Chotie Darling

Dinton first letter - 27th & 28th June 1940

  

Quidhampton

Wilts

Thursday evening

 

My darling Chotie,

 

  

Thanks a lot for the letter.  It cheered me up no end.

I also had a letter from Mother and one from Diller*, at the same time.

   

We are having a pretty strenuous time at the moment, two route marches and two sessions of P.T. every day, as well as squad drill.

 

    We have now received details of our future training in the army - we do six weeks concentrated training, at Quidhampton, to which we are returning on Saturday or Monday next.  (We are at Dinton at the moment, a small – I should say minute - village, in the heart of rural Wiltshire, situated about 10 miles from Salisbury.  There is one shop and one pub.  It’s hopelessly dull, as we have nothing to do after about 5 o’clock pm.)  After this 6 weeks we are posted to various isolated centres on guard duty, par example – aerodromes (which are the best), bridges, petrol dumps, and key positions. 

 

Our sergeant told me that this is a cushy job, with as much as forty-eight hours leave every week in some cases!  I must get posted within thirty miles of Poole, in order to be able to get home and back within the 48 hours.  The only thing to do is wait and hope as Dumas** says.

   

Please excuse this paper etc but until I can get to Salisbury its all I have.

   

 Bye, bye darling

 Dicker

(PS The food here is putrid)

 

 

I wasn’t able to post this letter yesterday and consequently have added another sheet.

 

As I stated, the food is rotten, and there is very little of it.  We get nothing whatsoever after 4.30pm every day.  There is a canteen here and half our money goes on food.  It’s criminal.  However, we are constantly reminded that there is a war on and cannot really grumble.

 

We get up about 6 in the morning and wash & shave in the open air.  We have to be in each evening by 10 o’clock, but as there is nothing to do and we are always pretty tired, we don’t particularly mind.

 

They are mad on discipline here.  Every thing has to be just so or you’re in trouble straight away.  I’d still go through it all just to get back to civilian life.  I might mention that 15 blokes deserted a couple of days ago owing to the conditions.

 

I think about you a lot, Darling.  It’s terrible not seeing you.  Were it not for the fact that we are on the go all day, I think I’d go mad. 

 

I’m going to put in for leave in about a fortnight or three weeks time.  I hope it will be successful.  I may get off on Saturday dinner time and will be at home Saturday afternoon.  I’ll have to leave again Sunday tea time.

 

We can but hope.

 

 I must close now darling

 Bye Bye

    Dicker

 

* Diller was Dick’s sister Dilys, two years older than him

 

** “Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,--'Wait and hope'.” Quotation from ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ by Alexandre Dumas.

  

© Chotie Darling, 2010.

 

On 30th June 1940 Germany began occupation of the Channel Islands.

The Guildhall, Salisbury - 23rd June 1940

 

 

Sunday 23rd June 1940

 

ENTERTAINMENT OF MEMBERS OF H.M. FORCES

ON SATURDAYS AND SUNDAYS

THE GUILDHALL,

SALISBURY 

 

Pte RK Williams

6^th Bath & Dorset Regt.

Quidhampton

Nr Salisbury

Wilts

Darling Chotie,

 

   

     I’m writing this in the Court Room of the Guidhall Salisbury, in the Company of about 200 members of HM Forces.  At least half of these are Australians as the place is packed with them.  I left camp this morning at 9 and do not have to return until 10, this evening.  I hope to come home one of these Sundays as I appear to get Sundays off at present.  I can get a bus to Bournemouth at 9am which gets me in about 11.  I should have to leave again at 6 in the evening, so it would be a case of hail and farewell. 

 

 

I went to the morning service at the Cathedral – the choir was wonderful. 

 

 

There are hundreds of commissions in Salisbury.  I’ve thrown about 200 salutes so far without knocking my hat off.  We wear battle dress, and I managed to get myself a hot overcoat. 

 

 

In this room there are RAF blokes, Aussies, Sailors, Merchant Seamen, and every kind of soldier, but no officers of course.  They dish out envelopes and this paper quite free which explains why I’m using it…  I miss you an awful lot, Chotie, but when I see these Australians who have come thousands of miles and won’t get home for years, I feel it would be selfish to grumble.

   

You can write to the address overleaf if you wish.  Found a Captain yet…?  It is now impossible to get a commission until one is twenty*.  As far as I know it is also impossible to get a stripe.

   

                    I must close for the moment

                                                                                         love (every bit)

 

Dicker

 

 

 

PS Please give my best wishes to all the boys if you should see them and tell them to join anything but the army!

  

 

 

* Dick was eighteen when he joined up and wrote this letter.  At the time only men aged between 20 and 35 were being conscripted.

  

© Chotie Darling, 2010

 

 

25^th June 1940 – The Times reported that the Australian troops, recently arrived in England, were training keenly in ‘a lovely stretch of English countryside’.

First Letter - 22nd June 1940

 

 

Miss Barbara Chalkley

The Hollies

Commercial Rd

Parkstone, Poole,

Dorset 

Salisbury 

Saturday  

 

Darling Chotie*,

  

 

 I’m terribly sorry I haven’t been able to write before but have not had a moment to spare.  I’m trying to write on a window-sill at the Drill Hall at Salisbury, as the Sergeant has gone out.  Had a rather stiff medical, with eight doctors.  I could have kidded one, but eight was too much.  Unfortunately I passed A.1.

 

 

I left Weymouth at 2pm Friday afternoon for Salisbury.  Arrived here at 4.30 approx. and was given tea by Sergeant of the guard.  We are at present under canvas in the heart of the country about 2 miles from Salisbury.  It is only a temporary camp of about 30.  We are moving to a larger camp sometime next week.  At the moment I have no number nor address, but will let you know immediately I get one.

   

I must close now as the Sergeant is coming and try to get some stamps.

 

 Bye bye darling

  Your devoted quack-quack

 Dicker

  

 

 

* Hindustani for ‘Little One’

  

© Chotie Darling, 2010

 

22nd June 1940 was the day France fell to Nazi Germany and signed the armistice.  Broadcasting from England, in French, General de Gaulle asked all free Frenchmen

 “to continue the fight, wherever they are and by whatever means they can.”

Joining Up

Dunkirk, the famous rescue of the defeated Allied Forces trapped on the northern shores of France, took place over ten days leading up to Tuesday 4^th June 1940.

 On that day Winston Churchill addressed Parliament and the nation with these words: 

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”

(Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Ltd, London on behalf of the Estate of Sir Winston Churchill. Copyright © Winston S. Churchill )

 

On 18th June 1940 Winston Churchill's speech to the House of Commons ended: 

“the Battle of France is over, I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin…

The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age ….

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say,

 “This was their Finest Hour”.

(Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Ltd, London on behalf of the Estate of Sir Winston Churchill. Copyright © Winston S. Churchill )

 

 

On 21^st June 1940 Richard Kelner Williams, age 18, occupation ‘student’, was enrolled in the British Territorial Army at Weymouth in Dorset and assigned to the 6^th Dorset Infantry Regt, to assemble in the Drill Hall, Wilton Rd, Salisbury.

  

 

 Dick Williams as a cadet in 1939.

 

 

They were ‘the Bath & Dorsets’ then but for June and July Dick was based in Wiltshire at Salisbury, Quidhampton and Dinton.