Dart is still confined at Treasure Island. The Navy has a rule that men can only be held in the pre-embarkation barracks for 72 hours. That leaves just 42 hours until they must be returned to Shoemaker to begin their wait all over again, or be loaded onto transports.
Everyone is over their intestinal disturbance caused by Shoemaker’s horrific food. When they’re not standing in long lines for the superior chow at Treasure Island, they’re getting a little “sack duty.” I guess there’s not much else to be done but sleep while they await the next step of their adventure.
Dart transferred all his photos, accounts and identification into his new billfold today. Now he requests that Dot send more pictures to fill up the empty slots.
Recalling Dot’s practice of stepping on discarded Lucky cigarette packages for luck, he tells her that the only brand of cigarettes available here are Luckies. She has his mother and even Lefty jumping all over the place to stomp on the things. Doesn’t anyone throw things in the trash?
He ends by asking her to imagine a million of these pages filled with “I love you.” That’s how much he does.
Dot’s last letter of 1944 is one of her joyful, effervescent ones, full of happy reminiscing and high praise for Dart.
When Janie spent the night with her yesterday, all they talked about from midnight until 3:00 was Dart – how funny and smart and handsome he is. Dot read Janie some of his funniest letters, like the one he wrote when he came so close to getting a leave and then missed out, or the time he cut out a string of paper dolls to prove he had gone nuts being in the hospital for so long. Dot wonders how he can think up so much funny material, but I’d say she can hold her own in the humor department.
She agrees that the snapshots he sent of himself are not the best she’s seen, but she’s happy to have them. It looks like the photographer was lying on the floor to take them, but Dart is looking straight at the camera, so she likes that.
The store gave staff an unexpected day off today and Dot had the blissful experience of sleeping until 10:00 in the morning. Tonight, Janie’s dad, Uncle Ralph took his family and Dot to dinner and a movie. Although “Winged Victory” was about the Air Corps and not the Navy, Dot enjoyed it anyway.
When she came home from the movie, she hung out in El and Betty’s room, talking more about Dart. “I wonder how many times I’ve told people how we met and how I fell for you – Bingo – just like that. It must be in the millions by this time. And yet, with each retelling, I get the same thrill I got when all of it was actually happening. I can remember certain things you said and be almost as happy as when we were together and you were saying them.” She goes on to recall the details of their few dates – her kicking a leaf under the sofa in her dorm, the young sailors from Case who were so proud of their new GI raincoats, the first kiss Dart gave her at her friend’s house. “I want to sing and shout and let the world share my happiness.”
She gets a little philosophical about the current state of the world. There are men and women who are building instruments of destruction and others who are perfecting drugs that can heal a wounded soldier so that he can go back to battle to be injured again. “War is something I have never understood, and God grant that it doesn’t last long enough for me to learn to understand it.”
Perhaps feeling a need to lighten the mood, she asks Dart if he’s begun his list of New Year’s resolutions. “My list is only begun, but at the top is ‘I highly resolve to love Dart for the rest of my life.'” I
Tomorrow night, Dot will be babysitting for the Miller children, but she’ll have company. Her new friend Nancy Lou Clapps invited herself over to help with the kids and have a little party once they’re in bed. Both girls will bring some Cokes and their record collections. When Dot asked Nancy why she wanted to spend New Year’s Eve that way, Nancy said. “I just love to hear you talk about Dart! You get so enthusiastic and your sparkle so.”
She wraps up with the news that every day she loves him twice as much as she did the day before. Then she advises him not to get sea sick.
