SCOTLAND. . .WHIT SUNDAY, 1942

My. Dearest,
Time and Place of writing:
In the barrack room on Sunday after dinner, five to two to be exact. I’m clean and refreshed and well fed, having consumed a large mutton chop, greens and potatoes and seven prunes and custard. Several people are writing, some are reading, some are out, the sun shines and I’ve a fine crease In my trousers and my brown shoes on.
Events, Friday midnight to now:
I wrote a hasty note on Friday night in the midst of preparing for our night march.  Going on from there. We had a pint of hot cocoa each at half past ten and paraded at eleven. We marched off in fine style, in two platoons, too. Swinging along with equipment settling and the moon rising was very good, especially through Hamilton, where we felt like a band of raiders heading for the Border to collect cattle and English women.     The march was pleasant, I had a poorish period between two and three when I just marched automatically and my mind wandered off dreamlike and I worked out plans for meeting you in July, details of a taxi to “D’s” where I’d arrive about half past five and a picnic hot coffee and toast in the kitchen and then, to bed and up for a late breakfast and coffee with Eileen or Jack an on to Kettering for the week-end, and back on Monday for a week at  home, and walks and some cricket and all sorts of things. I woke up when we halted, and after that felt fine. We got to our Forming Up Point at half past three, marched, crawled and crept across country for an hour, and then took up positions and assaulted the quarry which was our   objective at half past four, charging fiercely with fixed bayonets. We then consolidated the position, had a chin-wag from the Instructors on the attack, got into the trucks and home about six-thirty.

We had showers and a rest and paraded after breakfast and then off on bikes to recce a defensive position along the Rotten Calder. It was a seven mile (hilly- very) ride, in lovely weather, and the recce was fun as a band of Instructors took cover on the opposite side of the gorge and fired blanks at us when we showed ourselves, so we had to  crawl and scramble and keep under cover. We then biked back, made out the recce report and the map and it had to be handed in by one o’clock, all quick and hasty. And that ended our first course.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON AND EVENING:

Peter and I hurried over dinner, changed, and bussed to Glasgow and then trammed out for a long long way to a suburb where we found the school, a great brand new modern place. We watched the show, and marvelled at Bertha’s brilliant economy of movement on the stage and at the dancer’s skill and at the pleasure the large audience found in the show, and afterwards went behind where a large lady with an orchid asked us to tea with the cast and helpers. It was a dream tea. Twenty people and a long table with egg sandwiches, meat rolls, sausage rolls, scones, all new and absurdly abundant, and fancy  cakes, macaroons, jam cakes, pretty jam and nutty cakes, almond slices, cream puffs, all  sorts.  Peter and I began politely and then got really going, and it hurt us to leave so much.  A gargantuan tea. We then helped to load the van, parted from the crowd, and trickled off by tram to Glasgow.  Here was a problem. All the week, and especially during the march we had been looking forward to a grand supper at the Strand, where you can get grills and draught bass in tankards. And now our appetites were ruined. But we went to a pub and had four beers it being the end of a trying week, and our appetites improved and at the Strand  the grills were over but we had three large sausages each and chips and toast and beer, and so home, by nine, to bed. There I slept very deeply until 8.30 and got up just in time for   sausages and tomatoes for breakfast.

We have had tomatoes twice already, very good tinned ones.

THIS MORNING.

Every one went back to bed, but I didn’t as I wanted to do a lot of little domestic jobs. So Peter and I stayed up. Washed and cleaned boots, blancoed a lot of things, washed shaved and scrubbed ourselves, dressed nicely, made beds, ironed trousers sharply, sewed on buttons, sorted out my kit bag, big pack, suit case and soldiers box, re-arranged my books and added a further twenty-three issued yesterday (the books we have) and then it was dinner time.

And here I am. A busy week, with the range, assault course, marching and recces. A happy week.

My recce map was jolly good, I think, for a quick one.

TEWT is Tactical Exercises Without Troops. Good about the newts, stoopid.    No letter from you yesterday, yes there was, finished in Barrows. Good. I’m still anxious about you’re being tired, and overdoing it. Honor being there might cause that, I mean, your excitement on top of the strain of the other work.

We had a grand time at the theatre, and now I’m off to Caldergrove to visit some swagger gardens with them and to spend a quiet evening there, I hope. Arm chair and a fire, very, nice.

Its a Saturday morning early that I arrive home, unless the Worst happens,   or unless I have to do this Field Works course again, when I get seven days leave in three weeks time, a tempting idea!  I do want to come home.

Oh the castle. I didn’t pace it as Bertha was waiting to go, but its about a hundred and fifty feet along the front, quite small, but that’s just the Keep, the Inner core of it all.  Come and see it. Oh dear.

Bless you and be happy. Write when you can but not at night if you’re too tired. I’ll know why you haven’t.