Dart didn’t expect to write to Dot tonight, but he eschewed liberty and other letters to do so because he loves her. It has been just one month since he was a guest in her home and he tells her that he chokes up whenever he relives those few precious moments together.

He caught a glimpse of Fred on Treasure Island today, but Dart was marching in formation and was unable to speak more than a few words in passing. I don’t know if Dart is getting frustrated by his inability to visit with his good buddy, in spite of their close proximity, but I sure am!

Dart brazenly voiced the hope that he’ll get a brief leave after he finishes his schooling, just about the time of Dot’s February prom. Now why did he do that? I feel certain he’s jinxed the whole affair now.

He needs to close so that he can find out the details of how to get paid. Once again, he’s taking only $15.00 of the $60.00 he has coming to him. He ends with the prediction that his test score average will drop after his next Recognition exam. I think that’s the frequent tests he gets where he must identify the silhouettes of various aircraft – both friend and foe. Each week, more planes are added, so the tests are increasing in difficulty.

Dot’s contribution today comes in the form of two short letters. The first is a few lines she dashed off before work, promising another letter later tonight. She will be going directly from Franklin Simons to Toni Gale’s 4th birthday party.

After the party, Dot writes an account of the festivities. “Well, the big shindig’s over and I’m sure the three pounds I lost this week was gained tonight, three fold. Eat? No. When you do it the way we were doing it, they call it ‘stoking’.” She goes on to write a long list of food items served at the party for her niece and an aunt. “After all, we had two birthdays to celebrate, so you can see why we’d have to have twice as much food.”

She tells a couple of cute stories about the birthday girl, whom she refers to here as “Gale.” First, the little one kept asking Dot to look around the house to see if she could find just one more present. Then, noticing Dart’s photo in it’s place of honor on the piano, she asked, “Where’s Dart? Isn’t he coming to my party, too?” After all, the entire cast of her life was there to pay homage, so why not Dart?

She further reports that Dart was the main topic of conversation at the party. He made a very favorable impression during his brief visit. Those who met him wished they’d met him sooner, and those who didn’t meet him regret missing the opportunity to do so. Everyone agrees they’d like to see him in the very near future.

She asks Dart if he would consider her a slacker if she took three days off work next week. She explains that it’ll be her last chance before returning to school and she has several partially finished outfits she started sewing last spring that she’d like to complete. (Is there no end to this girl’s talents and industriousness?)

Then she introduces a theme that I heard repeated numerous times over my childhood. She writes that while she appreciates his gentlemanly manner, he’s certainly not helping her in her fervent efforts to lose weight. If she promises not to sacrifice her health, would he please stop discouraging her weight-loss efforts? I recall Mom asking Dad to please tell her that if she didn’t lose weight, he’d leave her. He would predictably murmur in a dead pan voice, “If you don’t lose weight, I’ll leave you.” Mom would then cry, “You have to sound like you mean it!” But he never did.

Although today’s letter from Dart was very short, she’d rather have even one line than to hear nothing from him. She sends her mother’s regards and the request to let Ruth know whose turn it is to write.

Signing off with “I must stop this letter, bit I’ll never stop loving you,” she bids him goodnight.

Dart writes an especially sweet and poignant letter today. First he tells of being hailed to the office via loudspeaker, where he finally met up with Fred! They spent several hours talking and walking, making plans to go into town the next evening to see a play.

At noon the next day, Fred came dashing in on Dart as he was shaving, saying that in two hours, he’d be gone. At 3:15, Dart saw a convoy of trucks loading a group of Marines onto a ship across the bay in ‘Frisco. By 4:00, Fred’s stay in the United States had ended. Dart watched until Fred’s ship passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and headed out to sea.

Dart says they talked of many things, including Dot, but there was a sad bit of news to mar the reunion. “Another of our friends and classmates, 1st Lt. William A. MacDonald, was lost when the Liberator he was co-piloting was shot down over the lines in France.” Dart related that some of the crew parachuted to safety, some landed in German hands, and Bill stayed with the plane to try and get it back to base. The plane crashed within sight of our lines.

“I could ramble on about what a swell, good-looking and good natured fellow Bill was. I could also say something about his fiance, our classmate, a neighbor of mine. But sad words and eulogies are of no use. They are heard so often now that they begin to lose a little of their effect. All I can say is that it’s a darned shame.”

This simple telling of the death of a young man I never knew, 70 years after it happened, caused me to mist up. Such a terrible waste! A loss to the world for all time. And replicated millions of times in dozens of wars in the intervening decades. Will we ever learn?

Dart told Dot a little about his latest liberty with his new buddy “Leffman. They missed seeing Jimmy Dorsey by five minutes and saw a pretty good film called Dr. Wassell.

He suggests to Dot that they drop the “unworthiness” business. He happens to think they are very well suited, in addition to being very much in love. He dispels her notion of his brain power by saying he’s simply been lucky that the tests have asked the questions he happens to know the answers to. Next, he runs down a list of his “flaws,” including frequent and pointless cussing and essential laziness. He claims he could go on, but instead he acknowledges that they are both human and he hopes the little bad traits they both have will not prove daunting or insurmountable to live with. All he knows now is that she’s the one and only girl for him, with or without her faults.

