Here’s a chatty, somewhat inconsequential letter from Dart. He’s spent most of his day in good conversation with his fellow patients, so he’s left with little time to write.

He has determined the cause of the sporadic delivery schedule of his mail to the outside. Outgoing letters are collected from the ward at 9:00 PM. The corpsman going off duty then is supposed to sterilize the letters (!) and they are sent to the post office the following morning. Several glitches can cause delays: The corpsman forgets to gather the mail, the sterilizer is being used for medical purposes, the mail bundle is too large to fit into the sterilizer, the day corpsman forgets to retrieve it from the sterilizer.

Dart can sympathize with Dot’s roommate who had a tantrum after not hearing from her guy for several days. Dart admits to throwing rather mild, quiet fits when his mail call has disappointed him. All this just underscores how incredibly important letters from home are to these guys!

Dart is listening to the “Hit Parade” on the radio as he finishes his letter. He says it sounds as though Sinatra has a cold tonight. That was a revelation to me because it indicates that the “Hit Parade” is a live radio program! When was the last time we heard anyone singing the hits live on the radio?

He explains that he filed income tax, but since his Navy pay was a paltry $300 in 1943, he doesn’t owe any taxes. Wow!

Dot’s letter was a quick one, dashed off after midnight from her friend Janice’s house in Cleveland. She’s having a good and busy time of it on her weekend off campus. She enclosed a couple of snapshots she had taken in a photo booth at the dime store. (Sadly, they have disappeared over the intervening years.) I’m sure Dart was delighted to get them, even though she claims they make her look like an inmate at some institution other than Andrews.