Jul 111943
 

Sunday
London
Dearest,
Well, the balloon seems to have gone up at last, doesn’t it? And the result is that people here who have been waiting for ages have settled down. It’s always the same with people who have to sit down and wait for something to happen, isn’t it? When it does come off it seems commonplace, but I don’t suppose the lads on the spot take that view. I wonder if Don McWhinnie is acting as traffic cop in chief in Sicily, and if Durham and Elgar are there? If it’s true that the First Army are on the job, Jerry must have a bit of a headache wondering where the Eighth Army is.
Many thanks for your letter and I only hope your thunderstorm hasn’t ruined the things in the plot. You’ll have to excavate the soil from around the celery or it will get coarse and will never crisp. Soil should apparently be built up round it slowly. From what you say, however, the damage to growing things seems amazingly slight.
I was interested to hear of the experience of the Gardiners, but if I remember rightly you told me a long time ago that they knocked off her allowance more than his increase in the first week he got his promotion, even though he made no declaration to any authority and did not make any increase in her allotment. I’m certain that was what you told me. Anyway, several of our fellows have got away with it – two of them for several months to my knowledge. One thing to remember is that I have not told you anything about an increase in money!
I’m interested in your frock. What colour is it and what sort of material have you got? I presume that it is a summer frock.
We have not done very much that is of interest since I wrote on Friday. On Friday evening we went for a quiet drink and, although I was off on Saturday afternoon, I did nothing spectacular as it was raining so I went to bed! What we will do today is still very uncertain because I doubt if the weather will be fit for us to go far afield. Well, angel, I don’t think there’s any more news. Just one thing. You can now drop the O from my official rank so that letters in future should be addressed to Sig (A/M) AJohnson etc. Just a matter of dignity!
I’ll try to write the children in the next few days but in the meantime give them my love. Take good care of yourself, angel. I’m thinking of you a lot this week and missing you a lot, too. Let’s hope that this new move against Italy will bring the end of all this nonsense nearer. What a day that will be, wherever I am! And, by the way, there is no fresh news of the possible draft. And now, love, I must leave you. Take good care of yourself. All my love, sweetheart.
Ever your own,
Arthur X