Monday
Aberdeen
Sweetheart,
Before anything else, many, many thanks for two comforting long letters. One of 10 pages and one of 18 pages! I am going to have a lot of arrears to make up in the next few days. Yes, your letters did arrive on Monday and I got it almost a quarter of an hour before we finished for the day. What really annoyed me was that I had to wait a couple of hours before I could begin to read it and it was only after a couple of efforts that I was able to read it right through uninterruptedly. You don’t know what it meant to me to think of you sitting down writing a letter which you did not know would eventually reach me at the first possible minute, as it did do. You are an angel and some time this week I hope to be able to deal with all the arrears of letters to you.
Now, for a moment, let us be sternly practical on the question of leave. This morning the matter was raised with the Master at Arms who made the position quite clear. There is NO leave from here. There are no long weekends. Ordinary weekend leave (Saturday afternoon after school to Monday morning, 8.15) will be granted occasionally only to men living in Scotland. The routine is that we do a full course of 17 weeks here and then, if we pass out, we get leave for seven clear days (apart from travelling time). Instead of reporting back here, we go to some other place for eight weeks’ training and then get another full week’s leave. That means that in ten weeks we get two lots of seven days, so looking into the future that’s fine, but I would like some now, just as much as you would. In some ways I would like it more than you would. You see my desires are so much more obvious than yours. I’m beginning to think there must have been something in that bromide business at Skegness because my desire for you has been far more physically evident today than at any time since I left home. At other times, as I think I may have mentioned to you occasionally, I have had a faint (!!!) spiritual desire for you and, every now and again, a movement of the upper portions of the bellbottoms has indicated a certain physical desire for you, but today I have been just one long ache for you. I am now, darling, and my desire just at this very moment is with the whole of my body, from my head to my toes and also with the whole of my mind and spirit. Darling, I love you so much that the next four months are going to be the hardest in my life. Thank God you ARE you and that I shall be faithful physically and mentally to you. Perhaps mentally is more important although so few people realise it. And it is comforting to know that, no matter what may come, we will be true to those things we have believed in since we were married and realised our complete dependence on each other. Darling, I have often said I would swing for you, and I would, several times over because I should have nothing else to live for.
Now, I said I was going to be sternly practical – well, I am. You’ve probably heard there was a bit of a “do” at St Lazaire. And, I think, you probably realise the Navy had a hand in it. We have felt the repercussions up here. Everyone in the establishment has got to take a hand in coastal defence, even our blokes, who previously were regarded as non-combatant. While we are in training here we’ve got to do our stuff. Percy has command of two field guns and he’s never seen anything like them before. I’m in a different class to him now, for schooling purposes, and our mob have been allocated to the lighter stuff – rifles, tommy guns and machine guns. We have been using them all today and will have one day a week on them. Reason: people high up have the jitters that Jerry may try a reprisal raid. I don’t think so, but they are taking no chances and this, of course, is the attitude they should have adopted ages ago, as I always said. Now they are just beginning to say officially “every man must learn to use arms, even if he never needs to use them”. Now all this rigmarole means that behind the new orders which rob you and I of our own personal pleasures and desires in the midst of what is supposed to be total war there is at least the glimmerings of a determination to do something definite and, at the same time, to leave nothing to chance here, as we have done since the war began.
What is more, young woman, I am paying you the compliment of telling you all this in the full knowledge that you are not going to panic over it and imagine me in the front line immediately. I shall not be. Only if things get really sticky will I be called on and I should be called on in any case if real trouble broke out, no matter where I might be. The only difference is that, even after today’s training, I know a little more about things and would therefore be a little more help, directly, to you and the children than in the days when I used to wander between Morningside and the ‘Daily Post’. I still dislike war as wholeheartedly as ever I did, but I dislike even more the idea of becoming a sitting target for some bloke with a tommy gun. I had enough of that business of sitting down and taking it when the raids on Liverpool were at their height. Anyway, that is the leave problem as it stands now, and the apparent explanation for the change in procedure.
There was a minor outbreak of meningitis here some weeks ago and one fellow who was in hospital for two months was given a fortnight’s leave. He returned today after one week because he was afraid he might miss a class! There’s no need to say he was both young and single.
