Ashcroft’s Heritage Committee will be presenting “Selected Stories of Ashcroft’s Military History” on Sunday, Oct. 28. Attendees will be taken on a journey of discovery of life on the battlefields and life at home in Ashcroft during this time.
This free event begins at 2 pm in the Ashcroft Community Hall. We have a number of guest speakers who will be sharing reading letters from their predecessors with military experiences.
The following letter was written by Trooper J.C. Nesbitt who served in Canada’s Army during World War II. It is one of several letters that will be read during this year’s annual Heritage Event.
November 17, 1942
Dear Mom,
I received your letter the other day. It took a little more than a month and a half to get here, but that isn’t too bad. Some of the boys are just getting letters from the first of Sept.
It’s a little damp over here now. If it rains much more I think I will have to learn how to swim, but it must be doing me good because I gained two pounds. I don’t know where I got that from, it’s not from eating too much. I guess it’s the training. We do more training over here then what we did in Canada.
You were saying you did not know what to send. Well you don’t need to hesitate about that. You can send the whole town of Ashcroft I would not mind. But I’ll cut it short, I don’t think you can send much over eight pounds maybe not that. You can send mostly cigeratts and a little gum. Sometime you can send a little snuff or chewing tobacco. I see by the papers that they are calling up the ninteen yeer old boys now. I guess Art will get called up. So tell him not to turn active service because it is pretty bad over here in all ways I thought I was hard dun by for staying in Canada so long, but now I see I was badly mistaken. I wouldn’t kick at all if they would ship me back and put me in with a bunch of French men, where they couldn’t understand English and me French. It would be a darn sight better than here.
I am now listening to Calgary over the air. First Canadian station I have heard since I been over here. Can’t get the news on the radio at all. When Britain broadcast the news Germany jams the air, and the other way around when Germany broadcasts in English.
Well I can’t think of much more to say. So Good Bye,
Your son Jim
If you haven’t sent the parcel you were talking about you can hussle it up because it will come non to soon.
Kathy Paulos