Letter from Jack Darby to Jean
Title
Letter from Jack Darby to Jean
Description
He has transferred from Ireland to Oxfordshire. He states that he will be busy flying. Accommodation and food are good. He has been playing tennis.
Creator
Date
1944-05-30
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
EDarbyCAHWellandJ440530
Transcription
[Postage stamp] [Postmark]
[inserted] 30-5-44 [/inserted]
Miss J. Welland.
7. Queens Drive.
Surbiton
Surrey.
[page break]
P/O. J. Darby. 154676.
[deleted] R [/deleted] Officers Mess
R.A.F. Station
Upper Hayford
Nr. Oxford.
30.5.44
Dear Jean,
Just a few lines to let you know I’m in England again, we left Bishopscourt on Monday and arrived here Tuesday evening, a pretty lousy journey of about 30 hours with eight changes, so you can imagine I was glad to get here. There were six of us posted here, and we started the course yesterday, we meet the other members of our crew here
[page break]
2/
and more or less get acquainted, the course lasts a fair time and we get bags of flying, in fact we only get one day off here, rather a bleak outlook for the next few weeks.
The station is a peace-time effort and is really decently laid out, at the moment we are living in married quarters, have a room to myself, civilian batman and everything just right. The mess is only about 50 yards away, much different to Bishopscourt when It took us 10 minutes, walking. Theres only one snag, we only stay her a
[page break]
3/
little while to do ground school, move on to a satellite and come back here later on, the food here is very good, nicely served and bitter is only 11d pint, mild 9d. of course a very good view is taken of this.
By the way, have you written to Bishopscourt, expect they will forward it me in due course, there were several letters there.
I managed to get a game of tennis last night, the courts are’nt too bad but the balls are terrible, those we played with were like new ones compared with these, however it was some practice,
[page break]
4/
especially for those short ones which you like, how is your tennis doing and what is the new club like?
The weather seems more like summer now, although we had some rain today it is still pretty warm, especially as we are indoors all the time, its hard to keep alert but all the gen we get here is very interesting but they pump it into you at a terrific rate.
Well, must close now, nearly dinner time, hope you are still going strong, still mowing down pedestrians with Agnes. I suppose.
Cheerio for time, give my regards to Mother and Dad.
Take care of yourself.
Yours Jack.
[inserted] 30-5-44 [/inserted]
Miss J. Welland.
7. Queens Drive.
Surbiton
Surrey.
[page break]
P/O. J. Darby. 154676.
[deleted] R [/deleted] Officers Mess
R.A.F. Station
Upper Hayford
Nr. Oxford.
30.5.44
Dear Jean,
Just a few lines to let you know I’m in England again, we left Bishopscourt on Monday and arrived here Tuesday evening, a pretty lousy journey of about 30 hours with eight changes, so you can imagine I was glad to get here. There were six of us posted here, and we started the course yesterday, we meet the other members of our crew here
[page break]
2/
and more or less get acquainted, the course lasts a fair time and we get bags of flying, in fact we only get one day off here, rather a bleak outlook for the next few weeks.
The station is a peace-time effort and is really decently laid out, at the moment we are living in married quarters, have a room to myself, civilian batman and everything just right. The mess is only about 50 yards away, much different to Bishopscourt when It took us 10 minutes, walking. Theres only one snag, we only stay her a
[page break]
3/
little while to do ground school, move on to a satellite and come back here later on, the food here is very good, nicely served and bitter is only 11d pint, mild 9d. of course a very good view is taken of this.
By the way, have you written to Bishopscourt, expect they will forward it me in due course, there were several letters there.
I managed to get a game of tennis last night, the courts are’nt too bad but the balls are terrible, those we played with were like new ones compared with these, however it was some practice,
[page break]
4/
especially for those short ones which you like, how is your tennis doing and what is the new club like?
The weather seems more like summer now, although we had some rain today it is still pretty warm, especially as we are indoors all the time, its hard to keep alert but all the gen we get here is very interesting but they pump it into you at a terrific rate.
Well, must close now, nearly dinner time, hope you are still going strong, still mowing down pedestrians with Agnes. I suppose.
Cheerio for time, give my regards to Mother and Dad.
Take care of yourself.
Yours Jack.
Collection
Citation
Jack Darby, “Letter from Jack Darby to Jean,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed May 18, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/40071.
Item Relations
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