Letter No. 89

AUST. No 34171 

LAC Cooney, JF 

No. 3 Squadron 

R.A.A.F. 

MIDDLE EAST

12^th May ‘43

 

Dear Boop,

I have just finished writing to Mum & this is only a short note in answer to your letter No.22.

You asked me to send you a few snaps home, but, although, I have taken a good few since last October. I have not been anywhere where I could get them developed. However one of the boys out of the tent is going down to Alex. Tomorrow on a months sick leave & so I will give him all my films & he can get them printed for me.

We will probably be moving back a bit as soon as this show is cleared up. How far back we are going I can hardly guess but I may be able to get hold of a bit of dress material for either yourself or Mum. Anyway I will keep my eyes open  & see what I can find.

The country round here is very good indeed & quite a change after being so long in the desert. Whereas in the desert we only had miles & miles of flat, sandy country we are now in country where there is dozens of olive groves & orchards growing apricots, peaches & almonds. There are also many vineyards which stretch as far as the eye can see in all directions. All the other country is cultivated & growing either wheat, barley or corn. I definitely don’t feel like going back into the desert again but if we do go back into it for a while I think it will only be until we are re-equipped & trained for a new front. That is, of course, if we are going to be in the new front, however time alone will tell.

Well, Bet, I’m afraid that’s all I can write for the present but I will write to Mum soon & tell her about Tunis.

Much love to Mum & Dad & my regards to Leo

                                                                         Tons of love,

                                                                                          Frank /

                                                                         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.

 

 

Letter 86

  

Letter No. 86

AUST. No 34171 

LAC Cooney, JF 

No. 3 Squadron 

R.A.A.F. 

MIDDLE EAST

4^th 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 30^th 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.