The letter is sent from my maternal grandfather, Leonard Billingham, to my grandmother Louie on 2nd September 1944. He had arrived in France in August 1944 after the liberation of Paris. He was a Private in the RAF Transport and Logistics corps. My grandmother was back in the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham, living in a back to back house. You can see this from the address on the envelope, which is written as 1/5 Rosalie Street – House 1 at the Back of number 5 Rosalie Street.
Billingham letter scans
I came across this particular letter in a bundle of letters given to me by my uncle during lockdown. He’d never sorted through them after he found them in my grandfather’s belongings when he died in 1992. There were letters dating from 1942 to 1946 in the bundle, covering life in the RAF from conscription to demob. My mother’s birth, my uncle’s birth and lots and lots of things about motorbikes are covered in the letters! This one stood out because it is so evocative. I can imagine the scenes greeting him as he arrived in the newly liberated French towns and the relief of the French people awaiting the arrival of the allied forces. It must have been quite amazing for my grandfather to experience. He’d never left Britain before he joined the RAF. Only a few weeks earlier he’d described being sent to take supplies to the D-Day beaches in the days directly after the landings. He’d been given a rifle, some francs and what he described as a ‘Mae West’ which I’ve since learned is a life jacket (cockney rhyming slang for vest maybe?). He drove his lorry out of a boat and up the beach, unloaded it and came back to England. Then a few weeks later he was sent out from RAF Uxbridge to France.
The end of the letter is sadly missing, but I still think that it is such a beautiful description of events in August 1944, written by ‘plain old Mr Billingham’ as he refers to himself. A young man, from the heart of Birmingham in the middle of the war.
1581166 LAC Billingham
313 S&T Column “E” Section
R.A.F
B.L.A
Sept 2dd 1944
Darling,
I expect you have been wondering why I have not written to you this past week; I hope you haven’t been getting worried about me. I have been out on a long job and I have covered some hundreds of miles in the last few days so I have been unable to get a letter to you. It isn’t like just dropping a letter in a post box over here, we can’t post them until we get back to our headquarters and I still happen to be a good hundred and twenty miles from there. I shall have to wait till I get back. We have been very busy ever since we came over and I have only had time to receive two of your letters. I haven’t up to yet been back to collect your parcel. So you can put your mind at rest, I am perfectly safe and well.
I will tell you about our drive through France:- I have never seen people get so excited when they see us in all my life. Some of the towns and villages we passed through had only been cleared of the Germans a few days and when they realised we were English – ‘Anglais’ they call us – they nearly go mad.
We drove one day over two hundred miles and without shooting a line practically every person – man woman and child – were in the streets to wave to us. We stopped at one big, well known town for a couple of days and we were allowed time off to look around.
But to try to walk down the street was impossible, we were stopped every two yards and had our hand shook. Little girls no older than eight were kissing us on both cheeks like the French people always do.
As we happened to be the first three English boys in the town we nearly got mobbed.
There was your husband, just plain Mr Billingham, signing the back of peoples photographs for souvenirs by the hundred. We were lucky to be the first lads in two of the most important towns in France. You see at the moment we happen to be in the American sector.
German prisoners – I have seen plenty of them in civilian clothes who had been left behind to do a bit of sniping. We happened to be in this town when some Free French lads caught a fifth columnist and they marched him down the street with his hands on his head. But you would you just like to see the hundreds of red, white and blue flags here. They have them on their cars, bikes, carry the, wear them on the arms and some have them for their hats. I have been more than once presented with a lovely bunch of flowers on the road.
They are very short of transport here and I have seen some funny vehicles floating around. One was a bike with a two wheel trailer; the fellow was on the bike and his wife was in the box at the back…
[Letter from Leonard F Billingham to his wife Louie, living in 1/5 Rosalie Street, Birmingham 18]
