The Haggard is in port again, and Dart is attempting to write but keeps being drawn into a giant gab session going on all around him. The men are talking, talking, talking about ideas, loved ones, desires, hopes and Navy, Navy, Navy. It’s just the kind of conversation that would attract an interested and thoughtful guy like Dart.

He calls this a “day of days,” but doesn’t elaborate much. He’s been on duty all day. His job is to wear a set of heavy headphones, listen for messages from the “talker” on the bridge, and then relay those messages to the stations in his line – mostly on the fantail of the ship. There’s no indication, of course, what those messages were or why they were being sent all day.

There’s a curious paragraph about him never knowing how much skin a nose could grow in a place like this. Is he referring to the noese that keeps burning, peeling, burning, and peeling again? Hard telling.

In one of Dot’s letters, she mentioned their hugging scene after they called Dart’s mother from Greenwich last July. “I guess most of our love scenes have been either on a stairway or in a car. I remember how it was that Sunday in Greenwich. And on Wednesday and Thursday in Cleveland.” I guess one of the advantages to them having had only eight days together is that each of those days is unique and memorable – none has blended into another, and each one carries with it very special memories of thrilling words, affectionate deeds and secret glances.

He takes her up on her offer to send pin-ups to him – of Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Linda Darnell, Ann Miller, Jinx Falkenburg (?) and Katharine Hepburn. Still the only one he’ll actually pin-up is a photo of Dot.

Where she and her family think Gordon is, is not where Dart is. All he’s able to do is keep saying where he isn’t.

He seems a little surprised to realize how much he’s grown to like his little ship. She has seen all kinds of actions since she was commissioned in  1943, and she’s conducted herself with honor, earning a fine record along the way. But he assures her that no matter how proud a sailor might be of his ship, no matter how much he may enjoy the Navy life, his only desires are to get home and see the ones he loves. How he hopes this war will end soon!

Dot’s letter is sweet, typically funny and long! She is ecstatic to have received four letters from Dart in today’s mail.

She tells him not to worry about the folks at home. They may get a little antsy when more than a week passes without letters from him, but they understand that it only means his letters took a while to get off the ship. All he should be thinking about is getting home soon.

She truly appreciates his frequent letters. But, she’s come to appreciate so many things about him – the first of which is that she did meet him. When he refers to his boyhood days in his letters, it almost feels that she knew  him then. By the time he gets home and they have plenty of chance to get better acquainted, she’ll know much more about him than he does about her. She’d like to tell him about her early life, but when she tries, it sounds “as interesting as a cake recipe.”

She pleads with him to please send the house plans, if he is able. She’s so eager to see the improvements he’s made to their future dream home. She only hopes it doesn’t remain a dream for too awfully long.

“Right now, there’s only one thing I’d rather be doing than writing to you. That, of course, is to be sitting here talking with you and remarking how well you look in your new sport jacket and slacks. Or do you have on your best suit this evening? The tears of joy in my eyes make everything except your eyes a little blurry.” (And this girl claims she can’t write!)

His description of the sunrise was so good that she shared it with her family. (She hopes he won’t mind, and she assures him she saves the more tender bits for her eyes only.) Her father said to thank him for describing the sunrise to Dot because she’s never seen one. She sleeps until nearly sunset every day! Well, we know that’s not true, but the statement gives us a glimpse of what a tease Arthur Chamberlain could be.

He asked about the big dinner party that she and El were supposed to serve. Well, it was cancelled, but they were both paid anyway. Even though the catering part of their business earns her an additional 15 cents per hour, she much prefers babysitting. “I tell you, I was born lazy. Why, did you know I did almost nothing but sleep and drink the first year of my life? Now if that isn’t the height of laziness, I’d like to know what is!”

She spends a little time actually answering some of the queries in his recent letters. She doesn’t recall seeing any of the scenes he asked about in “I Love a Soldier.” She hopes he’ll have a chance to see it someday. (Although, the title doesn’t sound like one they’d choose to show on a Navy ship, does it?)

