#8      Dec 2, 1943

Dear Mother:

We are feeling hungry tonight so I took a last look through my trunk and found one chocolate bar.  This is the second time I have done this but I think it is definitely the last.  Now we are going to try and heat up some K rations.  I brought over a lot of cigs and still have about 800—mostly American.  Some chaps have recently arrived who were in our course at G.R.  But they have completed their training at Canadian OTU and are crewed up.  So you can see how much time has been wasted.  Another arrival is an instructor I knew at Prince Albert.

Also one night Dick and I met another Yellowknife acquaintance of mine.  He has been eating at the same mess as I for weeks.

I have been swimming twice now—the second time for dinghy drill.  This was OK once you got into the water but you can imagine how cold and clammy the flying suits were to put on as they had been used in the morning and this was after lunch.

Next week I shall get started on an attempt to wangle some leave.  Dick seems very keen on Uncle George and gave me his address so I will certainly look him up as well as Uncle Tom.  I saw that Lady Bertha Dawkins had recently died.  A distant relation I believe.

I went to a play last night.  It was another French comedy but being only local talent not as good as the other.  The first didn’t get very good write ups by the London papers so I guess I’m no connoisseur of plays.

You don’t seem to have done very well with the pheasants this year.  I can imagine it would require steady nerves when shells are so limited.  I am going to do some skeet shooting on Sat.  That will be a waste of .22 shells—at Prince Albert I didn’t hit the clay pigeons at all.

Oh no, I didn’t need the overcoat on the way over.  It was so warm one rarely needed a coat at all.

We finished the K rations.  Delicious but the hot water didn’t really warm the stew up sufficiently.

With love from
Tony

[Note: Transcription provided by collection donor.]