Church Army tea - Sunday 25th October?

                                                                                            Sunday

My darling Chotie,

                                                    Please excuse my writing in pencil but I came in a hurry and forgot my pen.  I’m writing this in a Methodist Church Army Show, a hellish place to find oneself on a Sunday evening…However in a hour or so the Ritz will be open…

            I’ve been on the range all yesterday and today – marking in the butts (too technical for you?) means you signal the shots from the target end.  Very boring.  We manage to alleviate part of the boredom by betting on our own target.  After two days I’m where I started !  Not over profitable.  I’m on again Monday and Tuesday.

            Met a farmer on Friday.  Charming.  Quite the style with orange waistcoat etc, and a moustache like Marshall Budenny*.  Very interesting.  We talked for over two hours, mostly on farming topics.  Needless to say he was born and bred here, (man and boy for nigh on forty year etc…).  Altogether a very nice bloke, by which I mean he stood me a couple of pints…

            Needless to say I haven’t yet heard from that rat du Rose.  If you see him, tell him from me, he’s a SNAKE! 

            Fancy you liking Maggie Mitchell’s tale of ‘Ye Olde South’***!   Very surprising.  It’s on here.  Queues about a mile long for each performance.  There’s certainly a sucker born every minute…

            I went into a Church Army place this afternoon and found to my horror that they were issuing free teas.  Now when you get your tea gratis they expect you to stay to a temperance service afterwards.  There was a crowd of effeminate-looking service men seated round a table with various civilian was Led-in-the-blood-of-the-Lambers****, so I beat a hasty Dunkirk out of the place…

           Well, my Precious – will close here and see if I can’t find a drop of something warm somewhere.

                                                                                    All my love,

                                                                                                Dicker

P.S. Will write again tomorrow or Tuesday.

*Marshall Budenny – a Soviet military commander with a moustache wider than his face. 

**du Rose – one of Dick’s close companions in the Dorset Regiment. (See Enter du Rose.)

*** ‘Gone with the Wind’, from the book by Margaret Mitchell giving an idyllic portrayal of the USA’s deep South during the Civil War era, despite the reliance on slavery. It went on general release in 1941 and has been hailed as one of the greatest American films of all time.

****Possibly a mischievous reference to the Salvation Army?  

© Chotie Darling

 

25th October 1942 – the last German offensive in the Caucasus begins (between the Caspian and Black Seas, now in Russia, Georgia and Azerbaijan).  (From WW2-net Timelines.)

 

28th October 1942 – the first six hundred inmates arrive at the concentration camp of Auschwitz Monowitz or Auschwitz III, established to source forced labour for the Buna synthetic rubber factory operated by I.G.Farben. The labourers included 1,200 British Prisoners of War working in appalling conditions. However, conditions were infinitely worse for the Jewish prisoners. Of 3,800 inmates present in December 1942 only 1,500 were alive by February 1943.

(From 'Hell's Cartel - IG Farben and the Making of Hitler's War Machine' by Diarmuid Jeffreys, Metropolitan Books 2008, History Learning Site and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.)