Letter
No. 86
4th
May ‘43
Dear Mum,
I arrived
back at the squadron late yesterday afternoon & I received five letters
from you No’s 39 to 43 & one from Betty, no 21 & one from Aunty Emily.
I was also told the dreadful news about Rex Palmer that I cabled to you about half an hour ago. I don’t think censorship regulations will allow me to tell you how Rex was killed but it was entirely an accident & not due to any enemy action at all. Rex was buried at the war cemetery in Sousse & sometime this week the padre is going to hold a service at the grave so I will be going to it.
Re your
letter No.39 I can’t say that I am particulary pleased about being in the
headlines even if it was worth a quid. I send my letters home for Dad, Betty
& yourself to read & anyone else I know in the district but not to be
published for everyone else so I hope you haven’t sent any more in before this
letter arrives. If the Womens Weekly was not sent to so many of the boys over
here, it may not be so bad but every time I walk out of the tent I get someone
slinging off about it. Maybe it’s just that I’m upset by the news about Rex but
last night & this morning I have had some rather harsh words with some of
the boys over it & generally put myself in bad with them so please don’t
send any more of my letters to the WW or any other newspaper or I will be
making a lot of very bad friends of my mates.
All the same it was very good of Mrs. Gibbs to invite you to see the films &I’m glad you liked them. A lot of the films you saw were taken since we came over here because the boss broke his leg a couple of weeks after we arrived in the desert. S/L Gibbs has left the squadron now & is going to do a course of some sort before he returns to Aussie.
You said in one of your letters that George Brissett had met a Sgt Kingsley from over here, well, the only person I can think of who left here when we came over is Cpl Kington. He probably got his third stripe when he got home. Even though George said that he wrote to me a couple of weeks before he wrote to you, as yet, I have had no word from him. Maybe he forgot to post it.
I’m glad
you liked the cushion covers & mat. When I bought them I was not sure if
they would suit the room or not. Don’t be afraid that I will send any of those
lurid cushion covers home because I have seen thousands of them & I think
they are just a waste of money. If I see any particularly nice pieces of
tapestry I will send another one or two to you. By the way, did you notice the
Made in Italy tags on the back of the cushion covers.
There is still a good few parcels to come & I’m hoping that they will turn up soon, as the last time we received mail there were very few parcels with it & I think there should be about three cakes from you on the way & also other parcels together with a cake or two from Aunty Lizzie.
I took my pay book back to the pay office this morning & found that I had £39.10.0 to my credit so while I was there I filled in a form & sent £20 to you. When it arrives just send a cable to say that you have paid £20 into my banking account. I was just working it out this morning that with that money, when it arrives, I should have nearly £100 in the bank since last October which is not a bad effort at all for me.
After I left the Convalescent Depot on the 30th April I had three rather tiring days travel. From the Depot I was taken by truck with a lot of other fellows to a transit camp but I was only there a few minutes when they told me that they could not accommodate me because there was an RAF transit camp about 15 miles further along the road & so I picked up my baggage & with the aid of the old thumb I managed to get there at tea time.
I slept the night at the camp & then after breakfast next morning I was given two blankets, 6 days rations (which I finished off in 3 days) & politely told that my squadron was about 450 miles away in a westerly direction & that I would have to hitch-hike my way as best I could & so the old thumb came into action once more. I did the trip with only two nights on the road & with the aid of eleven different trucks. I think I have thumbed my way about ten thousand miles since I came over here.
One feels like a millionaire these days, ‘cause we go over to the pay office & draw a thousand or two francs. It sounds like a lot of cash but a thousand francs is only five pounds. On my sixth spin at the dice last night I span for a hundred & twenty thousand francs. Unfortunately I missed out, but I had already drawn sixty thousand out of the centre, so I had a good night.
Well, Mum, that’s all for now but I will think of something else to write about shortly so I will drop you another line then.
Much love to Dad & Betty
Lovingly
Yours
Frank
P.S. I’m
not so sure if my last four or five letters have been numbered correctly so if
there is any missing between 81 and this one, don’t worry about it.
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