Today she got a sweet note from his mother, thanking “them” for the plant. As it turns out, she got two plants from “Dart.” Did he happen to ask someone in Cleveland to take care of that for him? Dot urges him not to confess to his mother that the plant she sent was her idea. Helen seemed so pleased with it, that Dot is afraid her pleasure would be somewhat diminished if Dart confessed and gave her all the credit. Just this once, she thinks it would be best if Dart were slightly less than totally honest.

While she’s on the subject of flowers, she wants to thank him again for sending the lovely Easter corsage. She wore it into work this morning and received lots of positive comments, including a few “hot tips” on how to hang on to a man like him.

Before closing this letter at 1:30 A.M., she asks him “Why does a bee buzz? Answer: You’d buzz too, if somebody took your honey and nectar (necked her.) “Yes, there are homes for people like me, but in these times, they’re overcrowded. I’m waiting for a vacancy. Meanwhile, I’m renting the vacant space midway between my neck and the top of my head.”

Dart’s is a playful letter, talking a lot about photos. First, he mentions the cunning bathing beauty photos of Dot’s, including some “leg art.” Then you realize he’s describing the photos she sent of herself as a very young child. He says he’s learned to be more specific in his requests and ask for recent photos of her.

He rebuked his folks for showing her all of his baby pictures and then learned from his dad that the one he feared most that Dot had seen remains hidden from her view. (Only because Dart senior couldn’t find it while Dot was in Cleveland.) Dart, Sr. has dubbed that photo “The Famous Grand River Nude.”

He wonders if the pictures she sent had been taken at Lake Sunapee. There’s a torpedo man named Martin on the Haggard who lives near Blodgett’s Landing on the lake. He says the name of Chamberlain is familiar to him, but he can’t place it exactly. Is Dot’s family’s place near Sunapee Harbor and Indian Cave Lodge? (Note: Hal Martin and Dart stayed friendly for years after the war. Mom and Dad often visited with Hal and his wife when they were at the lake.)

Talk of yet another photo makes it into Dart’s letter – the street picture Dot and Helen had taken in Cleveland. Helen has not sent it to Dart yet, so he’ll ask her to do so. “If it’s as bad as you say, I’ll hide it and look at it only in secret,” he teases.

In a recent letter, Dot commented that Greenwich begins to collect moss after 9:00 PM. Dart asks if she was disappointed because she’d been trying to get into mischief then. He writes a cute, illustrated paragraph about the gnomes who roam Cleveland, beginning at 11:00 PM, rolling up the sidewalks and storing them underground. He’s definitely in a playful mood, despite the fact that the surgical incision on his back is flaring up and becoming quite sensitive again.

He’s not being so playful in the plaintive closing paragraph when he talks of how desperate he is to begin their life together. He fears the war will drag on for a very long time. He can’t know it now, but the war will be over for the Haggard much sooner than anyone could guess.

This is the day Dot promised – the one when she writes him two letters to make up for a skipped day last week. She even throws in a bonus note from her boss, Mr. Goldstein.

Today is Betty and Gordon’s second anniversary. Although Dot can’t believe they’ve been married that long already, it’ not a marriage she envies. “Personally, I think it would be kinda nice to have my husband around after I marry him. Perhaps I’m queer, but that’s how I feel.” Betty’s day started with three dozen roses being delivered to the Chamberlain household; two dozen red and one dozen yellow. Gordon even planned ahead enough to send the card to the florist in his own handwriting, to attach to the flowers. Betty was over the moon!

Things are very slow at work, so she’s able to start this letter during the day. She thinks the store won’t get busy again until just before the next holiday, and she hopes to be gone by then. It’s so slow today that even Mr. Goldstein takes time out to write to Dart.

