UNDERWOOD PAPERS, 1940-1946

Letters and papers of Joseph Leonard Underwood while on war service with the Royal Air Force, chiefly correspondence from his fiancee Irene James whom he married in September 1944

The letters document their hopes, anxieties and difficulties through five years' of separation during wartime and its immediate aftermath. Joe Underwood had relatives at Bramshall near Uttoxeter and at Chesterton, both in Staffordshire. Many of the letters from Bramshall are addressed from The New Inn and refer to social life in the area during the war, especially the presence of American soldiers, notably black Gls, and local reactions to them.

The papers were donated to Derbyshire Record Office by a RAF Reserve officer in September 1998.

Joe Underwood was a Leading Aircraftsman, later a Corporal, in the Royal Air Force, firstly in 203 Squadron. He served in Aden in the Middle East from 1941 to 1943. On his return to England, he was stationed at Blackbushe Airfield near Camberley in Surrey until demobilisation in 1946. Irene James was employed in 1941 at a local munitions factory, but was conscripted in 1942 into the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Services) in which she continued to serve as a Private until 1945. She was posted to a number of anti-aircraft batteries including ones in Bristol and Cornwall.