Lizzie - my father was also a RAF navigator. Joined up in 1941 after doing 2 years as a sort of Private Pike in the local Home Guard. Do you know which in section of the RAF he served and where he was stationed/operated? My own father trained for nearly a year in Canada and was posted to Transport Command, ferrying new planes out to theatres of war such as the Middle East. Reading through his log book, there seemed to be a huge percentage of training, testing and waiting around before actually doing something. As for predicting post-war difficulties, anyone who's experienced the aftermath of the 1st World War - like my father's generation - would have guessed that, win or lose, conditions would be difficult.

If you're interested in letters from a different age, check out:

The Broughton letters

These are transcriptions (and "translations") of letters written by various members of his family to Edward Broughton, an agricultural labourer who emigrated - like 40,000 other East Anglian workers because of the Poor Laws - to Canada in the 1830s. Fascinating reading...