Temperatures in Greenwich are expected to drop to 30 degrees tonight and Dot fears that all the beautiful blossoms that decorate the town will be lost. “It’s days like this that make me wish I were a hermit with absolutely nothing to do but enjoy the beauties of nature. Ah, what a life! Ah, what a lazy loafer I am and would like to be more of.”

The family just got word that Dot’s cousin Walter, a lieutenant in the Naval Air Corps, is on his way home from the Pacific! He’s coming for some rest, having been involved in the long bombing raids of Iwo Jima and other places.

She closes the first letter of the day by saying she’d love to go for a long walk in the country with Dart by her side. She proposes they take a rain check and add this to the growing list of things they’ll do when he returns.

By the time she begins the second letter of the day, she’s received another one from Dart.

She says again how great it would be if he could meet Gordon while “over there.” The whole family likes to talk about how nice it would be if these two men could meet. Somehow it would make them both seem closer. She knows it will do no good to ask, but she wonders if he’s been in on the invasion of Okinawa. Surely if he writes “yes,” or “Your hunch was right,” the censor will let it go. She’s intensely curious to know where he is.

Like Dart, she will forever be grateful that Johnny passed on to Dart the fact that Dot would like to get a letter. She poses the question of whether he would have ever written to her if he’d not received that hint. She thinks that some way or another, they would have gotten to  know each other because they both wanted that so badly. She certainly likes the way things have turned out.

Dart’s letter is brief and feisty. He spent the entire day working on an unloading party, lugging several tons of food (he thinks) from a supply ship up to the Haggard’s decks and into refrigeration. The work was hard, but that’s not what has him so riled.

While he was laboring, he heard a guy who is entrusted to keep their letters private, reading them to a bunch of other men! Dart describes them as “those ignorant men who become boatswain’s mates when they learn to read and count up to ten.” A stunt like that puts the man who read them in the same class as the “crude hoodlums who are his only friends.”  Dart continues with his diatribe. “That man has a reputation as being the most two-faced and partial man aboard. If he reads this, his ears will probably burn, and the rest of him may burn for all I care. If I’d been writing for publication, I’d have sent those letters by registered mail to a magazine. If I’d intended them for the eyes and ears of a bunch of stupid low-lifes I’d have sent them to some magazine like Laff or Famous Comics or some other yellow sheet which caters to their juvenile minds.”

Dart doesn’t know if it was his letters that were read aloud, but the principle is the same, no matter whose letters they were.

Having vented, he calms down a bit. He tells Dot that in his two months aboard ship, he’s made some enemies and some friends. The friends were slow to come and hard to find. The enemies deserve no further mention.

He likes life on the Haggard and the duty he’s seen. He’s proud to serve with most of her crew.

That completes Dart’s letter for this day, but I’m happy to say I’ve found the missing pages from April 1. (Clumsily misfiled by yours truly.) If you recall, that letter ended with Dart cautioning Dot not to look too long into the eyes of her young charges. Let’s continue with that thought.

He thinks the kids will soon learn that she’s easily mesmerized by big, blue eyes. “I hope you don’t spoil your kids that way. They might be mine, too, the way things look now; and the way I hope they’ll turn out.”

He comments that the crew is complaining about the hard seats on their ship. They’ve all been sitting all day, and the only seats are the lockers under the bunks and “various hunks of ship.”

The map of Dot’s room gave him a chuckle. Now he’ll know just where to go when he comes to steal her away. Sadly, she neglected to tell him which window was hers, so he’ll have to lug that tall ladder to every one of the upstairs windows until he finds hers.

When he had the chance to see “30 Seconds over Tokyo,” he passed on it. Having not seen it, he still can’t imagine any girl’s eyes sparkling as bright as hers, even if that girl is an actress.

He willingly gives his blessing to her writing to the Marine who writes to her. He must be alright, if Dottie wants to write to him. Besides, Dart answers the monthly letters from his friend Jeanne Kirby, who knows all about how deeply in love Dot and Dart are.

