Whatever Happened To Bill Milner?
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Letters
From Bill's army training right through to active service,
there is a lot of correspondence, not only from Bill to his father
William but also from Bill's wife Anne to Bill's father. Also
included is Bill's logbook that tells us of his target of that
fateful last flight and the official telegrams from the War Office
and The Red Cross when the letters from Bill stopped coming.
The first of the letters that Bill's father received documented Bill's time of his training days in Buckinghamshire (where Bill met his wife Anne). These explained the hard training regime that he endured and of the skills he learnt, mainly office related. He wanted to go into that line of work when the war was over.
The letters are written in a very 'matter of fact' way. Examples
of this refreshingly innocent prose include asking his father
to send him his good shoes, querying how everyone is doing and
wanting to know how his friends are doing.
He seemed to send most of his letters to Anne, who in turn passed
on these messages onto William and always added love from Bill's
two young sons, Daniel & Barry.
Anne had relocated back to Middlesbrough with the children, so
Bill was very restricted with his time and probably only had time
for one letter a month. He would send these letters to Anne asking
her to pass on the details to the family in Castleford.
Bill's logbook also contains details of the training flights
he took, and most importantly, the missions that flew from RAF
Binbrook in Lincolnshire. The details included the squadron, his
rank, the make of plane, date of the mission and the area the
mission took them.
The last entry in the logbook is April 1944, destination Essen,
Germany. This was the last mission Bill ever flew.
After that last flight, the next letters take on a more official
direction. These include telegrams for the Home Office stating
that Bill and the crew is missing in action. Replies to Anne's
anxious letters, from the Home Office and the Red Cross, stating
no news of her husband.
18 months from the day Bill died, Anne received the telegram that
confirmed her worst fears.
Bill had been shot down over Alsace. He and the names of all the
other crewmembers had been killed in action.
The last two pieces of literature from this period are commemorative.
Firstly is the certificate of honour that Anne received from the
government and secondly, and this is probably more significant,
a dedication from the local church in Allerton Bywater for his
name to be immortalised in a window in the church.
All of this correspondence and literature certainly gives us an insight into how it felt, home and abroad, during these difficult times. It certainly shows that the 'wartime spirit' is something that we should respect and honour when we hear it mentioned.