Letter 40: March 10, 1943
Mar
10, 1943
Dear
Ellen
Hello my little love sick sister how
is things around Outlook, still plowing through snow up to you shoulders or is
it slush now.
Well I suppose you have received my
last letter in which I informed you of my posting to this Bomber O.T.U. &
also that I have got an all Canadian & American crew. I have gone solo of
this type (Wellingtons) without much trouble & will soon be going cross country
trips with my whole crew. I have been here a month now & so in 6 weeks our
course should be finished & then we will get leave, I’m going to S.Wales to
Netta’s place for my leave, I’m sure looking ahead to my leave also, she is
going to try & get her holidays at the same time as me so we should have a
good time. The relations all want me to go to their places but I’ve decided to
go where I want to go & where I’ll enjoy myself most.
Had a letter from Nettie Piper the
other day & she is a waitress in W.A.A.F.S. & she is in a Sgts Mess
& the station is not far from Edinburgh, she is able to get home on her day
off, which will make it nice for her, she also told me that her Dad (Uncle
Jimmie) had a bad turn & has to go into a hospital.
I bought myself a bicycle the other
day. I sold my other old crate when I left Pembrey, this bcyc I bought is
almost new & sure runs nice. Almost all the fellows in our hut have bought
Bcyes, The other night a couple of us fellows went on an eight mile ride down
the road to a Pub & an café attached, we had a mutton chop & chips
& a couple of pints of beer.
Last Friday night some of us,
including Tex went into a near by city to a dance, Tex got waylaid by a gal
& thus he never got home until 6 o’clock in the morning. Tex sure knows how
to swing the lead, he can get away with anything. My night life since arriving
on this camp has been fairly restricted. I just seem satisfied to stay in the
mess or the hut in the evenings & shoot the manure. We had another all
Canadian party on the station tonight with bingo & a picture show
afterwards, I just got back & enjoyed it very much.
Haven’t had a letter from you since
I wrote last but should soon, with this moving about the mail gets held up a
bit which is natural.
Well Ellen this is about all the
news for this time so I’ll say goodnight for now.
Your loving brother
Fred
NOTE
After
completion of flying training, the individual airmen were posted to an Operational
Training Unit, where the new intake was paraded in a hangar and told to
form themselves into 5-man crews of pilot, navigator, wireless-operator, bomb
aimer, and one air gunner. Here they flew mainly Wellingtons and acquired team
skills and did a lot of training, sometimes with an "easy" operation
(dropping mines or leaflets) thrown in. After this, those destined for
four-engined aircraft - which by late 1942 was almost every one of them - were
sent to a Heavy Conversion Unit where the crew was joined by
the flight engineer and a second air-gunner
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