Aug 131944
 

Sunday
Normandy
Dearest,
With no letters from you to answer, and so little of interest happening here, it’s not very easy to write a daily letter. After asking you to send that fishing tackle, I found a bazaar in the town where I could buy tackle quite cheaply. For 15 frs (1/6) I got stuff which would cost about 7/6 at home. The great snag is a rod, for I had to cut a branch from a tree, which is not an ideal solution. All this, of course, is just building up an alibi to tell you that I didn’t catch a single thing last night! I was only there an hour or so and saw very little sign of life in that time, perhaps because the river was so low. Anyway, it was pleasant to see a line in the water again. Perhaps you had better not tell Michael or my stock as an angler may go down! I’ll certainly see Bert about getting my rods back when I get home, for I think the sections are small enough to go into my kit bag, and I could have made good use of them in the last two-and-a-half years.
One of the lads came out with a good crack today in a very ingenuous way. Apparently he went for a swim and in his eagerness to get in took a running dive off the springboard, but unfortunately drove a nail quite deeply into his foot. “When I got back,” he said, “I went to sick bay – and they syringed my ears!” Written down it doesn’t look as funny as it sounded at the time.
Two writers came over here with us and were sharing our tent for the first few days. They were both very decent fellows, though one of them was straight from the cradle! His home is at Southport, by the way. Yesterday it was decided that they never should have been here at all and they have gone a few miles up the coast. If we can hitch there I think I shall go to see them one day when I’m off in the afternoon. In their place we have had a couple of army corporals as temporary lodgers and it’s surprising what a difference there is in the mentality of the army and the navy. As they are only here for a very short time – almost a matter of hours – they were given half a week’s NAAFI rations for the whole crowd. This included ten bottles of beer, which the corporals saw off themselves and left the rest of the lads swinging! I doubt if a killick would have tried it on, even, and if he did he most certainly would never have got away with it.
Today we have done a little work – but not a tremendous amount, though it looks as if things are really beginning to move at last. We are wondering if there is any chance of some of our Wrens being among those who come over with the first lot here. Incidentally, now that Wrens are on the way, lino is being laid, nice doors are being fitted and the place redecorated. As an advocate of sex equality, what do you think of this as one more example of sex privilege? For me, it makes me retch! Bah!
The chief pastime for the lads here, apart from swimming and sunbathing, is football. They play morning, noon and night and thrive on it. I had a game for about an hour last night and thoroughly enjoyed myself, though I managed to knock my thumb up a bit on an awkwardly bouncing ball. It’s OK again now. The weather is still blistering hot and I’m getting quite brown, though I haven’t the energy to go down as far as the beach for a swim. In any case it’s a beach like Southport so that you have to walk half a mile to get any depth for swimming. So I content myself with a dip in the river, despite the attacks of the flies which bite down until they fracture their jaws on my bones!
I’m listening to the BBC broadcast and in it there was reference to our heavy bombing programme today. We’ve been watching hundreds of planes sailing serenely overhead without any opposition.
The doodlebugs are still active, apparently, and we hear that evacuation is still going on. Has your evacuee arrived yet? I’ll be glad to start getting your mail again for I feel more cut off than ever lately. It’s a long time since I was so long without news of home, isn’t it?
There are indications that the privilege envelopes will soon be allowed here and then I’ll be able to write you more normal letters. Meantime, I hope you are keeping fit and taking proper care of yourself. Have you been to see about your teeth yet? Don’t let it drag on until the winter, will you? One thing you had better do in your next letter to me is let me have your holiday address in North Wales. Don’t forget, because if you leave it any longer you will be without letters from me there. And there is, of course, always the chance that we may get some leave from here and if by any miracle it fell in that period I wouldn’t know where to find you! Horrible thought! How are the children? Hope neither of them develop anything between now and then. Well, sweetheart, that’s all the news for today. I’m expecting long newsy letters from you any day now. No alibis accepted! All my love, dearest.
Ever your own,
Arthur X