Mail Correspondence with Soldiers at War (“Feldpostbriefe”): Letter from the English soldier Reg Fayers, crew member of a “Halifax” bomber, about the war and his missions over Germany (Published on 28/02/2025)
The Royal Air Force’s (“RAF”) Bomber Command suffered some of the highest casualties of the war in relation to the number of men involved, and the men who flew the heavy bombers over Germany always faced the prospect of not returning home. Many prepared a last letter to their loved ones for this eventuality.
Sergeant Reg Fayers flew as a navigator on Halifax bombers bombers with the RAF’s No. 76 Squadron. He recorded his impressions of the war, its automation and his involvement in it in one such letter to his wife in the summer of 1943. This letter, which was ultimately not sent, read as follows (source: Roberts, “Letters from the Front” [2014], p. 161 ff.):
“Darling,
I’ve occasionally felt lately that should I not come home on leave next week, you would think it rather inconsiderate of me not to say a farewell and an excuse, so herewith both. (It’s a grey evening and I’ve nothing to do but write and read, and I’ve already read.)
Lately in letters I’ve mentioned that I’ve flown by night and that I’ve been tired by day, but I haven’t said that I can now claim battle honors – Krefeld, Mülheim, Gelsenkirchen, Wuppertal and Cologne, I suppose I’ve been fighting in the Battle of the Ruhr.
But it hasn’t felt like that. It doesn’t seem like fighting to climb aboard an aircraft with your friends and climb to a space where the sunset seems infinite; to sit in a small space, and on the engine-noise background hear the everyday commonplaces spoken to you while you juggle with figures and lines to find God’s intentions in the winds; to sit for a few hours at 20,000 feet working hard so that when Tom eventually says ‘Bombs gone, photograph taken. OK Steve, fly away,’ it doesn’t seem anything more than part of the job, and a fresh course to be steered, this time for home. It’s aloof and impersonal, this air war. One has no time to think of hell happening below to a set of people who are the same as you except that their thinking has gone a bit haywire. It’s a fair assumption that when Tom dropped our bombs the other night, women and boys and girls were killed and cathedrals damaged. It must have been so. Were it more personal, I should be more regretting [it], I suppose. But I sit up there with my charts and pencils and I don’t see a thing. I never look out. In five raids all I’ve seen is a cone of searchlights up by Amsterdam, with the southern coast of the Zuider Zee – where poor Ben Dove was found – and a few stars. And as far as humanity is concerned, I can’t definitely regret that I’ve helped to kill German people.
The only thought that comes from the outside is when occasionally Gillie, the mid-upper gunner, says ‘Turn to starboard, go…’. It might mean that out there in the darkness which you cannot even see, somewhere there is a night fighter with a German boy in it; and he may kill you. When Gillie or Reuben says ‘Turn to starboard, go…’, that quick weakening thought comes in – ‘Maybe this is It.’ But you never can believe it. It doesn’t seem possible that what is so orderly and efficient a machine one second can become, within the next minute, a falling killing thing, with us throwing ourselves from it into a startling world of surprised chaos. But it can happen, and, I suppose, does happen to a lot of us. So far we’ve had two small holes in ‘H’ for Harry and nothing more. We have been very lucky. We have flown straight and high, dropped our bombs and come home to bacon and eggs, or maybe only beans on toast. But, so far, we have come home.
Should you ever read this, I suppose it will mean that I haven’t. I can’t imagine that. If I really could imagine it, I suppose I wouldn’t fly. Or would I?
I really don’t know.
But, darling, I could never live easy with the thought inside me that a struggle is going on in the world without me helping good old Right against the things so wrong that have got into our system. This world is a swell sort of place even now; there’s so much beauty in it, such thrilling beauty. If a thing is really beautiful, through and through beautiful, it seems to me it is good. And it could be so much more so. I suppose really that is why I sit on our bombs and fly with them until we come to one more of Jerry’s cities. Instinctively it seems I’ve come to help, first in destroying the bad old things, and then in rebuilding.
If you read this, I suppose there’ll be no Simon in this world. But for those other worlds that will come, there will be Simon. And there will be other worlds, darling; there will be Simon. For them, I suppose, it is that I fly. That must be the answer, I guess. I struggle instinctively to be with you, walking so quietly by Brundon fields and Barnardiston hedges, eating enough lettuce hearts so clean and green for the two of us, being together in the excitement of our love, and in the quiet moonlit night when one wonders about God. That is the beginning of my new world, of all my new worlds.
The most real and living thing in the life that I’ve had has been you, Phyl Kirby. I have loved you so that I haven’t words left to say. And I believe it’s so much in the soul of me that it will always stay with me. I don’t know what heaven I’ll go to (the immodesty of the man) but I fancy something simple, with a river, and lots of green. And I know you’ll be there. If there be a god – and there must be – and if there be a heaven – and there must be – then, too, there must be us. I’m afraid I really believe that, darling. I hope it doesn’t sound too mystic or anything, but I do believe in always having you, and in new worlds.
I suppose that is why I have no personal fear of dying. It would be darned interesting, were it not that it might mean breaking an early date with you. And I’d rather take leave next week than the alternative, of course. Life is sweet, too; I’ll have as much as I can.
So, if you ever read this, darling, I’m sorry if I had to break a date. It means keeping the next one the more certainly. And
please don’t be too sad. Together we’ve had more out of living than most people can reasonably expect. And if we had to stop sharing those wonderful things, perhaps it was better that it ended when our love was so strong and firm and young, and while we both had our own teeth. If I have to go to heaven, I’d rather go attractively, and still be able to play soccer.
Love me till then, darling,
Toujours a vous,
Reg”
Reg Fayers was shot down during a raid over Frankfurt in November 1943. He survived and spent the rest of the war in the German Prisoner of War camp “Stalag Luft 1”.
(Head picture: German military cemetery Brandau/Odenwald, August 2022
[Inscription: “An unknown war dead”])
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