I’m fed up with RAF life, pining pilot tells his love
LETTERS from an RAF hero to his sweetheart paint a picture of wartime love.
Flying Officer Jack Shelley, who sank 14 U-Boats in the North Atlantic and damaged many more, wrote to Gladys Wright more than 100 times.
In an early letter dated September 1943, the pilot described hitting the ground with an “awful wallop” and his aircraft bursting into flames.
He told her: “I lost all my kit in the crack-up including the presents I’d bought for you.”
Later he proposed, asking: “What do you say to us getting married? I’m all for it.”
In 1944 Jack, from Macclesfield, wrote: “I pray it won’t be long before we’re back together again.”
And pining for his love, by November 1945 he admitted: “I’m fed up to the teeth with this life in the RAF.”
The pair are thought to have had a long, happy marriage.
The letters sold with his flight kit and uniform for £300.
Specialist Andy Stowe, of East Bristol Auctions, said: “They are a real snapshot of life during the 1940s.”