Dart’s letter begins with the premise that it will not be a masterpiece, but there is some good news to report. He was permitted to sit on the edge of the bed with his feet on a chair for 30 minutes today. That’s his first time sitting up for that long in 45 days! His back is tired from the experience because he has gotten so weak, but he is thrilled to get to this milestone.

He descibes his luck at receiving one of the new “surgical beds” – with the capability of raising both the head and the feet. Without that, he would have been lying flat for all these weeks. How amusing to think that was a new-fangled invention in 1944, and has been commonplace in hospitals since shortly after that.

He’s eager to see the dress Dot is making which is depriving him of long letters from her.

He says he’s doing his best to get well in time for a March 17th leave, but he has his doubts. It is rumored to take about a week to get all the permissions and forms completed for a sick leave. Now he’d be so weak that if he did get leave, he’d have to spend it at home, resting, instead of out with Dot. That does not keep him from planning how he’s going to use his dad’s car and the extra gas rations he’ll be allotted for the leave.

A letter from his mother said that his Case roommate, Tom Reilly and his Marine buddy, Fred had both dropped by for a  visit with Dart’s parents. How nice of these young men, home for such a brief time, to check in with parents of a friend.

He winds up the letter confirming that it was no masterpiece, but that “idle chatter” could be a nice form of conversation.

Dot’s long letter – begun in English class after a punctuation test – is typically chatty. She received a 95% on the test and continued her letter later in the day.

She remarked that housemother, Mrs. Woodworth, hadn’t been home all day and her door was locked. House residents could hear her phone ringing incessently, but could not get to it. The thought that it could be someone with an emergency need to reach one of the girls was driving Dot crazy. How odd that there was a) only one phone in the place, b) it was locked away from nearly everyone, and c) there was no other way to contact the house. That would surely never fly in today’s world!

Dot must have done something wrong with that roll of film Dart gave her, because there were no pictures on it. She’s decided to send him some older photos of her family instead. She’s not surprised that he thinks her 3-year old niece, Toni Gale, is cute. Apparently all the men think so.

The letter was interrupted while Dot completed her sweeping chore for the second time that day. Then she talked about a crazy radio program about a quirky family called the “Bumsteads.” I wonder if that was based on the Blondie commic strip, or maybe the strip came from the radio show…