(19) No.4 S.F.T.S.,
Saskatoon,
9-2-42.
Dear Mum and Dad,
We have only three more weeks on this station, and if they go as quickly as the last three it won’t be very long – that is, unless they extend the course again. After the first setback talk is again turning to wings dinners and so on, and to-morrow we are to have our interviews with the station’s big-wigs.
Just recently we have been having a lot of fun flying on some long cross-countries, and a couple of hours ago another chap and I got back from a 300-mile triangle. This navigation is good fun, and our trip to-day worked out well. There was just one little trouble – I took up a new kind of computer, and found I’d forgotten how to use it, so had to switch back to the old type. Good thing we had both kinds with us, or we might still be up looking for that wind direction.
Two or three days ago we were issued with “New Zealand” shoulder-badges to replace the “R.N.Z.A.F.” ones we laboriously sewed on on the boat three months ago, so I had another hectic three hours or more putting the new lot in place. Of course, I managed to get one of them crooked, and had to unpick it. Perhaps the new badges were responsible for a dinner invite I received over the week-end; we had a “48”, and I was strolling through town when a Mrs Steeves came up to ask me along to dinner any time I liked to go. When I told her we had week-end leave she said she was sorry she didn’t know sooner, so that I could have slept the night at her place. An Aucklander named Jim Whyte and I went along on Sunday and stayed for lunch and tea. Mrs Steeves is a dentist’s wife, and both she and her husband are very nice indeed. They have a nice home, too; as in all Canadian homes, the rooms are small by New Zealand standards, but everything inside is “just so”. They were very proud of their annual crop of tomatoes, which, as they proved with photographs, grow 6 to 8 feet tall in the season – outdoors, too. We had a great time, and they want us to go back any time we get off – “it doesn’t matter when,” they say.
Cousin Myra replied to a note of mine letting her know when I expected leave, with a letter which turned up to-day, in which she asked to be remembered to you, Mum, next time I wrote home, so don’t say I didn’t do it. She didn’t mention whether or not a letter from you had arrived, but surely it must have turned up by now.
We have Waafs in the kitchen of the mess here now, and so far there has been a slight improvement in the quality of the food. Maybe if it keeps up the meals will be O.K. by the time we leave here – now wouldn’t that happen to me?
On Saturday night I looked in on “Smilin’ Through”, which I hardly suppose you will see since it consists mainly of Jeanette MacDonald. Actually I liked it very well, though I still think there is something fishy about a piano which is still perfectly in tune after fifty years of disuse in an empty house.
There still seems to be a chance that we may be allowed across the border into the States after we leave here, and if that’s the case I am thinking of hopping from Ottawa to Chicago, and then hitch-hiking from Chicago to Niagara Falls, on to New York, Philadelphia and Washington. Following Father’s footsteps, huh? Hope it works out that way, as it would be a very interesting trip, even if done in a hurry.
The barracks are much quieter here now since the owner of the noisiest radio in the dormitory went into hospital and took his wireless with him. He was my next-door neighbour, and I got all the row first-hand whenever I wanted to sleep. Without wishing him any harm, I still couldn’t lament very much if he stayed in hospital for another week or two.
I was “on the air” for the first time in history this morning. Some of the ‘planes here are fitted with radio receiving and transmitting sets for talking to one another and communicating with the ground station. It was quite a lot of fun – maybe, if all else fails, I can be a radio announcer.
By the way, I understand that export of stockings from Canada has been prohibited, so you have probably had your last pair from this source. Too bad I didn’t arrive a little earlier.
I am wondering still how Dad is getting in to work these days, because I know there is no satisfactory ‘bus service. Poor old Charlotte will be creaking at the joints by the time she hits the highways again.
Closing down for now, folks, so love from
Arnold G.