Fort Brockhurst,
Gosport, Hants.
Chotie Darling,
Many thanks for your letter. It had its usual cheering effect on me - Honey, they never fail. How do you do it?
Hope you are still feeling OK and not too browned-off. Eric's presence has cheered me up considerably - but I'm pretty fed up, and Eric coming back from six months rest is also likewise.
There are one hell of a lot of mosquitoes here and one of the ------- bit me just under the eye-lid causing the eye to close up completely - and do I look a sight! Darling, you wouldn't like to see me now.
Leave, I'm sorry to say is hopeless at the moment, no one seems to be going, and there are three blokes in this room who haven't had a Seven Days for seven months! - which makes my three months look pretty silly. It's a scandal when you come to consider that a soldier is allowed four Seven Days a year and five 48 hrs. What a war!
This Intelligence course looks as though it's going on forever. We’re going to have a month under canvas soon - I don't know where - so I suppose all leave will be cancelled then.
Eric and I have just had a supper in the NAAFI, so my (our) condition has improved somewhat. I've just been reading “France” the Free-French newspaper in an effort to keep my French more or less fluent. What with German & Spanish it's rather difficult when I don't get any practice. Spanish I find very easy as I like it, but not so German - but then you'd expect swine to have a swinish language.
At the moment (on the course), I do six hours German and three hours Spanish per week ---. I won't be able to speak English soon.
How's everyone at home? I hope all are well and full of spirits etc. Talking of spirits, Eric and I had our fill last Thursday - we had enough to float a dinghy.
We went out with Pete and J.P. last night. Eric and I got in at about a quarter to eleven, but JP didn't arrive until after midnight, having found a woman from Brum. Pete being on detachment in ‘B’ Company can get it at any time.
Well, I must close here, as it's nearly lights out and I have to make my bed up.
All my love
all yours
Dicker
PS. Ich liebe dich*.
* I love you (German)
© Chotie Darling
9th August 1941 – the Maid Honor crew set sail from Poole for West Africa and Operation Postmaster. They arrived at Freetown , Sierra Leone, on 20th September 1941.
10th August 1941 – end of Double Summer Time to facilitate “early to bed and early to rise”. Replaced by the clocks going forward from Greenwich Meantime just one
hour instead of two.
(From ‘Dorset’s War Diary - Battle of Britain to D Day’ by Rodney Legg, Dorset Publishing Company 2004 ).
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