Letter to Jean Welland from Jack Darby

Letter to Jean Welland from Jack Darby

Ha has been to Banff on leave. After hitch hiking locally they hired bike and swam in the hot springs. On a flight their undercarriage stuck up but they landed safely.

1943-10-18

One double sided handwritten air letter

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EDarbyCAHWellandJ431018-0001, EDarbyCAHWellandJ431018-0002

No.41. 18./10/43

Dear Jean

Thanks so much for letter 31. which arrived today, just a month by [underlined] Air Mail, [/underlined] however it was worth waiting for, perhaps the mail will come through a little quicker. As I mentioned in my last letter I made Banff on a 48. It's a good journey, over 500 miles there and back. Its really worth it, is a wizard place with marvellous scenery, to really appreciate it, you really must see it, no explanation can cover it. We went by train from Lethbridge to Calgary, stayed the night and hitched the 85 miles to Banff. We were pretty lucky, had a lift from a man going through the mountains into B. C., in fact he would have taken us to Radium hot springs, 90 miles west of Banff if we had had the time, we did however go out 32 miles to Marble Canyon, then the weather looked bad and started to snow, as we were 6,000 feet above sea level we decided to turn back, however we had some grand snaps, the only snag was there did’nt seem to be any traffic on the road, so we walked 12 miles without seeing any signs of human beings, we saw plenty of wild animals including a huge bull moose, with a marvellous pair of antlers, he must have stood fully 8 feet tall, unfortunately we couldn't get near enough for a photo, as we had still 20 miles to go we had just had a smoke when around the corner appeared a large furniture van, what a break, the first sign of life for three hours, we hopped on and were soon back in Banff. Can tell you I had a huge meal that evening and boy was it good. Next morning we hired two bicycles and visited places of interest nearby, the hot springs are very interesting, the water is light blue and really hot, in fact five minutes swimming and you are exhausted.

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3/

fly round shooting off red flares, the ambulance and five crews think they've got some customers, then we came in having collected a nice crowd of onlookers and the undercart comes down after all, bags of flap for all concerned.

Will say cheerio for the moment, hope you graduate from picking up stones to pulling weeds in your gardening career pretty poor, its sure tough on the stones!

Writing soon

Yours Jack.

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AIR LETTER TO ARMED FORCES
BY AIR MAIL

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
Service Surrey England.
[inserted] 18-10-43 OVERSEAS.

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

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2/

So. in a short time we saw a lot but by no means enough, I should really like three weeks there, a large car and plenty of gas, then we could go places.

Well, must answer that rude crack about how my plane gets off the ground, its really a marvellous sight to see it stagger off the end of the runway, the elastic doesn't seems the same as it was but we manage. The best fun however is when the undercart sticks coming in to land, then we