Letter 77 The Australian News

 Letter No 77

AUST. No 34171 

LAC Cooney, JF 

No. 3 Squadron 

R.A.A.F. 

MIDDLE EAST

15^th March ‘43

 

Dear Mum,

                  As yet there is no sign of the mail we have been expecting but we are all still waiting patiently for it & our mail orderly is trying to chase it up.

                  We thought that the cold weather was over as the last week or so it has been rather warm but yesterday afternoon things took a turn for the worse & it came up windy, cold & raining. At present it does not look like clearing up for quite a while. The winter we were all dreading was not nearly as bad as we expected it to be. In fact it was no worse than any winter at home. The old hands were all telling us how cold it was going to be but they were going on their first winter here & that was the Middle East’s coldest for about thirty years & this winter was nothing like the last.

                  The enclosed “newspaper” was issued to us yesterday. Since the A.I.F. News printers have gone home we have been without news of the events at home & I suppose this is to take its place. At present there isn’t very much in it but it may get better later on.

                  As I said about a week ago we are now getting fresh meat & our noble cooks have been giving us some very tasty meals. Yesterday we had cold leg of lamb for dinner & a good drop of Irish stew for tea. It is a decided change for the better from our usual bully beef & M & V & I truly hope we can get more of it. We are also getting quite a few fresh oranges from Palestine. The last few days we have been getting bread with our rations instead of biscuits. The majority of bread over here is a dirty brown colour & tastes very sour but this last lt is nice & white & tastes good.

                  I was talking to one of the Scots ack-ack gunners to-day & he told me that he had about 60 yard of different coloured silks & he said if I wanted some of it he would give it to me so if I get a chance this afternoon or to-morrow I will go over & see what he has got.

                  That’s all for now but I will write again soon.

Much love to Mum, Dad & Betty.

                 

                                    Lovingly Yours

                                                      Frank

 

 

Letter 76 No mail

 Letter No 76

AUST. No 34171 

LAC Cooney, JF 

No. 3 Squadron 

R.A.A.F. 

MIDDLE EAST

13^th March ‘43

 

Dear Mum,

     Just a few more lines to let you know how things are going over here.

                  We should be getting some  more mail in a day or two because yesterday one of the boys got a letter dated 23^rd of Jan. This letter had been sent to him c/o The R.A.A.F. abroad & so it had to go to H.Q.-M.E. & then get re-addressed to here & so it came up by air. Our other mail is either coming by truck or boat & so it will naturally be a bit longer in coming.

                  Our mail to home is being treated better of late in regards to getting from here to Cairo. Each morning a plane calls in & all the outgoing mail is loaded on & it goes straight down to Cairo. That means our mail is being sorted in the Base Post Office about three days after we post it here. This plane brings the Egyptian Mail which is printed a couple of days previously.

                  We will be paid next Saturday in Francs because Lira & Egyptian currency is no good where we are now. I think that the new British Military Authority currency will still be alright but to save confusion we are going to get the new money. The rate of exchange is two hundred Francs to one Pound (Sterling) (25/- Aust)

                  I wrote to Miss Moody a few days ago & I told her that I sent a few things to Betty &that next time I wrote to Bet I would ask her to take them in &show them to her so will you ask Betty to go into Lovelocks when she gets a chance.

                  I nearly forgot to mention it but if my memory serves me correct it is yours & Dad’s Silver Wedding Anniversary to-day so I will wish you all the best on this occasion even though my wishes will be rather belated I am thinking of you both more than ever to-day. I only wish I was home. I will see if I can get something to send you both when we get to Tunis. Sorry I couldn’t get anything for you in Tripoli.

                  The old hands have been rather jumpy this last few days because news has come up from Cairo, by the desert telegraph that their replacements are somewhere in the Middle East & are due here soon.

 

Well, Mum, that’s all for now but I will write again soon.

                  Much love to Dad & Betty & once again best wishes for to-day

                                                     

                                                                        Lovingly Yours

                                                                                          Frank

 

 

Letter 75 Pigs on the Loose

 Letter No 75

AUST. No 34171 

LAC Cooney, JF 

No. 3 Squadron 

R.A.A.F. 

MIDDLE EAST

11^th March ‘43

 

Dear Mum,

                  Here I am settling down to try & scratch out a few more lines to you but I have absolutely nothing at all to tell you. I have gone right off my letter writing this last few weeks – as a mater of fact, I still have a couple of letters to answer from the last lot of mail.

                  I have been learning quite a bit of Arabic this last week from one of the wogs from a nearby camp. He has been coming over to the tent each morning & sits down for a few hours & talks to us. We christened him “Darby Munro” because he only stands about five feet high. I’m afraid we won’t be able to see any more of him now though because one of the wogs ‘cliftied’ – pinched about five blankets out of one of the tents & now they have all been kept out of the camp area.

                  Every morning at the squadron sick quarters there is a sick parade for all wogs suffering any ailments. The main trouble with the children seems to be their eyes & desert sores & with the older people it is their teeth that give them most trouble. They are all extremely grateful for what the medical orderlies do for them each & morning they trot over with eggs by the dozens & give them to the orderlies. Our friend Darby invited us over to have a cup of tea with his granddad but of course we didn’t go because that is one of the things we are definitely not allowed to do.

                  The food situation has been getting better of late. We are now on an Australian ration scale again for the first time since we left Alexandria. This scale makes a vast difference to us because we get Aussie tinned butter instead of “margy” & extra of everything else. Yesterday they brought back a lot of fresh New Zealand mutton & with the exception of what we killed ourselves at Xmas time this is the first fresh meat we have had since we started to move over four months ago.

                  I forgot to tell you before but when we were near Tripoli our cooks caught two extremely small pigs & for the last six weeks they have been fattening up & in a few weeks will be making a meal for us. For a while the cooks kept them in a slit trench so they wouldn’t get away but they did not thrive very well & so they let them out & now the pigs just wander around & get fat. Sometimes they wander a few hundred yards from the mess & if the cooks want them they just whistle & the pigs come trotting back like a pair of pups. There is going to be some strife when the time comes for the killing of their ‘family’ cause one of them says that he will shoot the first person who harms them. The pigs, by the way, are called Hitler & Musso & they respond readily to their names.

                  The cooks had a rooster but it used to crow at all unearthly hours of the morning & so it got it in the neck very smartly.

                  Well, Mum, that’s a lot further than I thought I would get & now I’m out of new so I had better close & try & answer a couple of the letters I have here.

                  Give my love to Dad & Betty & my regards to Leo.

 

                                                                                          Lovingly Yours,

                                                                                                            Frank