Tuesday
When I found I was going to miss the post I thought I might as well hold this back until tonight as I doubt whether it would have reached you any sooner. The mails from here are apparently not too hot. There is only one collection on a Sunday and that is at 9pm so I doubt if you would get my letter until this morning. Let me know if it arrived on Monday will you?
On Sunday we found a Services Club on the main street in Aberdeen and joined at the enormous expense of 1/2 for a year. There is no bar so you need not fear the worst, but there are two lounges, with piano and radio, a reading and writing room where I’m writing this, a couple of small games rooms and a dining room where meals are served quickly, cheaply and in pleasant surroundings. A big improvement from the point of view of comfort on the YMCA and NAAFI places. Meals seem quite good although I don’t buy anything out. Some of our fellows do, however, and here are two sample meals: (1) Two cups of tea, sausage and chips, bread and butter – 8d; (2) Two cups of tea, sausage and bacon (good helping), bread and butter – 10d. Those are reasonable enough, aren’t they? More important than these things to me is the fact that there’s a telephone in the club. On Sunday night I tried to get through at seven o’clock and was continually called by the operator who kept telling me what the delay on the line was until eventually I got through. That would have been pretty well impossible in an ordinary call box for I would have had to be hanging about the street for three hours.
Our digs are decent enough in a way, but there is no common room with a fire, nor is there a fire in our own room. As we have no table in the room either, the Club makes an ideal place for us in the evenings and we have already introduced quite a lot of our fellows to it. It is light, warm and cheerful and the small membership charge is sufficient to keep the real crowds away, although Sunday is a pretty busy day. All this to show you where I spend my leisure time.
We began our course today by being taken to a civilian school where we will stay for a fortnight, just to familiarise us with the tapper and to give those who don’t already know it a chance to learn the code. As you know, I haven’t done any for ages and was pretty rusty, but it gradually came back and the instructor, a decent laddie who was for years confidential telegraphist at Balmoral when the King was in residence, had me at the key sending to the rest of the class for a time. If I can only keep up top like that I shall be O.K., but I have my doubts for I suspect one or two of the lads, particularly one who was in the Post Office in peacetime, of hanging back for bets. Still, I’m hoping that when the time comes I shall be able to hold my own.
There has been more information regarding the leave. This comes confidential-like from Percy who had to go into the office today and saw some documents there. We are scheduled, at the moment, to leave here on July 27 and are to report to HMS Scotia, Ayr, on August 8. Percy has worked it out into the number of days! As we have to face the prospect of a wait, it is nice to have some idea of a definite date and if we stick to schedule, we should be home for the Bank Holiday, if that means anything more than a normal week. Any time with you is going to be a gala week, sweetheart. Have you realised, by the way, that when I do come home I will be replete with teeth? If these new duties we have to perform mean a lot of gas mask drill I might even touch the Navy for a new pair of frames for my glasses. There are special frames with flat side pieces for use with respirators as the broad horn-rimmed ones allow gas to seep in through the sides.
There are a few things I would like you to send me at the first chance you get. Chief of them are my black swimming costume and a metal cigarette case. The leather case doesn’t hold very many and there should be somewhere at home a square silver one which holds 8 or 9 cigarettes on each side. If you can find it, will you send that one please? I want the bathing costume because we are forced to go for a shower bath every Friday morning and while we are there may also go for a swim at a charge of 2d. We can get slips there, but I prefer my costume. Will you see that the moths have not attacked any vulnerable places? I’d hate to give the lads a treat! As we are going to be here for the summer, we might get some quite nice bathing as a cheap way of spending the weekends.
Did I ever tell you, by the way, that wives of service men can travel at cheaper rates by producing their allotment book at the railway station? It’s as well to know these things in case you do decide to go away for a weekend at any time.
When I was mentioning things to send on, I forgot to include my tapper set. I wonder if you could get it to Bert at Litherland some time and ask him to send it on to me? He probably has more materials for packing it safely and it must be very carefully packed because if that valve goes I’ll be sunk. It’s almost impossible to get another these days. No offence, love, but as I say, Bert probably has proper packing stuff.
Must get this away now, precious, as the lad is waiting to collect the mail from this club.
All my love, sweetheart. I’ll write again tomorrow and by the end of the week should catch up with the gap the move has made in letters. Night night, my love. I still love you perhaps more than ever through this damned leave business. Look after yourself and try not to get too depressed. Remember I still love you.
All my love. Always yours,
Arthur X