As he closes, he tells  her that his whole world revolves around her. He remembers her eyes, her smile, her hair, her “winsome blush,” which he wants to gently tease out of her again. Everything about her is dear to him.

This is the third letter Dot has written to Dart in the past 24 hours. All she wants to do is sit down and write to him. Could that be because in that same time, she’s received five letters from him? How much easier it is to write outgoing letters when she’s also getting some incoming ones!

Franklin Simon has given her the afternoon off in exchange for the overtime she worked recently. If it were a nice day, she’d take a long bike ride. However, it’s quite cold so she may go see a movie, instead. She remarks that she could clean the house, but that thought doesn’t seem like a good idea for filling her rare time off.

She reminds Dart that a year ago, their letters were filled with hopes and plans for him to attend her prom. When those hopes were dashed at the last moment, she was devastated. In retrospect, she’s grateful for the way things turned out. If he’d gotten leave then, he would not have been able to come to Greenwich in the summer and he wouldn’t have met her family. Now, every letter and every day leads them closer to his real homecoming – the one that ends in a one-way ticket, instead of a round-trip. She can’t wait for that day!

For now, she’s content to let everyday occurrences remind her of their times together. For instance, right now, she’s chewing clove gum. That reminds her of the time Johnny, Betty, she and Dart went to see the “Phantom of the Opera” and Dart offered her a piece of clove gum. She had a difficult time getting it from him because she didn’t want to turn her head and let Dart see her in her glasses!

Her memories even hold images of what Dart wore that night; a navy  blue suit and a black tie. The suit was trimmed in white around the lapels and the jacket cuffs. She doubts he can describe what she wore, but I’m not sure that’s a bet I’d take.

Her final paragraph is so tender: “I love you, Dart, and the memories of the few days we had together and the plans for the future are more precious to me than any material thing in the world.”

Dart has time for just a single page tonight, but it accompanies a photo from a magazine. He thinks it’ll get past the censor because this magazine photo has been published in the USA. It’s a photo of an early version of a destroyer similar to the Haggard. Dart says his ship is nicer because it’s an improved design and has just a single-color paint job and some design improvements.

He has just discovered two new songs that he really likes. One is recorded by Bing Crosby called “Let’s Take the Long Way Home.” It reminds him very much of Dot. The other is the first Andrews Sisters’ song he’s ever liked, and he believes it’s been banned on US radio, but it’s called “Rum and Coca-Cola.”

He’s tired and out of time.

Dot begins her letter as she began her day – in a terrible mood. She can’t put her finger on any particular reason, except that Dougie was entirely too rude and rough when he woke her up this morning, and that set her off for the day.

When she picks up the letter again at 11:30 that night, she’s in a far better frame of mind. Dart is responsible, of course. She came home from work and thought she’d feel better if she read some of his old letters. She started with one he wrote a year ago today and was instantly gratified. You see, he began his letter then by announcing what a foul mood he was in. She believes it was fate that led them both to be so irritable on the same day, one year apart – that’s how close and sympathetic they are! He had just been demoted once again to strict bed rest in the hospital and had received conflicting orders from two different doctors. It wasn’t a good time for him back then.

Inside the envelope of that letter, Dart had written that he’d held onto his letter for 24-hours, just to see if he still loved her. He did. “Now that a whole year has passed, can you safely say that that still holds?” asked Dot.

Hours have passed since she started reading his old letters. Her hands and nose are frozen and she can barely stay awake, so she closes the letter with a familiar old shorthand squiggle from those long-ago letters.

Dart is in port again, and today’s mail call yielded 14 letters, five of them from Dot. Dart’s letter today is one of his masterpieces, from gripping sorrow to exquisite description to playful teasing, and finally, romantic dreaming.

