Letters 47 & 48 to 1st Jan 1943

Letter No 47

Aus No34171

LAC Cooney J.F.

No3 Squadron

Middle East

29th Dec ‘42 

Dear Mum,

Still have nothing to do so I’m just writing a page or two to fill in time.

You may have noticed that all the letters from number 40 on have be signed by the one officer. The reason for this is that since the tenth of the month our postal section has not been with us & I have just been writing letter & putting them away so this morning I took them over & got Mr Tumbridge to sign them & I will post them as soon as I can.

I also have an A.I.F. News ready to send to you & inside it you will find a bit about us pinching a ME109 from one of the other squadrons. Our squadron is known far & wide throughout the desert as the biggest gang of thieves & scroungers that ever left Aussie. Nearly everything on wheels in the squadron has been pinched from other units & in “The Crusader”, the 8th Army Weekly, there was a quizz & one of the questions was “what has the greatest lifting power out of helium, hydrogen & Three Squadron & everyone voted that our squadron was easily the best.

The boys have decided that when the war is over & we get back to civil life again they are going to try & get a job at a circus because in the last two months we have pitched our tent in a different place about twenty five times & in a circus they would be just the men required for the job.

There’s only about a page & a half but I’m afraid that’s all there is for to-day so I will close.

Much love to Dad & Betty

Lovingly Yours

Frank

Letter No 48

Middle East 

1st Jan ’43

New Years Day

Dear Mum,

At long, long last a little bit of mail has turned up - only one bag. It was all letters & cables & out of this I received numbers21 & 22 from you, a Christmas cable from everyone, letter number 12 from Betty & a letter from a girl in Melb.

We know for a fact that there is fifty bags of  Christmas letters, parcels & papers waiting to be picked up between here & Cairo but the only trouble is that we don’t know which post office they are at & we will have to wait until we are advised where they are. Your letters no’s 18,19 & 20 must be among them, also all our Christmas parcels.

As yet I’ve had no word from Lovelocks but so long as they received my letter they will answer it sooner or later.

There are two letters missing from there that were sent to me c/o the Base Accountant Officer but, knowing the way these Poms work, I can expect them anytime in the next six months.

Regarding the tobacco situation at home, don’t bother about getting me any now because we have been getting issued with two ops a week & , as there are two fellows in our tent that don’t smoke, I have built up quite a supply & we are also issued with ten cigarettes a day so smokes are now the least of my worrys.

Have just returned from the mess & while over there I received two cables, one from Lovelocks Ltd & one from Peggy. I will write to the boss again tomorrow if I have enough time.

Re the dress material I will see what I can do when I go to Alex again. One of the boys used to be a traveller for dress materials so I’ll see if I can get him to give me a hand to choose some. If he is going elsewhere I will see if I can get hold of an A.I.F. nurse to pick some for me. There is always plenty of them in Alex & they are only too willing to help us.

I’ll bet the screams from ACL Moran are loud & numerous because an aircraft hands job is about the worst job in the Air Force & he will find that to re-muster as a mechanic is a lot harder than he expects. I have had a re-muster to a fitter IIA in for about six months & it still has not come through yet, but I’m still hoping that it will be through before long ‘cause its worth an extra 1/8 a day to me.

If I get a chance within the next few days I will drop a few lines to to Miss Wilmot..

Well, Mum, that’s about all for now but I’ll write again shortly.

Much love to Dad & Betty & regards to Leo

Lovingly Yours

Frank