No. 15 Armoured Car Squadron, R.N.A.S., in Russia, 30th June 1916

Three Mansfield men were members of No. 15 Armoured Car Squadron, Royal Naval Air Service, serving in Russia. On 30th June 1916 a letter from one of them, Jack Slack, was published in the local press.

“MANSFIELD MAN IN RUSSIA “Last week we mentioned three Mansfield men who are with a British unit in Russia. One is Jack Slack, Nottingham-road, who says in a postcard to a friend, that he had a “ripping” time in Moscow before leaving for the Russian Southern frontier. In an earlier letter he has sent he said: “We have at last left ‘No Man’s Land.’ Came aboard a Russian passenger steamer last Sunday and left the harbour on the Tuesday. This boat has ample accommodation for two of our squadrons. We sleep in second-class cabins and dine in the dining-room, which is a fine, large place. It’s quite a treat to have a game of cards now, and on Thursday night we had a ‘sing-song’. This is heaven after the ____, although we had a great struggle to get through the ice. It was fearfully thick in places. We had our mails handed to us off another boat which was stationary in the ice. You will realise what the ice was like when I tell you a party of men walked across the ice to fetch the mails off the other boat.” ‘Mansfield and North Notts. Recorder’, 30th June 1916.