One of the letters he got today came from the mother of a childhood friend, Art Carle, bringing the tragic news that her only son had “given his life on a foreign shore” on December 28. It hit Dart extremely hard. He talks about the countless happy hours the two of them spent as kids living on the same street. He has already written to Mrs. Carle. “But what can be said by a boy who has lost a friend to a woman who has lost her only son? It’s so cruel, so outrageously true and permanent. Dot, those words ‘gave his life’ mean so much. They mean gave, for he received not one single thing in return for his gift. And it was his life that he gave. Not an arm, a leg, a mind, a chance for success, a chance for a girl to love him, a memory of childhood happiness, a chance for future happiness. No, not one of those things, but every one of them. Every one and many more. And to give one’s life in the service of Our Country. Humbug! I do not believe in it. If we were giving our lives to the service of God, there might be more hope that the gift would have better use made of it. It’s futile, and we’re all so utterly helpless to stop it. If only there were some other way…”

Wow! There’s a lot of emotion in that paragraph, and it’s followed by an absolutely poetic accounting of last night’s sunset and nighttime.

He climbed to the highest point of the tallest gun mount to watch “the most beautiful evening that I have ever seen close in around me.”  He describes the breathless, sultry air and the glassy calm of the sea which reflected all the colors of the splendid sunset. The high, ragged clouds on the horizon looked like rugged mountains in some distant land and they served to hold up the dome of the sky, filled with brilliant stars. “I was spellbound, thinking so hard of you and wishing you were here.”

He finally went inside and hung out in an improvised darkroom to watch the work of hobbyist photographers as they developed their film and tried out their homemade enlarger. “Living in this huge, intricately complicated machine called a ship surely does bring out the best in the ingenuity of the crew. We’ll never be whipped as long as the Navy can have men like the Haggard’s crew. They improvise hotplates and coffee pots so that no one on watch need go thirsty. Tiny workshops where prodigious amounts of legitimate work goes on in the daytime are tucked away in all available spaces. At night, these are transformed into places where photo hobbyists can work on their pictures, where the writers can hide away with pictures of their loved ones and write, where the singers can wail and strum their guitars without bothering a soul. The skill of making the very most of what’s at hand seems to be a natural part of most Americans, and we’ll be on the winning side, as long as we keep that skill, and our senses of humor and justice.”

He admits to being bitterly angry now, and to have done his share of cussing today, but it would do no good to say more about it here, so he changes the subject and responds to some items in Dot’s recent letters.

He’s pretty impressed with the job she did on her bike. It sounds like the transformation he did on his a few years back, but now his brother Burke has let that bike go to ruin.

Then, he scolds her soundly about trying to censor his thoughts and words. If he wants to call her beautiful, if he chooses to think of her as sweet, charming, smart, or anything else, he’ll do just that. And there’s nothing she can do to stop it! As a student of good-looking women, he can attest that she’s one of the prettiest on Earth. “Maybe if you could see yourself as I see you, you’d think so too, but as it stands, you haven’t changed my mind.”

It’s obvious he’s not much like Dot’s father because he’s liked every hat he’s ever seen Dot wear. In fact, he greatly admires her taste in clothing.

Hey, what makes her think that her letters don’t give him the same thrill she gets from his? He thrives on every word and is profoundly happy and proud when she tells him those sweet thoughts she has about him. He’s decided it must be love.

They share some of the same ideas about that last night in Cleveland. “When I remember that wonderful evening and all that was said and done then, I wonder when we’ll ever be able to carry on from where we left off that night. I wonder if we could some way work this going-to-college-while-working-while-being-married arrangement. If I should survive this war long enough to be engaged to you, I want that engagement to be a short one, followed by the normal course of events following an engagement. But that’s so heart-breakingly far away now. Can we ever do it? I believe we can, IF. (You know what “if.”)

Dot writes a cute little rhyme saying she has nothing to write about and that Dart’s four letters today touched her heart.

I’m sure we’ll  hear more from her tomorrow.

