My grandfather, John Wallett, kept the following letter regarding his son Harry Wallett, tucked away in his belongings and never spoke about it. Only recently have I discovered the letter during searches about my family history:
Hairmyers Hospital, Lanarkshire, June 5th.
Dear Mr. Wallett, I have been meaning to write to you for a long time. I did write to you from Gibraltar, but I have reason to believe that the letter never reached England, owing to the ship being sunk. I was the pilot of your son’s plane. When we hit the sea near the rock, Harry came up alongside of me when I was floating in the water, and I tried to keep his head above the water, but I was forced to leave go of him when the plane sank a minute or two later, and I rather think he must have been caught up in the under-carriage, but all this can interest you better now. What I really want to say is that Harry was a splendid mechanic and took such a tremendous interest in his work, that I took special care to see that only he looked after my plane. I am quite sure that if only he had vetted the plane at Gibraltar instead of the Gibraltar mechanic, we would never have had the engine trouble and failure, and crash, but he was not allowed to, and somebody else did the engine check-up, and we had engine trouble about five minutes after taking off.
My choice of him as a mechanic was a terrible one for him, because he lost his life as a result, but I thought I must write and tell you how very much he was appreciated.
The ground mechanics at an RAF station get very little credit from the public, but they do a tremendous lot of work and your son, especially, was the best man at his job that I ever met. I wish I knew a tenth as much about a plane as he did.
I am still in hospital after getting a broken leg in the crash. I was ten weeks in bed at Gibraltar, but I am up on crutches now and hope to be flying again in a few months. It’s nice to be back in Scotland again after Gibraltar. The rest of the squadron had a very bad time of it in Malta, only six crews were left after two months of operations.
With deepest sympathy, yours sincerely, A.D. Tanered
