Dart’s is the only letter today, but oh, what a letter! After some chit chat about his busy day and and even busier one expected tomorrow, he takes a break until after mail call.
Today’s mail brought several letters, including a long letter from his buddy Fred and five letters from Dot. Fred sends the news that a close friend of theirs, Walter Follett, has been missing in action over Austria for two months. Walter was the first of Dart’s immediate circle of friends to marry. His 21st birthday is coming up in June. Another Shaw classmate, Frank Steinbrugge, was killed in action.
I feel compelled, whenever Dart mentions by name anyone who was killed to include that name in this blog. Since most of them died without children, there are by now, precious few people on Earth who remember that they once existed. Seventy years after the fact, it is such a tiny tribute, but I want to perpetuate their names in some small way. They had so little time in their lives to be known and remembered.
Then Dart gets to the gist of this letter. He is practically frantic about Dot wanting to join the WAVES. His most recent letter from her is dated the day before her interview, so he has no idea that her hope of becoming a WAVE was for naught. For the next several paragraphs, Dart does his best to dissuade her from the notion, if it’s not too late. He has seen the abuse that WAVES take from officers, nurses (if they’re in a hospital setting), and sailors themselves. He has heard the foul and degrading names they are called. He knows that Dot would stay strong and true, but he fears that the abuse would damage her and maybe even change their happy future together. He knows he risks censure, or worse, by trying to discourage her from enlisting, but he believes strongly that it would be a mistake. In the end, he concedes that if she decides to join up, he will be proud of her and will do his level best to change the reputation of the WAVES and they way people talk to and about them.
“Now that I’ve spoken my piece and apologized for it, and gone on to speak it again, I realize that in some way I may have hurt you. I’m terribly sorry if I have. Can we kiss and make up and be friends again? Please, can there be mail tomorrow so that my worries will be settled?”
He sums up with “Dot, your letters, most of them, made me very happy. Little note inside an envelope, little memories of times when we were so happy in each other’s arms, a clever twist of a phrase or two; all are so much like I remember you and are so much like the girl I love so deeply and want to wait for me, unchanged, until I return to her. I love you so very much that I can’t bear to think of anything which might hurt you or mar our happiness.”
He’s glad she got the house sketches and is pleased with them. He knows a guy who was a contractor in Akron who says he could build that house for around $8,000. He was one of the best buddies that Dart had on the Admiral Coontz.
