24/2/43

Dear Mother:

I thought that I had better write you a letter and tell you about my trip down here and what the station is like here. I met a fellow from Regina on the train by the name of Bob Vagg, his old man runs Vagg-Wilson Contractors or Plumbing Co. I rode all the way to Portage with him and he seems like a good egg. When we got to Portage we found out that our train for Paulson didn't leave till Sunday night at 11:45 so I still had a day to waste. We tried to get a room in Portage but we couldn't so we caught the next train to Winnipeg. As soon as we got into Winnipeg we got a hotel room and went to bed and didn't wake up until 3 o'clock Sunday afternoon. We walked around Winnipeg and met a lot of guys I knew. I got the train to Portage at 9:45 and then waited till! o'clock in Portage for the train to Paulson. We didn't get out to the station until 6 o'clock so we slept all day Monday too. So far we haven't done anything here yet but we are sure going to work hard next week. This course is 4 weeks and then we are posted overseas. I can't ell you what we take here as it is supposed to be very secret but I can tell you that we bomb from 10,000 feet from Bolingbrooks so it will be quite a change from Ansons anyways. We won't get any leave at the end of the course. About half of our class are officers and the other half sergeants so there will be quite a lot of competition between us. Please send the rest of my monthly check so I can buy smokes until the end of the month as I spent the rest of my money while I was in Winnipeg so send it as soon as possible. I got one of those photographic letters from Melville so I will send it along. Please write soon.

Orval