He comments on the opening paragraph of her letter that he received today. I can’t tell if he enjoyed it’s bold flirtation, or if he was a little nervous about where she picked up a line like that. (All those movies she sees, maybe?)

He tells her that his parents think a lot of the picture Dot sent them, and they think a lot of the girl who sent it. He tells her that he has placed all of her photos on display and continues to get a little thrill every time he looks at them because they enhance his memories of the time they were taken. “I remember how contented and natural it seemed to have my arms around you or to walk hand in hand with you.”

He closes by saying that letters are absurdly feeble for expressing what is in his heart, but he is so glad he was able to tell her in person and to know that they are “in it together.”

Dot begins her letter to Dart with a breathless description of her day. She raced from work to the beach, where she felt like floating in Long Island Sound all night. It was the hottest day of the hottest summer on record. While at the beach, she saw the mailman who informed her there were two letters from Dart waiting for her at home. I get a kick out of how much the whole town of Greenwich seems to be invested in this romance!

Her cousin Janie wanted Dot to go home with her after the beach visit, but knowing what was awaiting her, Dot decided to head home immediately. She says she’ll spend the night at Janie’s house after they see Dragonseed tomorrow night.

She tells Dart that she finally worked up enough nerve to do a back dive yesterday. “As far as form goes, well, I didn’t have any, but on the other hand, neither did I suffer from any physical injuries.”

She wonders how he’ll ever manage to gain any weight if he skips meals to do laundry. She also requests that he send her his pictures of their leave together. She just wants to see what they look like and then promises to return them to him.

As she finishes the letter, it’s nearly midnight, making it 9:00 PM where Dart is. “I’m wondering if you can see the gorgeous moon. They always seem most beautiful the times it doesn’t do me any good.”

Here’s another letter started in class. (You can tell by the pencil and lined notebook paper.) Some of the guys are having an argument over some inane trivia having to do with electricity. He had to pause when the instructor started the film on synchronous systems. I know, this is pretty gripping stuff.

He resumes later, after mail call when he received two letters from Dot, plus five others. There’s a detailed discussion about how much information she needs to include in his address. His serial number is not necessary because there are no longer two D. G. Petersons in his unit.

He is most enthusiastic about the care package she sent him. That leads me to wonder if they were called “care” packages then. I think I recall first hearing that term in the 1960s when there was some international relief organization with the acronym C.A.R.E. that sent packages to underdeveloped communities overseas. Anyway, he was delighted with the candy, the book and the nice stationery she sent him because shopping in his base store is difficult due to his schedule.

Dart says he’s falling way behind on his correspondence. He can count at least 10 letters that he owes people today. He told Dot of mailing a letter for his classmate today that was addressed to Mrs. Dorothy Peterson and he was caught up a little short. “Forgot for a minute that it’s his wife and not my cousin’s (or my dream).” Looks like Mrs. Dorothy Peterson was becoming a very common name.

He closes with the suggestion that she find a NYC telephone directory. If she imagines that every listing said “I love you” instead of a name, that would give some indication about how much he does (love her).

His P.S. said “It’s morale that you’re good for.” I’ve noticed that he has a habit of gently correcting Dot’s spelling errors by using the same word in his letters and underlining the correction. I guess that was an early warning sign that he would someday be a professional editor. I’d hate to see what he’d say about these hastily proofed posts of mine!

Dot writes this at the end of her three-day “vacation,” during which she worked her tail off. She tells Dart she received three letters from him yesterday. “It’s a mighty good thing you couldn’t see the color of my face when I read the first one. It’s plain that we did not have the same thing in mind. I’m afraid I know what you thought I meant, but you’re wrong. That’s what I get for cutting in on other people’s wit. Better we should drop the subject before either of us interprets anything the wrong way.”

What?! Could this refer to that little diagram she drew that he might have assumed hinted at Dot dreaming about her name being “Peterson” and living in Ohio? I’m as confused as Dart must have been when he read this letter. I hope Mom will be able to shed a little light on all this, if she recalls the details after so long a time.

She appreciates the sketch Dart drew of the San Francisco streets to show how steep they are. She also assures him that if he needs to postpone writing to her in order to study, she’ll understand that he needs to keep his test average up.

She tells him that her brother also had to borrow money to pay for his technical school, only it was a much higher sum than Dart’s loan. After school, Gordon joined the Navy and got married and now he’s begun the process of paying back the loan.

She announces that today she must finish a dress she started in March for one of those leaves of Dart’s that never happened. She reports that her cold is better but her “taster” is on the blink.

Because neither Dot nor Dart wrote on August 9, 1944, I’ll pick up their story on the 10th.

And here’s a little note she inserted in the package Dart mentioned in today’s letter.

