Letter No. 88

AUST. No 34171 

LAC Cooney, JF 

No. 3 Squadron 

R.A.A.F. 

MIDDLE EAST

12^th May ‘43

Dear Mum,

                  It’s over a week since I wrote last but with things as they are at present everyone has been too excited  to think of writing at all.

From the latest reports we have received I think it will only be a couple more hours before the entire enemy force in North Africa is cleaned up completely.

We received a bit more mail yesterday but I only received three letters. They were No’s 44 & 45 from you & No. 22 from Betty.

It’s too bad that the airgraph took so long to get home. As far as I can see it must have gone by ordinary mail. I believe that there is an airgraph service to New Zealand now, so it shouldn’t be long before there is one to Aussie.

Regarding the snow falling in Tunis I’m afraid we have never seen anything that looks at all like snow. In fact, the winter over here was quite mild & nothing like what I was expecting. At present it is very warm & it looks as though the winter weather is finished.

Fancy Berry(?) Moodie being sent to Burma. When you said he was going overseas I was expecting to see him over here. I think I told you before that S/L Gibbs had gone away from the squadron. I don’t think I have ever seen a crowd of men so relieved as they were when Gibbs left us. As a pilot I suppose that he is without equal in the M.E. but once he got on the ground he was loathed & detested by every pilot & member of the ground staff in the squadron. It often made us laugh to read the cuttings out of the home papers about “how the all the men adored their leader, etc”. whenever any of us received such cuttings we would put them up on the notice board in the mess & everyone would write something on it – most of the remarks are very uncomplimentary & nobody ever cared if the C.O. saw them or not.

Our new C.O. is Squadron Leader Eaton & he thinks as much of us as he does of himself & always tries to keep a good stock in the canteen. At night ‘Skeeter’, as the C.O. is always called, often comes around to the tents & has a yarn with us & he lets all the other officers do the same. This morning he had a talk with us & told us what we would be doing when the new front opens, gave us a good idea what country we would be going to & also told us that we would probably have plenty of excitement & plenty of leave in all the main cities. At the present time “Skeet” is away trying to arrange transport planes to take us back to Alex or Cairo for a bit of leave & that in itself is a darn sight more than Gibbs ever thought of doing for us.

You may wonder why I am writing all this when the letter has to be censored but I will give it to one of the pilots & they never even open the envelope.

We haven’t had any papers or parcels for ages now but we are expecting them in any day. They may be holding them at a base P.O. until we go back a bit when everything is cleared up.

The boys have just come back to the tent feeling very excited with the fact that ‘Skeet” is unofficially giving us a bit of leave in Tunis tomorrow. It will only be a day at a time but it will be a change at any rate.

I don’t know whether I will be able to get a cushion cover the same as the others, but I will keep my eyes open for one.

Well, Mum, that’s all for now but I will write & tell you about Tunis in a few days.

Much love to Dad & Betty

                                                      Lovingly Yours

                                                                         Frank

P.S. You remember I told you that we had a couple of pigs called Hitler & Musso. Well, their real names were Gibbs & Grieves. Grieves was our adjutant.

                                                                                           F /

Excuse writing but I busted my hand a bit when I crashed my motor bike.