Letter from Jack Darby to his Wife

Letter from Jack Darby to his Wife

He has been posted to near York. They travelled to Grantham before returning to near York. He has very little administration work to do.

1945-10-05

Three double sided handwritten sheets and envelope

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EDarbyCAHDarbyJ451005

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[inserted] 5-10-45 [/inserted]

Mrs Darby,
7. Queens Drive
Surbiton
Surrey

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F/O C Darby. 154676
R.A.F. Station
Acaster Melbis
Nr York
Yorks.

Thursday

My dearest,

Now I have been posted and more or less settled I am able to write again.

I phoned Mother tonight as I expect you already know, hope you did’nt mind me not ringing you as I thought at 5-30 there would have been a chance of you being out and this is a

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village phone and difficult to get through, theres always a queue for it and sometimes there are delays.

We left Burn on Wednesday at 8.30 so I have’nt received any mail, as usual the air force sent us down to Group HQ at Grantham we were only there two hours when they posted us to here, we arrived here at 10 pm, – 13 1/2 hours travelling to do a journey of about [underlined] 15 miles [/underlined] thats R.A.F. efficiency for you besides. wasting our time and the nations

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money, as we moved all our kit on and off trains you can imagine what we said. By 'we' I mean Bill and other chaps, we are attached here as U/T ADMIN and the station is similar to Burn, just dealing with crews for Transport and Overseas Commands. There are no aircraft here and only a few permanent staff. We are assisting the Adjutant with postings, which means we watch him do all the work, there are four of

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us to do about half a man's work and we were told at Grantham that we shan't be going on a course but will stay here until demob. This is a very dispersed camp, all Nissen huts, the food is quite good, the beds fairly comfortable, the distance to York about 7 miles – the train takes 4 hours to get to Kings Cross but it looks as though theres not much chance of leave. but

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we may be able to wangle an occasional weekend.

Mother mentioned that you had started work, I think its quite a good idea as I shan't be getting much leave, expect you will tell me all about it in your letter.

Well, darling, must get this off tonight, I may be home for the weekend but won't promise

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Remember me to Mum and Dad, take care of yourself darling,

All my love

Your loving husband

Jack