Letter from Jack Darby to Jean
Title
Letter from Jack Darby to Jean
Description
He has received eight letters from England. He comments on Jean losing her wisdom teeth. Their friend Basil has lost his girlfriend. One of the wooden huts caught fire and caused much excitement. It has been snowing.
Creator
Date
1943-04-13
Temporal Coverage
Spatial Coverage
Coverage
Language
Format
Two double sided handwritten sheets and envelope
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
EDarbyCAHWellandJ430413
Transcription
[CANADIAN Y.M.C.A. logo]
[postage stamps] [postmark]
[inserted] 4-3-43 30-3-43 13-4-43 [/inserted]
Miss J. Welland,
7, Queens Drive,
Surbiton
Surrey,
England
[page break]
[CANADIAN Y.M.C.A. logo] ON ACTIVE SERVICE
(8)
927893. L.A.C. Darby,
31. Depot. 12G. R.A.F.
Moncton N.B.
Canada.
13/4/43.
Dear Jean,
I've forgotten for a moment whether I mentioned in my last letter of the arrival of mail from England, quite a fan mail, eight letters in all, two from you. I keep a list of dates of letters sent, soon shall have to have a file to tell me what I wrote about, they seem to be getting home fairly regularly.
What a disaster, so you've lost all your wisdom, still don't worry, you should go on as before, do hope you are able to talk now the swelling has subsided, should think that was the worst part
[page break]
2/
of the business (you can take that two ways.
So Basil has been shot down in flames, just too bad, rather a funny idea her father doing all the writing, should have thought she would have ended matters herself. it may be that her parents disapprove and have taken matters into their own hands.
Theres not been a lot of excitement here just lately, however today we had a fire, as all the billets are of wood they panic like anything. The fire engine is a smashing job with a syren like the American police cars, it was only a hut alight, but up rushed the engine and there was bags of action for a few minutes, as I watched I thought of the days when I carried my fire bucket around, think of it if I had still carried it I might have won a medal for fire fighting.
[page break]
3/
The weather has been rotten again, a return of winter for a few days, it snowed hard for about 36 hours, quite a lot of drifts formed, where the wind was blowing. suppose the snow was about 2ft deep average but the drifts were 6-10 feet. Today the wind has changed and the sun is shining as the temperature has risen considerably expect the snow will melt quickly. I took some snaps of the various snow scenes, some of them are not too bad, shall have quite a collection when I return home, they will be nice to look back on.
By the way, has the censor been busy on any of my letters? usually try to refrain from mentioning anything but these people have funny ideas of security, we have had to alter the address of the camp from 31.P.D to 31 Depot although the local paper refers to it in full and all equipment sent here has it written in large letters
[page break]
4/
across all the packages, silly is’nt it after the camp has been here some considerable time.
Hows the ice-skating going, still getting run over? suppose after each session you spend the next two days eating from the mantlepiece or are you progressing?
I went to the local flicks the other night, is a rotten place, like a converted theatre, saw 'Air Force' usual American line shooting, afraid there were quite a large part of the R.A.F. present and properly took a poor view of the effort, its surprising how these Flying Fortresses shoot down dozens of fighters, on the films, looks too easy.
Well, must stop binding now, [missing word] say cheerio, give that [indecipherable word] a chance.
Yours
Jack
[postage stamps] [postmark]
[inserted] 4-3-43 30-3-43 13-4-43 [/inserted]
Miss J. Welland,
7, Queens Drive,
Surbiton
Surrey,
England
[page break]
[CANADIAN Y.M.C.A. logo] ON ACTIVE SERVICE
(8)
927893. L.A.C. Darby,
31. Depot. 12G. R.A.F.
Moncton N.B.
Canada.
13/4/43.
Dear Jean,
I've forgotten for a moment whether I mentioned in my last letter of the arrival of mail from England, quite a fan mail, eight letters in all, two from you. I keep a list of dates of letters sent, soon shall have to have a file to tell me what I wrote about, they seem to be getting home fairly regularly.
What a disaster, so you've lost all your wisdom, still don't worry, you should go on as before, do hope you are able to talk now the swelling has subsided, should think that was the worst part
[page break]
2/
of the business (you can take that two ways.
So Basil has been shot down in flames, just too bad, rather a funny idea her father doing all the writing, should have thought she would have ended matters herself. it may be that her parents disapprove and have taken matters into their own hands.
Theres not been a lot of excitement here just lately, however today we had a fire, as all the billets are of wood they panic like anything. The fire engine is a smashing job with a syren like the American police cars, it was only a hut alight, but up rushed the engine and there was bags of action for a few minutes, as I watched I thought of the days when I carried my fire bucket around, think of it if I had still carried it I might have won a medal for fire fighting.
[page break]
3/
The weather has been rotten again, a return of winter for a few days, it snowed hard for about 36 hours, quite a lot of drifts formed, where the wind was blowing. suppose the snow was about 2ft deep average but the drifts were 6-10 feet. Today the wind has changed and the sun is shining as the temperature has risen considerably expect the snow will melt quickly. I took some snaps of the various snow scenes, some of them are not too bad, shall have quite a collection when I return home, they will be nice to look back on.
By the way, has the censor been busy on any of my letters? usually try to refrain from mentioning anything but these people have funny ideas of security, we have had to alter the address of the camp from 31.P.D to 31 Depot although the local paper refers to it in full and all equipment sent here has it written in large letters
[page break]
4/
across all the packages, silly is’nt it after the camp has been here some considerable time.
Hows the ice-skating going, still getting run over? suppose after each session you spend the next two days eating from the mantlepiece or are you progressing?
I went to the local flicks the other night, is a rotten place, like a converted theatre, saw 'Air Force' usual American line shooting, afraid there were quite a large part of the R.A.F. present and properly took a poor view of the effort, its surprising how these Flying Fortresses shoot down dozens of fighters, on the films, looks too easy.
Well, must stop binding now, [missing word] say cheerio, give that [indecipherable word] a chance.
Yours
Jack
Collection
Citation
Jack Darby, “Letter from Jack Darby to Jean,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed May 22, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/39897.
Item Relations
This item has no relations.