Dart says that since the ship is completely painted and “scrubbed as clean and bright as a certain young lady’s smile,” they’re on holiday routine again. Half the crew is on the liberty island. The other half is lounging on the decks where giant awnings have been stretched to provide some shade. There’s a record concert playing on the P.A. and guys are playing cards, sleeping, or writing letters. It’s so incredibly hot that feet can’t touch the bare deck and tools left in the sun cannot be handled without scorching. Paint dries too fast and the sailors with deep tans are getting badly sunburned. It’s turning into a lazy day. “For us today there is no war, but there’s plenty of evidence of it within eyesight.” (A fleet of warships surrounding them? Bombed out islands in the distance? What evidence does he see?)

To answer one of Dot’s questions posed in a recent letter – yes, he’d much rather be painting a house than a ship because it would mean that she was somewhere nearby. He never misses an opportunity to think about her, does he?

He’s so grateful for her thoughtfulness toward his parents over Easter. It’s just one of the many attributes that makes him love her so much. He’s already written to Burke with plans for their parents’ 25th anniversary, although he doesn’t know if Burke will be around to carry out the plans. He hopes to enlist in the Navy before he can be drafted into the Army on his 18th birthday which is coming up soon. He knows his folks would get a huge thrill if Dot helped the boys with an anniversary surprise. They want her to be an official member of the family almost as much as Dart does.

He likes her sentiment about money and love and happiness, but he does think that the presence of money helps in lots of cases.

Dot writes from the beautiful, sunny porch on the Mason St. house, basking in the glow of the four letters she received from Dart yesterday. She’s frustrated that he still hasn’t received any mail from her, yet his letters have been coming with great regularity. Dot doesn’t know it, but Dart’s ship was badly damaged in an episode on March 22 and had to be towed to dry dock in some out-of-the-way island for repairs. With the Haggard out of commission for several days, maybe the mail ship couldn’t find them. Naturally, Dart has not been able to give any hints about the damage, or the fact that it was a result of the Haggard ramming a Japanese submarine and sinking it!

Before she forgets to mention it, she’d like to say that his house plans are fantastic! “Everyone thinks those drawings are real works of art. I showed them to Dad and he was very surprised at the talent you showed. I don’t know why he should be. I’ve been drumming it into him (how wonderful you are) for a year and a half.” She asked her father how much he thought it would cost to build and he guessed $23,000 to $25,000. She’s started a piggy bank for the house, but fears she should have started 19 years ago. Maybe the house will be done in time to give it to their great grandchild for a wedding present! Still, all of his good ideas are just one more reason she loves him so.

In closing, she says she’s heard a rumor that you can join the WAVES at age 19, with parental consent. What would he think of her joining in June? Exactly what he thought of that idea became a part of the Peterson family lore when we were growing up!

Dart’s very short letter begins with, “Still here. Seems like a long time to be staying in one place. Especially since my favorite columnist, Ernie Pyle says destroyers ‘prance’ and ‘cavort.’ Some fun.”

He received three letters at mail call today – all of them over a month old, and none of them from Dot. He’s still corresponding with his pal Fred, a teacher from Shaw High School and a nurse of his from Great Lakes.

Today was hot, lazy and uneventful. The movie didn’t hold his attention, so he left it. He much preferred last night’s screening of “A Song to Remember,” the supposed story of Chopin’s life. The music in it made him homesick to hear his cousin Margaret playing the piano.

Nothing else to write tonight, except how much he loves Dot, but he doesn’t fell like writing that. He feels like telling her, and she’s much too far away for that.

Dot’s letter is also short, although twice as long as Dart’s. She had one subject on her mind, namely her 9:00 AM interview with the WAVE recruitment office. “What they tell me tomorrow morning will either make me the happiest or the most disappointed girl in the world.”

She dreams of working in a rehabilitation hospital, perhaps teaching boys to walk again. She wants to do something important. “This idea of being just a number in a store, selling a lot of worthless junk to people who don’t seem to care how they spend their money is beginning to get me down.”

