#29

July 5. 1944

Dear Mother:

A while ago we had a mess meeting the immediate result of which has been the elimination of the tea meal—one of the best meals. Nearly everyone voted for this partly to raise the standard of the other meals proportionately and I suppose it is more like home to the average Canadian to have no tea and an earlier supper. I don’t think anyone dares to admit now that he voted for this most unwelcome change. Anyway your cake which I opened a few days ago has thus been doubly welcome. The other day I took the pot of jam with me on a trip and I have never seen anything disappear so quickly.

We are still pretty busy but nothing exciting seems to happen. Recently we were diverted to a different base which made a short but pleasant change. It was a permanent RAF station and so had a very nice mess etc. but the place was grossly overcrowded and we had to sleep in old army bell tents. Fortunately it was quite warm and didn’t rain that night.

Some more pilots have gone on Captains courses and I think that those that came here with me (including me) are now the second set on the list. It will still take a long time though and the last ones didn’t go to Canada for it.

I have been sitting here for ages trying to think of something of interest to write and have almost decided that even if I felt quite free to write on anything it might still be difficult. For instance today was fairly typical. Got up at 9:00 (should have been much earlier but I decided to miss breakfast and wasn’t in the mood for mail censoring.) Had some chocolate and strolled down to the technical site. There didn’t seem to be anything special to do so spent a couple of hours in intelligence library and came back to the mess at 12:00. Lunch at 12:30 and read newspapers and attempted crosswords until 2:00. Came back to billet and pottered around eventually getting started on this letter. At 3:30 my roommate came in and we had a game of chess, going down to the mess for a cup of tea (no food) at 4:30. Afterwards I had a game of snooker and a pint of beer until super at 6:30. After supper a game of push penny and then (here is a deviation from the ordinary) a game of knock rummy which lasted until 11:30 and cost me 30/. And so back to the billet to finish the letter. Pretty grim isn’t it. The days work (?) net me $7.00 too.

Tomorrow I will help get our kite ready for a trip and in the afternoon try and get in some link trainer time which I have been neglecting lately. The next day we fly we hope.

With love from
Tony

[Editor’s note: Transcription provided by collection donor.]