I have a collection of letters ‘to’ and ‘from’ both my parents Nellie and Edward Sykes dated between 31/12/1939 and the end of WW2.
My father was in a reserved occupation as a Police Constable at the beginning of the war and was called up in June 1943 when he joined the RAF to train as a Pilot. After basic training in the UK, Dad was posted to South Africa to train fully as a bomber pilot. As luck would have it, he gained his Pilot’s Wings just before VE day and was flown back to the UK.
In the following September, he was demobbed shortly after that and returned to Police duties in the UK. Several of the pilots he trained with were posted to the Far East and some were sadly killed before the end of the war with Japan.
The photograph relates to the ‘day out’ described in the letter where my mother, Nellie celebrated VE Day in Skipton with her close friends who had worked with her in Munitions while my father was away in Africa.
