x Flight
#2 Squadron
#7 I. T. S.
Saskatoon

August 4. 1942

Dear Mother:

We arrived here 11:00 a.m. on Sunday after an uncomfortable trip sitting up on a train which rattled about as much as the muskeg express to McMurray.

I think I am going to like it here. Most pleasant surprise is the course is still only 8 weeks. Most of us want to be pilots—probably few of us will be—it seems to depend on what they want for a particular draft when you finish your exams. We should have all our medicals over in the first two weeks and this will wash out some of us. Some of the boys went in the decompression chamber today which takes you up to 18,000 feet where you stay for 10 minutes before donning oxygen mask. I may not like this particularly if the person beside me keels over as one did today. Also have a night vision test which doesn’t count against you if you are not so good. One of the chaps washed out today on color blindness and has to go to Toronto to remuster. I am beginning to have a premonition that I will be a navigator although I would much rather be a pilot. This is because I think navigation is going to come fairly easily to me and probably under the new system eyes are not so important for the navigator.

Discipline is particularly rigid here—ceremonial drill and inspections every morning—barrack inspections every day—and probably someone watching for you to do something wrong all the time. For the first two weeks you are on duty wach every other night and they say you hardly have time to think what with your studies etc. That is why the letter is so jumbled I guess.

Either in the morning or afternoon we take our lectures at a normal school which is 15 minutes walk away. If we want a decent place to study we have to walk over to this school after supper, so I am going to get tired of this after awhile.

We live in two story barracks with 18 to a room instead of the 4 we would have at Edmonton.

Already I have had two lessons on the link. Today I had to make circles with airolons locked. This was the first one with more than one control at a time and I think I did fairly well. The machine is extremely sensitive and it is quite hard to stop on a certain mark without dropping the nose or something.

Aircraft recognition will probably be my hardest subject as there is so little difference between some of the planes.

Bunny writes me that he was in Calgary and looking for me as busily as I for him. Unfortunately he did not stay at either of the hotels he told me he might.

It will be best if you use the full address as someone is sent over to collect the mail for the whole flight.

With love from
Tony.

[Note: Transcription provided by collection donor.]