bursting open far below—the beautiful blasts of the bombs his plane dropped.
Dearest Loretta,
Hootie, Tony and I hopped the bus into a town in this vicinity last night, and after shaking, bouncing and shivering for an hour (the “bus” is a plain old G.I. truck), the driver stopped and said, “Here we are, men—the ‘Target for Tonight.’ ” Believe me, it was a matter of taking his word for it! It was strange to walk through the fairly crowded streets of this town, hearing voices but seeing only vague forms and shadowy outlines of buildings.
We found the Red Cross and had a cup of coffee and asked about the nightlife of the metropolis—said nightlife consisted of a skating rink, two cinemas, and a few pubs. We chose the best-recommended pub, got directions, and found it, with a few sneaky blinks of my “torch,” as a flashlight is called here, and divine intuition. It was a barn-like pavilion with a bar and dance floor and a band. The band, let me tell you, wouldn’t worry Harry James very much! During the evening they played “Missouri Waltz” and “Pennies from Heaven”—highly corned-up versions, too.
The high point of the evening was a raffle. When the fellow came around selling the tickets, due to my uncanny ability to get mixed up on the English language and monetary system, I gave him two half crowns, thinking that would buy two tickets. Instead of two, he gave me thirty-six (!) tickets, so of course I won the damned prize, which was a bottle of Scotch whiskey! That sure beat the pub’s weak beer.
We had to leave at ten o’clock to catch the truck back “home,” and we made it just in time. We had one of those famous fogs last night, and that plus the blackout really obscured the streets and houses. It was a very cold ride, and did it feel good to be warm again!
*
Honey, I’ve been a seamstress tonight, patching rips in the blackout curtains. Say! Let’s not have black drapes in our dream house, baby. Let’s show we have nothing to hide.
*
Tonight coming back from the mess hall I learned that war is dangerous! I was absent-mindedly walking on what is the “wrong” side of the road here, and was knocked ears over appetite by a blacked-out bus—it was only a glancing blow and merely injured my “dignity,” but it surely messed up my only clean pants!
Hootie is standing in the door, letting all our nice cold air out, and letting that nasty old warm air in from outside. I’m thinking of spreading a little water on our floor and using it for a skating rink in the morning.
Marshall recalled with some fondness those dark, breakneck, nighttime forays and the foolhardy bike races to the mess hall in the early-morning blackness. After a while he had developed a sixth sense about walking in the dark. He tried to act like a keen animal. He learned to relax his pupils to take in more light. He grew sensitive to the nuances of darkness, how the eye could be trained to interpret shapes in the dark. In deep darkness, he learned to move with his arms out ahead. In good moonlight, the landscape was enchanted. And if there were drifts of mist about, sometimes passing across the moon like advertisements trailing behind a small plane, he might feel he had entered another world. The flimsy, scattered mists were pleasant, but the thick fogs smothered and enclosed the base with tooth-chilling cold. The fogs glowed with light borrowed from the moon, a light so dim the eyes could not penetrate it.
Darling, I’ve said it before, honey, but—once more—please don’t worry a lot about my work here. I was optimistic enough, I think, about this business before I came in closer contact with it, but the outlook at closer quarters is even more reassuring. Plain statistics are very comforting, and when you add to them my undeniably outstanding ability as a Hot Pilot (?!) the future looks absolutely rosy! The only thing I’m afraid of is that the thing will get to be such a snap that the Big Operators will boost the score from 25 innings to a hundred!
Of course, I plan to personally throttle Adolf Hitler if I get a chance. Aside from the heavy humor, I AM very much impressed by the record and achievements of this outfit, and I know damned well that I’m fortunate to be with it. They’re a great bunch