Letter to Jean Welland from Jack Darby

Letter to Jean Welland from Jack Darby

He thanks her for her mail. He has left Lethbridge and is now at Edmonton. The food at his new base is good. An Anson crashed killing five crew and trainees.

1943-10-31

One double sided handwritten air letter

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EDarbyCAHWellandJ431031-0001, EDarbyCAHWellandJ431031-0002

No. 45. 31/10/43

Dear Jean,

Firstly, thanks a lot for all your mail which seems to have crept up on me, in the last week I’ve received air letters 31, 32, 34 and the ‘serial’ letter 33, honestly when I saw 6 pages it shook me rigid. one other thing, I mislaid my book where I keep the record of all the numbers of my letters I write to you, when I left Lethbridge it re-appeared, so some numbers are missing, am starting from 45 to straighten them out.

Well, the course at Lethbridge is now history, I did fairly well on the whole, averaged 75.8% for all 10 subjects which placed me about 7th out of 48, am pretty satisfied as the majority of the course were chaps of 18 to 21 who had been in the A.T.C. and had a decided advantage over others. I managed to get through the course without bombing farmhouses, cattle etc or shooting up Indians, horses other aircraft or the C.O. in fact I was a ‘model’ pupil, am afraid something is going to happen here at Edmonton to balance things up!

Now a few words about this part of the course, this is an Air Observer School run by civilians and controlled by the C.P.R. the station seems alright, the mess hall is all civilian managed, and food is plentiful and good, of course we work a 7 day week, starting tomorrow morning, if we are lucky we shall get a 48 at the end of 6 weeks, then to Moncton and home (I hope), there seems a very faint chance of getting leave, rather a nuisance as I wanted to visit my cousin in New York.

Have just finished re-reading your letters, well there are lots of openings but I will ignore them for the

[page break]

4/

accident here, an Anson crashed, all five lads bought it, the first serious accident in 2 1/2 years at this station. Rotten luck to get so near the end of the course and then get killed.

Must close now, hope you are keeping fit and don’t [deleted] misb [/deleted] miss your thrilling ride to work too much.

Take care of yourself give my regards to Mother and Father.

Yours Jack.

[page break}

AIR LETTER TO ARMED FORCES

BY AIR MAIL

[postmark]

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

[deleted] Number, Rank or Rating and Name [/deleted] MISS WELLAND.

[deleted] Unit (Company, Battery, Ship, Squadron, etc) [/deleted] 7. QUEENS DRIVE

[deleted] Regiment, Branch, Establishment or Station [/deleted] SURBITON. SURREY.

Service ENGLAND

[inserted] 31-10-43 [/inserted] OVERSEAS.

FROM (Sender’s full name and address)

M 927893 L.A.C. Darby
[symbol] 2 A.O.S.
Edmonton. Alberta

[inserted] 45 [/inserted]

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2/

time being, one thing however, I believe Norman’s have a special clearance of left-over wines for 4/9 3/4 with a case of apples thrown in, am wondering whether they’re decent apples, what would you do chum?

The weather is now definitely on the wintry side, temperature is down to about 30° F and we’ve had some snow, weather conditions were bad yesterday, had a nasty