News today, cancelling yesterdays, that these letters are getting through after all so you may have had a letter a day, in spite of the “Last Letters” sent nearly three weeks ago.  I hope so.  No letters have come for us, we are so securely tucked away that even the Army Post Office can’t find us.  But the day will come.  I know you are writing & I know your devotion.  To anyone but you I’d say that should I be away for a long time, & should you become in love with another, provided he were a good bloke I’d fall out.  But to you that’d be nonsense & anyhow, the good bloke would die suddenly from too close proximity with a .38 revolver.

                        The things we saw today, me marching at the head of a column of four or five hundred men, largely from censored Dominions: a telephone kiosk, & no telephone in it, a school with many excited children, a pillar box, houses, gardens, a bowling green, a few Wrens (and there the men cheered) & a horse.  Also a bicycle.  A great day.  Also a hedge, wet & dripping & rich with variety & wild treasures.

                        David writes interminably to his Wren, & then goes to bed & reads verse.  A nice gallant Naval Officer.  You’ll love him when he calls.  He’d called in a Spitfire or a Seafire if he had one.  He has thick undisciplined hair, a red face, good features & capable hands.  He looks well dressed in untidy clothes & wears the RN cap well.

                        Oh, the these two addresses, please note them : –
I thought it’d be nice if you could write them each a letter.  Washbrook lives in B’ham as you see.  He is young & very sensitive & devoted to his wife & his baby daughter, Pamela.  He is doing very well, is very keen & a splendid, rather Ronnie, chap.  Braithwaite is my section clerk, my personal Secretary as it were.  Stolid, intelligent, reliable & unsparing in his sense of duty.  You could say I gave you the addresses, that I am their section officer, & that I’ve often told you about them.  Say I’ve seen very highly of them.  So you know how lost they must feel, and is and how anxious.  Say you feel the same.  Say how are sure you are that I’ll do all I can for their husbands.  You know what to say. I feel it would be a very kind action.  You’d like it in their shoes.  I’m not suggesting you write to all gap wives !  They are especially deserving.

                        And how does the garden grow? The Blenheims ripen, being duly Christened?  The young growing things are for picking.  Tomatoes, they ripe !  The Clock marches solemnly round, the Cricket Club Clock ticks away, the world that is ours marches on.  And it cannot be long before I am back among it all again, loving so many little things, unnoted unknown, the unnamed details which make the all satisfying picture of home.

                        You are still well, and happy, and busy, and undaunted.  God keep you so.

                        My blessings & my love, dearest heart.

Tonight’s memory :- The “wicked oak tree” between the Hills & the Village, and calling on the Unwins that Sunday evening on our honeymoon, and tea in bed on Sunday before we were married.