I would not take kindly to anyone who maligned the Valentine’s Day letter Dart wrote recently, unless it was the author himself. Even then, I’d be hard pressed to agree with any negative critique, Still, that’s how this letter begins.

“This kid is ashamed of himself. Here he expects to make some money by writing after the war, and he turns out a bunch of run-down, corny, over-worked crap like that last letter to you. Such tripe as I wrote in that letter should best be forgotten. Anything nice I said about you, I’m not ashamed of, nor do I regret. But the rest of it – BAH! It must have been disgusting, or at least discouraging, for you to receive that one. Times before, I’ve threatened to start a little black book of hackneyed phrases, in which I should put all my complaints, do all my ‘hell-raising,’ do all my writing when I feel low, so that  never again will the moody side of Peterson show in his letters. Enough for the borscht which had to come out in the last letter.”

I want to take a moment here to defend the letter he so viciously derides here. It was not an excerpt from a novel, nor was it intended for public view. It was the deeply personal, brutally honest confessions of a scared young man, far from home in very dangerous circumstances. In writing his truest feelings to the woman he loved, he was building on their intimacy in a way that could never be complete if constructed only with happy thoughts. He was bearing his soul and trusting her to accept it, dark crevices and all. For that purpose, it was a masterpiece.

He goes to tell a little about life on the USS Haggard. When he first arrived, the Executive Officer told the crew that they would go through frequent cycles of loving, then loathing this little ship. Dart confesses he’s completed that cycle at least a dozen times so far. The ship rides rough. She’s always wet, as are the men who occupy her. The food coming from her galley is mediocre at best, and there is terrible over-crowding that makes sleeping very uncomfortable and unpredictable. Still, the crew, while not particularly chummy, give the impression that they’re always there to help if a buddy really needs it.

He mentions there are three full-blooded American Indians aboard, named Whiteface, Two Bears and Smith. Smith is Dart’s watch captain.

Dart is assigned three four-hour watches out of every 24-day, with four hours of sleep and free time in between. He spends his time searching for a place to stretch out his long frame for a nap and trying to find the least-wet clothing to wear on is next watch. He has a hard time keeping clean, but he’s grateful for the ship’s laundry. His whites come back yellow and his denims have been bleached white, but at least he doesn’t have to scrub them himself. He seems slightly obsessed by the fact that, lacking a freezer on board, they cannot keep ice cream. The only time they get the stuff is if they can bum a few gallons from a larger ship and eat it all before it melts in the South Pacific heat.

He’s frustrated because there’s so much to write about, yet so little that can actually be said. Then he adds. “I hope this experience doesn’t change me too much, so that you won’t love me anymore. If I should lose you it would be the end of my world. There’d still be reasons to come back, but not the same reasons I’ve had for about a year and a half.”

There are so many reasons why it’s difficult to write while at sea, but he’ll keep on writing anyway. He’ll also keep on loving Dot and dreaming of the time when they can “grow up together.”