Southampton
Tuesday 27/May
My Darling Chotie,
I'm writing as promised, as soon as I'm on guard, which I missed yesterday.
I'm now on the detention guard (the one with the barbed-wire round it on the common). There are nine prisoners at the moment, though things are not so bad as I thought they would be as I have a Lance Cpl with me, who does most of the work, leaving me most of the responsibility. It’s not too bad on the whole. I shall be quite all right, unless a prisoner escapes, in which case I shall be ruined. But I’ll bayonet the b-----, if I catch him!
I’ve only just been paid! They wouldn’t pay me on Sunday, as you know, and on Monday they hadn’t got any! However, I’ve got it now and that’s all that matters. The only thing is I’ve borrowed so much now that it scarcely leaves me any left!
This is neither here nor there. What I wanted to tell you was that you looked marvellous on Sunday, Darling, and made me love you a hundred times more than I ever thought I could love anyone.
I miss you so terribly, Darling. Even when I'm with the boys having a drink, or at the flicks or somewhere, I am always thinking how much better it would be if I could only change them for you. I have a good time on the whole here with John & Co, but it could never be compared with being with you. Just to be near you, Tootsie, really means such a lot to me, more than you'll ever know.
Am I boring you? I hope not. You must think I write a lot of drivel - but nothing has ever happened to me like this before. I'll change the subject before you start throwing things about.
It's a funny day to-day here at any rate. It's real April weather, alternate sun & rain - really marvellous. The common’ s lovely when the sun's out, as all the trees are wonderfully green.
I took ‘Rebecca’ back yesterday evening. The woman who runs the library is very decent and kept insisting that she didn't want any fine but my conscience paid her. I got Steinbeck's ‘The Grapes of Wrath’. I read it when first published but it's all I could get and it's worth reading again.
(smudge) Mucky puppy!
There's a lot of rumours around about moving, which will probably be on Thursday, but is not definite. It will probably be Gosport, which is no good to me. I'd like to get back to Southbourne again....that seems too good to be true now. However, we must always hope, as usual.
The buglers are practising somewhere outside, and they're raising Cain. They keep playing ‘Cookhouse*’.... blast them!
I hope you got back safely and in good time, on Sunday. I had a lift up Hill Lane, but was soaked all the same. It rained all yesterday which peeved me not a little as I again got soaked, being too lazy to clean my overcoat buttons...That is the penalty for sheer laziness.
Have you seen any of the old family? I suppose they're still alive & kicking, if somewhat feebly. I had a letter from the mater this morning, also an enclosed from Diller, as mad as ever.
There's no news as usual, I'm afraid, so I'll close here, and scrounge some tea if possible.
Bye, bye, Darling.
All my love
Dicker
PS. Maintenant, Chèrie, je t’aime tout ce qui est possible, avec tout mon âme, et avec toutes mes forces**.
* Buglers memorised their calls through patterned word refrains – mealtimes were announced by the call to “Come to the Cookhouse door, boys, come to the cookhouse door”, which presumably acted on Dick’s saliva glands like Pavlov’s whistle!
** “Darling, I love you as much as possible now, with all my soul and with all my strength.”
© Chotie Darling
Top photo: Corporal Richard Williams of the Dorset Regiment on guard at home at 'Fairhaven', Orchard Avenue, Parkstone, Poole.
Above: Corporal Richard Williams with his father Dudley Williams in Home Guard uniform and his younger brother Brin, a cadet.
27th May 1941 - President Roosevelt of the United States declares an unlimited national emergency and asks all Americans to resist Hitlerism.
Germany’s new battleship, the Bismarck, was sunk in the Bay of Biscay, finished off by the torpedoes of the battle-cruiser HMS Dorsetshire.
27th – 31st May 1941 – evacuation of defeated Allied troops from Crete. Poole’s flying-boats assisted with the evacuation. (Extract from ‘Poole and World War II’ written by Derek Beamish, Harold Bennett and John Hillier and published by Poole Historical Trust in 1980)
Recent Comments