Oh, for my Student days! - Thursday 27th March 1941

                                                                   ‘D’ Company, 70th Dorsets (No Girls School now)

Southampton

27th March 1941

My Darling Chotie,

                                        Thanks for the letter, and Birth Certificate, it’s very good of you to go to the trouble of getting it.

           Did I make my journey back sound so terrible?  It was quite fun really.  Everything connected with the Army is grumbled at – at the time, but doesn’t seem half so bad afterwards.

           I hope you’re managing to bear up all right.  Things are quite good here – all things considered – but it wouldn’t be much of a life if I hadn’t my Chubby Baby to dream about, in fact it wouldn’t be a life at all.

            I had a letter from Eric to-day.  He’s a queer bloke.  He thanked me most profusely for ‘what I did on the beach’!  I think he thought I’d have walked off and left him!  He always says nothing for months after anything, and then suddenly holds forth.  He also enclosed 3 shillings, which was very welcome. He owes me about £3, the rat!

           I’m afraid I don’t get much time to write here, if any.  I always seem to be on duty – they have a nasty habit of grabbing me when there’s any work to be done!  However, who am I to grumble?  I’ve got the most wonderful wife in the world, which is more than any General has.

           I write so seldom now that I can hardly hold a pen!  Oh, for my Student days!  By the time I get out of the Army I'll be so dull I shall have to keep pigs or something.  I haven’t had time to read anything lately, besides I can never get settled on any one thing for long.

            I’ve been up on the range for the last three days, instructing.  The best part of it is that I’m no good myself

            Well, Darling, I’m on duty till lights out so I must say night night, Honey

                                                           your adoring sweetheart

                                                                                                Dicker

                                                                                                x x x x x x x

                                                                                                I.T.A.L.Y.*

* acronym for “I trust and love you”

 © Chotie Darling

 

27th March 1941 – a ‘sneak raider’ bomber attacked the gas works at Branksome, Poole.  34  were killed and 23 injured when the works Mess Hall was hit at lunchtime. (From  ‘Poole and World War II’ written by Derek Beamish, Harold Bennett and John Hillier and published by Poole Historical Trust in 1980.) 

 

30^th March 1941 – the German Afrika Korps began their offensive in N. Africa.