Letter to Jean Welland from Jack Darby

Letter to Jean Welland from Jack Darby

He has been horse riding and flying. He enjoys bombing and evasive action. He has four weeks of the course left.

1943-09-26

One double sided handwritten air letter

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EDarbyCAHWellandJ430926-0001, EDarbyCAHWellandJ430926-0002

No. 34 26.9.43.

Dear Jean,

Thanks a lot for air letter 30 which arrived a few days ago, I take a poor view of your concern about the horse, not so much as a word about the rider, anyway the last I saw of it was the horse leaning up against the Litching [sic] post with a very browned-off expression on its face, as much as to say, "what did I do to deserve that." We have been getting tons of flying in, when your letter arrived I had just finished 24 hrs flying without a break, both day and night, so your observation that it must be a grand feeling did not get a good reception. Really its O.K. but pretty boring, if I have plenty to do I don't mind but to sit and see miles & miles of prairie gets a bit monotonous. When you are bombing its wizard, time flys by and you hang out the bomb hatch and watch the bomb go down, my favourite is evasive action, then the pilot really goes to town, throws the 'ship' all over the sky, just straightening up to give you time for one correction, the bombs have to go and funnily enough you usually get a good group, my last 6 bombs fell in 30 yard radius from 10,000 ft which is considered quite good. We have just another four weeks to go then it will all be over, we had our last progress test tonight, quite a reasonable paper, I think I've made the grade O.K., hope to average about 75% on the three. Today we had another medical, the worst I have had, one thing we had to step up and down from a 2' form 150 times in five minutes, it doesn't sound much but just you try stepping on and

[page break]

4/

of one of [indecipherable word] cricket matches with your fathers name being mentioned, it reminded me of our Sunday afternoon efforts at the E.U.T.C. to me it seems so remote although I can't seem to forget Cyril, believe me the first load I take over Germany will be for him. Well, space is short, how has the photo turned out? I suppose you weren't connected with a report in the Surrey Cornet mentioning mysterious damage to valuable photographic equipment in Kingston, All the best take care of yourself. Jack.

AIR LETTER TO ARMED FORCES [inserted] 26 9 43 [/inserted]
BY AIR MAIL ]postage stamp] [postmark]
IF ANYTHING IS ENCLOSED, THIS LETTER WILL BE SENT BY ORDINARY MAIL.
[deleted] Number, Rank or Rating and Name [/deleted] MISS J WELLAND.
[deleted] Unit (Company, Battery, Ship, Squadron, etc.) [/deleted] 7, QUEENS DRIVE,
[deleted] Regiment, Branch, Establishment or Station [/deleted] SURBITON [deleted letter]
[deleted] Service [/deleted] Surrey, England.
OVERSEAS.

FROM (Sender's full name and address)
[deleted] M [/deleted] 927893 L.A.C. Darby
[SYMBOL] 8. B. & G.S.
Lethbridge Alberta

[inserted] 34 [/inserted]

2/

off an ordinary chair once every two seconds. Boy, I was nearly dead by the time I’d finished, of course it's testing the heart, they take your pulse rate for the 1st 3rd and 5th minute after you've finished, mine was average, but yours truly felt far below average. Fancy you meeting Bink, apparently married life must suit her, give my regards to her also to Carol if you happen to run into them again. By the way, thanks for the newspapers. I saw the result