This is a long and newsy letter from Dart, accompanied by a short one with additional news. In the first, he talks about how quickly the mail gets to him from Cleveland and discusses “that funny little mark” she made on her letter. (I think he was referring to a shorthand symbol she had drawn.) One of the guys translated it and then gave Dart a symbol that he should send in response. Fortunately, Dart had the sense to distrust his fellow sailor and asked around to find that the real meaning of the shorthand he was about to send was rather vulgar!
He reminded Dot not to hope too hard for a letter from him. Not only did he still have to complete the stenciling, but he had eight other letters to answer! He talked about how hard it was to write or get any privacy with all these men around. He told her of the hours of drilling that he did with his platoon, adding that he now knows how sergeants and Chief Petty Officers learned to cuss so well. He mentioned a guy in his barracks who saw Dot’s picture and recognized her as an Andrews student he had met once. He said the weather was sunnier so the place didn’t look so bleak. And, he told her he had not been able to attempt the swim test because of the cyst on his…er…let’s just say…his back.
In the brief note he enclosed later, Dart tells Dot he has been assigned to the hospital and will undergo surgery on the cyst. While he is reassuring that she should not worry and that the operation was really not that big a deal, there is a melancholy tone to this letter. He urges her to keep the letters coming during his recovery, and he talks about the full moon over Great Lakes making him miss her all the more. His words are ardent and urgent as he tells her he wishes he could see her again.
Dot received a letter from Dart and decided to answer it immediately, even though she had already completed one letter to him that day. She noticed that although cheerful, his letter sounded a little homesick. What a poignant comment she made when she said, “If you do get rather homesick, please don’t say anything you don’t mean or that you’ll regret later on.” Translation: Don’t toy with my emotions because you’re already very important to me.
She changes tone when she mentions his revelation that he had received no demerits while at Case. She “fessed up” to two in her Andrews career – one for chewing gum and another for talking to the cooks. “Aren’t I awful? I’m just beginning to catch on why my family sent me out here. However, I’m glad they did, now.” (How else would she have met her dashing sailor?)
In the next paragraph, Dot jokingly chastises Dart for lying about hitching a ride to Greenwich to see her over Christmas. “It would be lovely, of course, but don’t raise my hopes up only to be shattered on the ground.”
Throughout the letter, Dot bounces between letting her growing feelings for Dart come through and then poking fun at him or herself. She’s sitting out the upcoming date night because her favorite date is unavailable. She offers him a pair of “mittens.” They’re boxing glove style “in case the boys don’t like the idea of you marching them around for two hours.”
She finally gets around to asking him to call her Dot and says she needs to get lights out so she can “dream of you.” In the margins she refers to a little game they have apparently started on the backs of their envelopes – writing a phrase using just the initial letters of each word. She reveals that B.B.S.F.L means “Bond Bread Stays Fresh Longer,” and concluded that he was probably expecting a different not meaning .
On this Veterans Day I’m thinking off all who have served in the military. However, because I am steeped in the 1940s through these letters, my mind is especially drawn to the rapidly dwindling vets of World War II. They truly made the world a better, safer, saner place – at least for a while. We owe them so much!