The letter shown below was sent to the parents of William Gerald Sorel, August 29, 1944 by Wing Commander Eric Mitchell. W/Cdr Eric Mitchell had just taken command of 431 Squadron a mere 2 days before. As tragic as it was for the Sorel family to be notified their son was missing, it must have been an extremely difficult task for W/Cdr Mitchell. He was forced to write 35 letters home to the families of airmen lost on the Hamburg raid, airmen he likely never had the opportunity to meet. Although it is a little difficult to read I have chosen to display a copy of the actual document rather than re-create the text.

Notes:

In the letter W/Cdr Mitchell refers Sgt. Sorel as "Bill". He was known to his family as Gerald since his father went by Bill, there are two possibilities as to why he may have been referred to as such. The first being that W/Cdr Mitchell, faced with the prospect of writing 35 letters and attempting not make them sound impersonal deduced that since Gerald's first name was William that he went by Bill. The other possibility is that Gerald may have in fact gone by the name "Bill" while overseas as military protocol would have called for him to sign any documents using his full name. Given that W/Cdr Mitchell took the time correctly identify in the letter  the number of sorties and operational hours flown, I tend to believe the latter rather than the former.