Letter to Jean Welland from Jack Darby

Letter to Jean Welland from Jack Darby

He thanks he for her letters and poetry. They have been flying and buzzing farmers on their tractors.

1943-09-10

One double sided handwritten air letter

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EDarbyCAHWellandJ430910-0001, EDarbyCAHWellandJ430910-0002

No 32.

10/9/43.

Dear Jean,

Thanks so much for letters 28 & 29, blow me down you are getting quite a poet aren't you, the last two letters have had little odds and ends of rhyme. are you going to start writing for Christmas cards? Regarding your trip to [indecipherable word]. Well, who was he, – a mere captain this time or did you suddenly see a poor old man of about 80 with a weak heart? it must have been one of these two things to make you catch the wrong train. The best thing you can do next train journey is to get Mother to label you and put you in charge of the guard! (all right I'm safe over 6,000 miles away). Well, must stop being rude, but those two letters have provided me with bags of ammunition. We're still doing a fair amount of flying, but haven't dropped any more bombs, today we were selected for flying but the aircraft was unservicable, was a great pity as the air was very smooth, ideal for good bombing results. The last time we flew we had a great time, were wind finding, as we both got them fairly quickly there was 45 minutes to spare so we went low flying, shooting up farmhouses, etc, one old chap took a very poor view of it, he was driving a tractor across a field when we appeared about 10ft above the deck, heading straight for him, he took one look decided "they [indecipherable word] Air Force boys were too close for comfort" and abandoned the tractor forthwith. Of course to us its a great joke but its really a foolish pastime, sooner or later you make a mistake, then the crash gang collect the pieces, still only the good die young, yours truly will live to a ripe old age.

[page break]

3/

[deleted letter] at 26 hours. Well, I think this is all the news at the moment, what did you think of the Italian business? I think the Huns will fight all the way up Italy and we shall see many more fitter battles.

Cheerio for the moment, shall be writing again soon

Yours Jack.

AIR LETTER TO ARMED FORCES

BY AIR MAIL

IF ANYTHING IS ENCLOSED, THIS LETTER WILL BE SENT BY ORDINARY MAIL.

Number, Rank or Rating and Name
MISS J. WELLAND

Unit (Company, Battery, Ship, Squadron, etc.)
7, QUEENS DRIVE
SURBITON, SURREY
ENGLAND.

Service
10-9-43

FROM (Sender's full name and address)
M 927893. L.A.C. Darby
# 8. B & G.L.
Lethbridge Alberta

[inserted] 32 [/inserted]

2/

Today we went skeet shooting, this is like clay pigeon but the bird is smaller, this is part of our training to quicken the eye and give you practice in allowing deflexion. Next week we should be up flying in Blenheims for gunnery practice, we fire at the drogue and do ground straffing [sic], here we fly very low but it's great for practice, these next few weeks we've got a lot of flying hours to get in, at the moment my total stands