Room 28
3rd Technical Training Group
Preston Barracks, Brighton, Sussex
Thursday
My Own Darling Chotie
Just a few lines, Precious, to thank you, and all your family for a lovely and very welcome present*. Thank you, Darling, very, very much.
I would have written before, but I’ve been laid up for some little time with the wretched vaccination. However, I know you will understand.
I had a very quiet time on the 28th. I thought rather than spend it in the company of strangers, I should prefer to be by myself, so I betook myself to the theatre and saw Jean Forbes-Robertson in the Soviet play “Distant Point” with the London cast, which was really rather good. I managed to sink a couple of pints every interval, so that by the time it finished I was beginning to feel that life was worthwhile again.
I then hied myself to “the Old Ship”** and finished off the job. The boys put me to bed when I got in …
Further to my last letter – I do very well here now, as we are working on theory at a civvy garage every day in Hove, and have our meals in a British Restaurant***. And believe me that’s a cut above the Army. I’ll send you one or two photographs of the old place.
Well, Darling, I can’t write any more as my arm is giving me hell.
Please thank all your family very much. I now have one exquisite smoke every night before going to bed. Any tobacco will do in the daytime but I can appreciate a little ‘Sobranie’**** in the ‘cool of the evening’.
I’ll write again as soon as my arm gets better – in a couple of days I expect.
all my love, Darling
Dicker
xxxx
B.O.L.T.O.P.****(?)
That shook you! Rather puerile don’t you think?
* Dick’s 21st birthday was on Tuesday 28th July 1942.
** an historic hotel on the seafront in Brighton
*** British Restaurants were set up by Local Authorities with loans from the Wartime Meals Division. They were open to all, but mainly served office and industrial workers. A three course meal cost only 9d.
**** an expensive cigarette
***** “Better on Lips than on Paper”
© Chotie Darling
31st July 1942 – heavy raid by 630 RAF bombers on Düsseldorf, a city in Germany’s Lower Rhineland.
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