No letters were written on this day, but as promised, I’ve posted some of the clippings that Dot enclosed with a recent letter to Dart.

My favorite one shows a sailor dangling from a harness over the side of a ship while an officer glares at him from the rail. The sailor, like Dart himself, is engaged in painting the ship. In large black letters, he has scrawled the words “Is this trip necessary?” Just as a major media campaign in the States was asking civilians to preserve gas by posing the same question to themselves, this young sailor has every right to ask it!

There’s another that shows a man in his trousers and undershirt eagerly peering into the bathroom mirror as he’s about to take a razor to his curly, burly lumberjack beard. Nearby, his Army uniform hang on a hook while  his weeping mother is being consoled by her husband. Says the husband,”Now, now, mamma…Junior has to start shaving sometime.” Dot says this one reminds her of the sketches Dart used to draw of himself when he was growing a “goat” at Great Lakes Naval Hospital.