Officier-vlieger J. Blok

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by Norm Cromie
Hanno:

The loss of Zlieger J. Blok was like all losses in the air either by accidents or enemy fire it was tragic and had an indirect effect on us all. This is a letter that I mailed to my brother from Ortona in 1944. You will notice on the top that it was salvaged from an air crash.
God knows if there were any survivors.

Thanks Norm, amazing stuff. I am surprised by the effort that postal services - public or military - put into delivering the mail at all cost. It is quite well possible the crew transporting your letter did not survive the crash. Somehow it was arranged to pick up the mail bags from the debris and deliver the mail to the addressees. This is what happened to a letter from the Blok family in 1934. Their letter was sent by Douglas DC2, the famous KLM Uiver, but it crashed in the Syrian desert. The crew was killed, and much of the mail was lost in the ensuing fire. This particular envelope was scorched by the fire, but it was delivered anyway (and is still in posession of the family). Who would think one would bother about a couple of scorched envelopes when recovering a dead crew?