Letter from Jack Darby to Jean

Letter from Jack Darby to Jean

He has been doing dinghy drill at the Baths in Oxford. Then they went shopping, failed to get a beer because the pubs were sold out and went to see a film.

1944-06-14

Three double sided handwritten sheets and envelope

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EDarbyCAHWellandJ440614

[inserted] 15 - 6 - 44 [/inserted]

[postage stamp] [post mark]

Miss J. Welland.
7. Queens Drive
Surbiton
Surrey

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P/O. J. Darby 154676.
Officers Mess.
R.A.F. Station
Barford St John,
Oxford

14. 6. 44.

Dear Jean,

Thanks a lot for your letter which reached me on Saturday, by now you have received my other letter so you have all the gen on my return journey, am glad that your 'line' to Mr Mutimer was O.K.

I'm actually writing this at Upper Heyford and will put my new address on it when I get there which should be tonight.

We had to go into Oxford

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yesterday after the crew dingy [sic] drill at the Baths. This is quite a performance, really amusing if you are watching and of course the rest of the crews who are waiting shout their comments and duff gen. The idea is for practice if you have to 'ditch', we start off by standing on the side of the bath and after passing various articles of equipment the skipper calls the roll, we push off and paddle to the other end of the bath, some keen instructor type tips the dingy [sic] upside down, of course we are in flying kit and we swim round, collect all our bits and pieces that are still floating and whilst one

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chap [deleted] s [/deleted] rights the dingy and climbs aboard we heave the stuff in and climb aboard one by one, its very difficult with a flying suit full of water and after the first two are aboard the rest are usually hauled [deleted] about [/deleted] out by the seat of their pants. (this always gets some wise cracks from the spectators) after some more paddling to the end of the bath we dive in again and swim two lengths, by this time we are all on our knees and just totter out of the water amidst cheers from the rest of the boys. Then we have the pleasure of watching them do

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their stuff. After we had finished we went into Oxford, did some shopping and then had a very nice meal, as all the locals were sold out we had to go to the pictures. 'The Desert Song in Technicolor was showing quite a good film, also the new Preparations for Invasion, this is really terrific, the stacks of stuff we have accumulated is amazing, there's some wizard low flying shots, in fact the chaps are so low that the blades of grass look like a 5ft fence (. line)

The weather has been a little better today, yesterday was lousy it rained all the morning and there were some very heavy showers in

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the afternoon.

I'm glad Mother & Dad like the photo, I don't know about the right type of face, expect its because its a natural expression ? ? ? I think thats why a lot of photos are not so good.

Well, I must pack up now, hope the Red Peril is not running down too many people.

Take care of yourself.

Yours

Jack.