Wednesday
My Darling Chotie,
Many thanks for letter of a few days ago. I seem to have a couple of hours buckshee so I’ve decided to reply while I have the opportunity.
Glad to hear you’ve settled down at Bristol – I use Bristol in a rather broad sense – and finding the company of your friends congenial if not that of your male companions*. Never mind Lulubelle – you’ve always got me to fall back on….
I’ve managed to get this far without being retarded though I had a shaky time on wireless. At present I’m doing gunnery which is pretty cushy – I hope. If I get through this – and all goes well I should get leave on the 8th May – 4 days only. Bit naughty isn’t it? Then its Sandhurst here I come …. (and go!) But remember I shall have to get through gunnery….
However that’s enough of this wishful thinking.
I hope to get home this weekend if all goes well. The snag here is that if you drop your rifle on parade or anything stupid like that, you lose all your weekends for a month or so. So far I’ve managed to escape this nightmare.
Had to give a lecture this morning – and chose ‘Factors in Post-War Economic Planning’ – sounded rather good to me. It went over very well. Lot of rot, of course, but then you know me ….
There were three of us here discussing letter-writing in all its aspects. We have come to the inevitable conclusion that as an art it has definitely degenerated, in fact we have the greatest difficulty in writing anything at all. All my notes are much behind schedule and leave a lot to be desired.
Had rather a good tea today. Went into the mess and had egg & chips – so we just walked out and in again at the other end and had some more egg & chips. Pretty nippy.
Well, Darling I must close here owing to ink rationing,
All my love
Dicker
*Mum told me she developed quite a crush on one of her male ATS officers early in her career. Unfortunately he seemed to be ‘working his way through the ranks’. Although initially ATS girls had gained a poor reputation for behaviour by 1942 Major Rees Williams wrote in this article on the Gunner Girls: “No mother need be afraid of entrusting her daughter to a gunner unit”. Not strictly true of all Mixed Batteries perhaps?
I wonder if this photo is of Chotie's officer? It was among her wartime memorabilia.
He is included in this group photo ATS (taken by R.F.Wills of 40 Clarendon Road Bristol - click on the image and it will appear in a separate window) so seems to date from summer 1943. Chotie has ringed her face (end of second row from the back on the right). The officer is in the third row back, fifth from the right.
This photo of ATS officers from the group above has had others torn out – possibly including the handsome officer above? All the photos were kept by Chotie.
Chotie would also have met Lance Corporal Rosemary Stewart (see Rosemary's comment ) during her time with B troop:
“I am on the group photograph – 1st left on the second row up. I had lost my copy of that photo so it was marvellous to see it again!
How well I remember Barbara, – she had the most lovely smile and the most beautiful hair which she had great difficulty in keeping up above collar level as laid down in Kings Regulations!
I was a Lance Corporal in those days, and she was a member of my team. I always remember how she had a pair of eye lash curlers which she always insisted on using before going on parade! None of us aspired to such sophisticated beauty aids.
I also remember that she had a picture of her sister’s wedding on show in the barrack room. Barbara told me all about her family and her work before she joined up, and I remember how much she looked forward to the letters from Dicker.
I was with the battery in Bristol, Plymouth, Hull and a few other places before going off to OCTU.”
© Chotie Darling
30th April 1943 – a Spanish fisherman discovers a corpse in the sea near Huelva, apparently the body of a drowned English major. This was Operation Mincemeat -a hoax carefully constructed by British Intelligence with the corpse carrying false letters that suggested the Allies planned to invade southern Europe through Greece and Sardinia but would pretend to invade via Sicily. The Spanish passed this information to the Germans who strengthened their defences in Greece, Sardinia and Corsica, reducing them in Sicily, even just prior to the Allies’ invasion in July.
3rd May 1942 - Lieutenant General Frank M. Andrews, the Commander of the US Forces in Europe (he had succeeded Eisenhower when Ike was appointed Allied Commander in North Africa in February 1943) and one of the founders of the US Air Force, is killed in an air crash in Iceland.
Recent Comments