He won’t get this letter in time to wish her luck for the interview, but she hopes he’ll send her his best wishes for enlisting in June when she turns 19. “You saw the WAVES and what they were doing when you were in the hospital at Great Lakes. Didn’t you think they were doing a fine job?”

It’s almost as though she knows he won’t like the idea, and she pleads with him to support her wish to become a WAVE. If she does, she’ll work very hard at making him proud of her.

She vows that the long letter she promised is forthcoming, and she sends him all her love.

I’ve found only one page of Dart’s letter today, which ends abruptly, mid sentence. I hope the remainder of the letter will surface in a day or so. Meanwhile, here’s what page one contained.

He’s grabbing a few minutes to jot this letter while he waits for the chow line to get shorter. He has a midnight to 0400 watch tonight, so if he has any free time, he’ll try to spend it sleeping.

No mail today, nor does he expect any. The laundry is so backed up from being closed for painting that he has completely run out of anything clean to wear. He says he really must devote some time to hand-washing a few things very soon. By the end of page one, he’s still getting reports that the chow line is quite long. The guys who get liberty this afternoon get to eat first, so Dart must wait his turn. He writes that he has grown to hate the word “chow” and must remember to refer to meals by their civilian names when he’s writing letters. That’s all until the rest of the letter turns up.

Dot finally got to that long letter she’s been promising. In the upper right corner the first page, where Dart often writes either “in port,” or “at sea,” she has penned “in bed.” Clever girl. She begins, “Today, Yours Truly, who anticipated being a mighty WAVE is nothing but an insignificant ripple.” She has learned that a woman must be 20 years old to enlist in the WAVEs and she’s just shy of 19. She’s terribly disappointed that she won’t be permitted at this time to do something important or meaningful.

And now, to answer some of Dart’s recent letters. She confirms that her father’s birthday is just two days before Dart’s, on January 13th. She corrects Dart’s assumption that her cousin who’s moving to the Belgian Congo with her husband and kids is not happy about it. On the contrary – Cousin Dottie is anticipating the adventure with great glee. The Spanish class she told him about a long time ago was cancelled after two weeks, to her regret. She enjoyed learning the few phrases that she did. She also clarified that when she talks about his “millions,” she wasn’t referring to actual cash. She was thinking more about his other riches like, brains, health, and good humor. She says he has so many riches that he’s the wealthiest and nicest millionaire she knows.

She regrets to inform him that her bowling has been neglected of late. Too much babysitting and not enough extra cash. She’s going to try to get a game in every now and then, just to keep in practice.

With a fervent plea, she tries to extract a promise from Dart that the two of them will take dance lessons when he returns. She loves the way couples look in the movies, gliding across the floor so gracefully. That’s a promise, that if made, was never kept. If Mom ever danced at weddings or the like, it was generally with her brother, a cousin, or a family friend. Dad never developed an interest sufficiently great enough to actually learn to dance.

How happy she is to read that he occasionally has some good times. Although his letters are usually cheery and upbeat, she liked reading about his time on liberty island and him going into the water fully clothed. She once did that in March, on a bet. She had to swim 50 feet, fully clothed in an outdoor pool, for which she was paid $5.00. She still wonders if it was worth it.

He has piqued her interest. She’d love to hear more about this sequined evening dress he took to a dance once. “Someone did go along inside to hold it up, didn’t they?”

Dart will find a snapshot in this letter – a picture of Dot and El in their Easter finery. She complains that she’s wearing the same toothpaste grin she can’t seem to shake, but it”s the one that Dart is so crazy about. She asks that he take particular note of the corsage she’s wearing.

She’s alarmed to have to stop writing briefly so she can attend to the buzzing mosquito! How could he be here in mid-April?

Hooray! He has finally started to get some of  the letters she’s been writing. That makes her feel much better.

