Letter from John Stockbridge to Terry Ford

Letter from John Stockbridge to Terry Ford

The letter contains news from Bagotville.

1943-07-07

Four handwritten sheets

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[Royal Canadian Air Force Crest]
Sgt Stockbridge
RCAF
Bagotville
7.7.43.
Dear Terry.
Well, I suppose I should apologize for not having written for such a time, but as you know I am pretty shocking @ writing letters @ the best of times even to Girls!!!
How are you getting along on your Course? I expect you have nearly finished by now. We are finishing in 2 weeks from last Saturday & I am hoping to go on leave to New York for a few days before reporting to Moncton!! Oh boy. I have now completed 48 hrs on the a/c & honestly they are wizard machines
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especially now that we have started firing the eight machine guns, my word do they roar!!!! Its an absolutely marvelous [sic] feeling sitting in the cockpit behind a solid stream of bullets!!!! We do all sorts of things here including [underlined] bags [/underlined] of low flying & also low level attacking of islands in the lakes around here: its wizard!!!! I went up to 35000 ft the other day with another in formation & then @ that height we had a dog fight & my word I was shagged when I landed, as you can quite imagine. I would love to go back to Weyburn now & show them a thing or two about [underlined] close [/underlined] formation & my word is it close. Whew!!!! Old Kendall & another bloke were up dog fighting the other day & had a mid-air collision but luckily the a/c were landed OK & no injury to the pilots, but the wing-tip of Kens plane was badly smashed in &
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there was a large rip on the underside of the other fellows wing!!!! Such fun!!
Received a letter yesterday from my girl in Weyburn & she says that there have been two serious accidents @ 41 SFTS. One mid-air collision where one of the fellows was killed & another crash where a fellow was doing stunts over his girls house & his wing came off!!!! He was of course, killed.
When will you be going to Moncton? I may see you there! I hope so!! How are the rest of the lads getting along? they are all doing fine here. We are officially [indecipherable word] as fighter pilots now & as you can guess we are all bucked about it!!!! By the way, how did you get on in your ground subjects. I expect you came through with flying colours as you did @ Weyburn
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Well! Must close now as I am going to bed!!! Give my kindest regards to all the boys when you see them & ask Cox to let me have the photos of Bradshaw & me standing by an a/c as I would like them very much.
Cheerio for the present
your old pal.
John