Lt. A Scott Daniell RE
1021 Docks op. Coy. RE
C.M.F.    10 Aug 43

My Darling :

                        Last night the Great news came, & I have sent an airgraph & a cable.  Peter, off on detachment elsewhere, is also sending a cable.  So you may get two.  I made it two to ensure earliest possible delivery.  My dear, it’s too sacred and Holy a subject to jest over, yet I am like a birthday child.  Proud, happy, relieved, exalted, brimming with affection for you, full of feelings so mixed and interwoven that the resultant tapestry dazzles me.

                        I await knowledge of our child through your description with eagerness.  Dreams I revel in, but facts will be absorbed hungrily.  What is he like ?  Fingernails and toenails, knees and little hands and eyelashes ?  Hair, chest and shoulders ?  Its so much a miracle.

                        And you ?  Was it too bad ?  Are you well now ?  Your new trousseau, is it in use ?  The new shoes ?  Will you please draw £10 & buy clothes for yourself.  I’m spending nothing and living in a field is so economical.  I’ll tell you about the £10 for clothes in tomorrow’s airgraph.  And does the pram work ?  And does Dickie ever smile ?  I would have him happy & carefree.  God, how I’ll love your child.  Our child.  And the dear pride of our Mothers.  Bless them.  Is Eileen pleased & Marjorie & Romsey ?  Tell Rolf & Susan Bashford.  And Bertha & Mrs. Thom and the Bromborough people.  And how please the village will be, Mummy Hanson, too.  And Elizabethan old Jim, & Jack Lawrence.  And how clever, how wonderfully clever you are.  And how sweet.  I should love to see you two together, Dickie, my Dickie, & you, my you.  What a pair.  What a destination for this journey I am making.  It’s incredibly rich, makes life & poetry & living more meaning. Do people call on you as you lay in bed, resting, slightly pale & very lovely, with Dickie resting too ?  Does he howl ?  Does he like his bath ?

                        A HE, A RICHARD JOHN SCOTT DANIELL, not a but the Richard John Scott Daniell, named & individual for when, in time, you & I will be a memory may be a kind fond memory.  But the adventure of growing up, watched by us, helped by us, guided – circumspectly – by us.  Adventure indeed.  And how it will enrich our writing.  And success will mean so much more.  Everything will mean so much more.  A son, more clever than the Queen of England, more clever than Princess Juliana.  Sweet though little girls are, a son, masculine, the grace of small boys, in so many ways better, to start with.  A son & heir, to carry on our name, to have the little field we’ll buy afterwards.  A son, for us, ours alone, you his Mother, me his father.  No wonder I am proud.

                        News other than this is significant.  We are still resting, I am, with half the company & Jock & the others have moved on temporarily.  I’m kept here for some reason best known to the Colonel. So I administer the half company with Jack.  And I think my thoughts.  Of Richard John & you.  Does Uncle Jack know that “John” is after him.  I’m so impatient for your details of the affair, of what people do or say.  Tell Dickie I’ve got an Italian revolver for him, captured.  He can use it for prowling.  I have no ammunition for it.  Its in a leather holster too.  And he shall have the red History books.

                        What will he think of me !  A strange thin man.

                        Oh could you keep a Dickie Diary ?  Smiles, hair, teeth, interest . . cricket scores, . .  dance tickets . . .  Driving licence & so on ?  Not detailed, just comments.  Hope he’s not too old & set in his ways by the time I see him.

                        Isn’t this letter rather single track ?  Our letters will be, for quite a while.  Still, loving Dickie as we are, we must not get to absorbed & lose our mutual devotion.  We shan’t, our love of Dickie is part & parcel of her own love.

                        All those clothes been used, those little shoes.  When Dickie has finished with a pair & used them, do send me one, a sort of spare shoe.

                        You clever darling, & our pretty bedroom with Dickie in the corner.  Dear lad.  I hope he takes after you and my mother.  & Your mother & some Candy. – in nature & eyes, not ears delicious & perfect though Candy’s ears are.  Pram Parade up Lover’s Lane with Dickie and Candy.

                        God bless you, dearest heart, mother & sweet wife.  Kiss Dickie for me,