TYPED LETTER SIGNED as Prime Minister to General Sir Leslie Hollis, with Churchill’s Handwritten Postscript

Description

Typed letter on 28, Hyde Park Gate, London letterhead, dated 2 January 7, 1946, to Lieutenant General H.H. (”Hap”) Arnold:

My Dear Arnold, [In ink, in Churchill’s hand.]
I am indeed grateful to you for sending me the three reports of the commanding General of the Army Air Forces to the Secretary of State for War, the first of which you have inscribed. I value these a great deal, and they will have an honoured place in my War Library. Thank you so much for your thought of me.
All good wishes for 1946.
Yours sincerely,
Winston S. Churchill

P.S. Thru all the storms I always remember our day with the Czechs!
[In ink, all in Churchill’s hand.]

The letter is in excellent condition, with the standard fold marks and a hole punch at the upper left corner, with the penciled date of receipt: 1/23/46 in the lower left corner.

HENRY H. “HAP” ARNOLD (1886-1950) was commander of the Army Air Forces in World War II and the only air commander ever to attain the five-star rank of general of the armies. He and Winston Churchill first met in Britain early in 1941 when Arnold visited on a personal mission from President Roosevelt. Their relationship continued at each of the Big Three conferences, which Arnold attended accompanying both Roosevelt and Truman. Arnold appears throughout Churchill’s Second World War memoirs, beginning in Volume II. After a lengthy career as an Army aviator and commander that spanned the two World Wars, he retired from active service in 1945.