A Letter Home
Peter Large served with 208 Squadron in the early 1950s. Some time ago, he was clearing his mother’s house after she died and he came across this letter that he had written home back in June 1954. It presents very well the way things were in the Royal Air Force of the Middle East in those days. A far cry from regular phone calls home, emails and television cameras on site. It was pen and paper once a week or so back then. This letter was first published in the 2007 Newsletter with Peter’s kind permission.
Dear Mother,
Thank you for your letter it was waiting for me when I came back from Cyprus along with 3 weeks papers so I have a bit of reading to catch up.
I came back last Monday for there was no flying on Sunday when my leave finished so I had a total of 16 days over there. Although there is a leave camp over there I stayed in Famagusta at the Victoria Hotel. In some ways it was better in the hotel but I found the food monotonous even though it was very well cooked. Every breakfast we had 2 fried eggs, sausages, tomato, brown bread & margarine and weak tea. For dinner and tea we had the choice of four meals for the whole time; chops egg & chips, steak egg and chips, boiled ham & salad (but no lettuce) & herrings. The chops were the thickest & juiciest I've ever seen and were really very good and the steak was quite good but with the boiled ham it didn’t seem like a salad without the lettuce.
As for the hotel though it was bare as compared with English standards but comfortable. The manager we used to call him Louis & he usually wore a sports shirt and shorts even in the 
evening when most people would have had a good shirt and flannels if not a suit. He certainly looked after us though as for example when I was booking in I was still hot after carrying my bag & he put a glass of lemon squash in front of me — on the house, when we went out for the day he would pack sandwiches for us at no extra charge.
While I was over there I met up with a bloke in the Welsh guards and he had a car out for 3 days. It was a Ford Consul and in the 3 days we covered 400 miles visiting the Troodos the highest point on the island, Kantara Castle & Kyrenia. Troodos is nearly 6000ft and the road bends and doubles back on itself for about 20 miles but the scenery there is well worth the trouble.