Dart’s letter reveals that he is really feeling a time crunch these days. With classes, calisthenics, and duty rosters, he and his classmates were already fairly busy. Now, Dart has the extra burden of daily swimming practice. Letter-writing and laundry duties are falling by the wayside.

He dreads the recognition test that he knows is coming. There’s an understanding among his group that the instructor doesn’t like these guys very much, so he appears to be making the tests as difficult as possible.

Dart’s pleased that the material in his electricity class has finally moved beyond the basics into things he’s not had before. Once again, he seems to thrive on new mental challenges. Part of the fire control system he’s learning involves gyroscopes, and he’s eager to learn how they work. He’s hoping that’ll give him something in common with Dot’s brother Gordon.

Changes are afoot at camp. His math and electricity classes are winding down and new subjects will be introduced in a couple of weeks. His group were all moved to different living quarters yesterday, an arrangement Dart doesn’t like as well, but seems to be adjusting to. A new class of fire controlmen is scheduled to start today – four weeks behind Dart’s class. Treasure Island is really cranking these boys through.

Well, this “letter” from Dot is really more like a label, but I’ll include it, nonetheless.

She has no news but didn’t want two days to pass with no mail from her. She offers her condolences on the loss of Dart’s friend to the war. She must go back to work, reluctantly. She still has her cold but it isn’t bad enough to warrant another day of leave.

She closes with a typical Dot quip. “Well, Chum, I must be off. (I certainly must be. They haven’t found any other excuse for my actions.)”

Dart’s first letter of the day is written just before sunrise, as some of his bunk mates are returning from liberty and he is already on duty. He says he’s received no letters in two days, but the package he got from Dot was greatly appreciated. He tells her he wishes he’d brought one of the candy bars it contained with him to his watch duty because he’ll miss chow this morning.

He’s impressed by the delicious menu at Gale’s birthday party. “Maybe you did gain back what a week’s work had removed, but you had fun, didn’t you?”

He asks her to give her mother his regards and tell he he has no idea who owes whom a letter. He accepts responsibility for the lapse, however, because he owes 10 or 15 people. He’s trying to get caught up with his correspondence, but not having much success. He also confirms that his mother received a nice letter from Dot recently.

“Dawn is just now breaking and Treasure Island’s crazy bird (the only one crazy enough to be here) is cheeping outside my window.”

He assures her that, contrary to her assertion, he can be good and still have some fun. Her reminds her to do the same.

He writes a second letter during math class as he waits for others to finish the test. It’s one of those wretched things on cheap yellowed paper, written in pencil. It’s very hard on the eyes. I doubt he had any inkling that this letter would be saved for posterity and that his poor daughter would have such a struggle to make out the faded words seven decades down the road.

He’s just completed his last Basic Electricity and Basic Math tests until the final exam in both which will come in week 14 or 15 of his training. He predicts that he got about an 85% on each of today’s tests.

He writes that from here, he’ll go to the projection room to watch the last of his daily indoctrination films that have been shown during his first month at Treasure Island. He is hoping he’ll be able to sneak out of that and into the 5:00 swimming class. If successful, he can get in his required 30 minutes of swim practice and then make it to the chow hall before dinner closes. (If unsuccessful, he’ll miss his second chow of the day.) Otherwise, he’ll have to dine at the Ship’s Service restaurant and pay a “fancy” price.

He spends the next page of this letter beating himself up about his swimming. First, he had three to five hours of swimming instruction every week at Case and he still can’t swim. But his real burden is that 17-foot jump from the platform into the pool. He berates himself for being unable to accomplish what even a child can do. He has managed to make the jump once, but since then, he has been mortified to have to climb back down the ladder after being unable to take the “quick way” off the platform. His humiliation runs deep. Here’s a guy who can accomplish most feats of cerebral prowess with ease, but the simple act of stepping off a board and letting gravity take over nearly brings him to a state of apoplexy.

He’s decided to stay “home” for liberty tonight and do some washing. He has a question for Dot, posed by one of his buddies, about why socks break after they’re washed. Maybe too much soap? Dart says his don’t break, but they crackle and rustle in his shoes for a few steps. I’m at the edge of my seat to find out if Dot has an answer to these mysterious occurrences.

He describes the scene outside his classroom window. He can see the San Francisco shoreline and skyline in the distance. Close to the edge of Treasure Island,  a couple of strong, thick-trunk palm trees are silhouetted against the luminous green water. It makes him wonder how tropical vegetation can survive on this wintry island where pea coats are required even in August if one is exposed to the wind for very long.

He signs off with the reminder that he loves her. Then he adds the joyous news that he has received a 100% on his electricity test!

After the eye strain caused by reading Dart’s last letter, I’m relieved that Dot’s letter is a brief, easy-to-read single page.

She begins with the probing question: Is it possible to be too hot to live? If so, she is near that point. To add to her anguish, her job today was sewing labels into fur coats! She says she is becoming a pool of melted butter and predicts that he will soon have fewer letters coming his way because she will have expired.

That’s all she has time for, but the heat is all anyone is talking about anyway. Oh, by the way, she loves him.