Bawdsey Manor - Sunday 5th March 1944

61^st Recce Regt

RAC

Whittlesford

Cambs.

 

Sunday

Chotie Darling,

                                    I’ve got this evening free, so I thought I’d drop you another line or two.  My leave at the moment, still holds good, so if you’ll let me know finally that yours is OK and what time you expect to arrive home in your next letter I’ll get things teed up this end.

            I’ve been very busy lately, spending most of the time away from the camp, which has both its advantages and disadvantages.  It provides a change of scenery which is always welcome, especially when it’s sunny, tho’ on the other hand you never get a chance to get organised.

            You’re a very naughty girl for not having written to me for such a long time.  However, I expect you’re pretty busy yourself, or you would have written.

            There’s no news to tell you.  I get so little time off that I don’t get a chance to do much .

            Incidentally, you’d better send your next letter to Pagham as I’ll be home on Wednesday mid-day.  I expect this will cross with one from you anyhow.

            I spent three very happy days on a stud farm in Cambridgeshire*.  It was the home of Sir Cuthbert Quilter who is President of the Suffolk Horse Breeding Society.  Ten years ago he farmed 22,000 acres but he’s practically penniless now I believe.

            I met a bloke, a civilian of fifty or thereabouts, who used to live in Herne Bay and knows most of the people we knew there.  He actually lived in the same house.  The next time I see him I’ll get things teed up and get my feet right under the table.

            Must close here for dinner.

            Don’t forget to write to Pagham to let me know all the dope.

                                                                        love

                                                                                    Dicker

*probably Bawdsey Manor, where Sir Cuthbert Quilter had bred Suffolk Punch horses but which was acquired by the Government in 1936.  It became the top-secret research establishment where Robert Watson-Watt (who had set up the first radar research station at nearby Orford Ness in 1935), and then A.P. Rowe, developed Britain’s radar defences. The outbreak of war and proximity to Germany moved them first to Dundee and then, on 5^th May 1940, to Worth Matravers in Dorset as the Telecommunications Research Establishment.  See ‘The Missing Winter’.  (From ‘The Bruneval Raid – stealing Hitler’s radar’ by George Millar, Cassell 1974)

© Chotie Darling

 

5^th March 1944 – Operation Thursday was part of the 2^nd Chindit Expedition involving flying in 9,000 men (with mules, equipment and supplies) to northern Burma, near Indaw, and landing them behind the Japanese enemy lines.

 

6^th March 1944 - The RAF’s Bomber Command begins a large-scale offensive over Northern France in preparation for D Day and the USA Air Force again attacks Berlin. (From WW2-net Timelines)

 

7^th March 1944 – Japan advances to India with nearly 100,000 men in Operation U-Go until stopped by the Allies at Kohima and Imphal in the mountainous borderlands of North-eastern India. (See Defence of Imphal and Kohima.)

 

On 7^th March Chotie’s Service & Casualty form records that she ‘Acted Voluntary Blood Donor’.

 

Dick was on leave in Pagham from 8th March and seems to have met up with Chotie.

 

10th March 1944 – Merrill’s Marauders attack Myitkina on the Ayeyarwady River in north Burma (now Myanmar), a critical point on the planned supply route to China known as the Ledo Road.  However, the city was not finally captured from the Japanese until 3^rd August 1944 and most supplies continued to be flown over the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains (known as ‘The Hump’).

 

13th March 1944 – British Forces in the Arakan, Burma (Myanmar) take Razabil, a critical position between the Maya mountains and the sea, known as the ‘Golden Fortress’. (From WW2-net Timelines.)

 

15th March 1944 – heaviest raid of the war on Stuttgart with 863 RAF bombers dropping 3,000 tons.  Stuttgart had significant industrial infrastructure (Daimler and Porsche factories).

Soviet forces advancing from the Ukraine reach the Bug River, a tributary of the River Vistula that formed the division between German and Russian forces following the invasion of Poland in 1939 and the traditional division between Catholic and Orthodox Polish Christians.  (From WW2-net Timelines.) 

New Zealand and Indian Divisions with the US Fifth Army in Italy are engaged in the unsuccessful third attack on Monte Cassino and withdrawn after 23^rd March.

In France the Conseil National de la Resistance publishes its programme  for the future of France after the war as a social democracy with a planned economy.