His plans for the post-war development of the tropical islands he’s seen are impressive. She’s glad the guys can exercise their wild imaginations while they’re out there. Still, she has some post war plans of her own that she’d rather Dart focus on, and they are much closer to home than a South Pacific island. She wants Dart to tell his mother that she likes her idea of dropping in to see Dart’s folks frequently. Dot recalls that when she first went to Andrews School, she wrote and told her mother that she wanted to live in Ohio someday. She still intends to, even if she’s there to run her Old Maid’s Home for Bachelors. (That idea became a very remote possibility the moment she met Dart!)

She ends by telling Dart that 1) she loves him heaps and heaps, 2) she’s glad that what he wants to do with his life and what she wants to do with hers are very much the same, and 3) the next time he whispers “sweet nothings” in her ear, she’ll be much more responsive than in the past.

Today’s letter is a vivid description of Dart’s visit to the liberty island. He went over with his buddy V.D. Hite, a guy from Ashland, KY and Cincinnati, OH. These two have lots of fun when they hang out together.

The liberty was a “dry” one – no beer included. Consequently, only about 20 men took the boat over to the island instead of the usual count of 80 when beer is provided. They spent the day swimming, beach-combing and getting thoroughly sunburned.

Dart describes for Dot all the weird and wonderful sea creatures they observed along the beach. They found a baby octopus and countless tiny hermit crabs who are not at all particular about the type of shell they occupy. The most fascinating creatures were the sea urchins. Dart and VD watched them for hours, careful to avoid their poisonous splines. Dart loved swimming in the warm, shallow water, as long as he was able to keep his feet away from the sharp coral.

He reports that he received an 89.5% on his fire control test. His crew mate, Hirsch, who took the test with the aid of a whole crew of senior fire control men assisting him with the answers, received a 90.5%. Dart felt deservedly proud of his accomplishment and rather miffed at Hirsch’s cheating. “I don’t think Hirsch likes me any more. I told him he should have said ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ when he gloated to me over the grade ‘he’ had made.”

Dart has been sitting for an hour, dreaming of Dot and trying to think of a new way to tell her how much he loves her. “I guess it all boils down to those three famous words, no matter how much it’s dressed up. And about the best way to get those words across is to whisper them softly into the ear of the person in your arms. My arms aren’t long enough to reach you tonight, so I guess I’ll have to write – I love you, Darling.”

Dot begins by remarking how nice it would be if she could write to Dart in the afternoons when she’s alert, rather than after midnight when she’s so weary.

She got two more letters from him today, the most recent dated April 2. She loves it when he’s in port because his letters get to her so quickly. She assumes that since the latest letter was written from port, it means he was not in on the raid on Okinawa.

Those  nurses at the Easter service must have been quite popular with the men who’d not seen a woman in 14 months. “Gee, maybe they’d even talk to me if I were out there. Guess you boys would talk to just about anything you didn’t have to salute.”

She comments that life “out there” sounds nearly civilized when he talks about all the radio programs he gets to  hear. She wishes she could be on one of those programs and send him a fond “hello” over the airwaves.

She’s grateful she didn’t know until after the fact that he was involved in the Tokyo raid. “I’m sure I’d turn grey if I knew about these things before hand. Your letters are so cheery I can’t even guess when you’re doing something exciting and when it’s all just routine.”

Referring to his comments about her spoiling kids who might be his, she says “If they aren’t ‘our’ kids, there won’t be any. Need I make any further comment?”

She notifies him that her bedroom window is the only one on the third floor in the rear of the house, and there’s no need for him to bring a ladder. “Just whistle. I’ll tie my bed clothes into knots and make a rope ladder. I did it once before when my parents and I didn’t agree on where I should spend my evening.”

Her mother let her drive the car a few blocks this evening, and she even got to turn it around twice! It felt wonderful! Her mom says she can probably get her license for her birthday. The Millers have a 1931 Austin they’ve said she could drive this summer, if she gets that license.

After a paragraph in which she quips about needing to buy some fan magazines in order to keep up on all the current pin-up girls, she closes quickly, saying she’s too tired to stay awake, but she loves Dart, Butch, Pete, etc.