Dart’s idle body has infected his mind. With nothing to do all day but sleep, read, and watch the endless horizon, he finds his brain can think of little to write about. Still, he somehow manages to fill three pages.

He makes the comment that he lives in “mortal fear” that the censors will cut his letters to ribbons. Two things struck me; he seems to get nearly every word of his letters past the prying eyes and sharp instruments of the ship’s board of censors and, he never sees his letters once they are passed on to that body. Because he’s had no word yet from Dot, he has no idea how much of his letters survive for her eyes.

I assume he’s traveling somewhere near the equator, which may account for his days being slightly longer than 24 hours. He also has surmised that he’ll probably not be running into his buddy Fred. It seems the Pacific is quite large and the island where Fred stays is tiny (although Dart does not know what island that is.) He says his group is headed for a different island in a different part of the Pacific. What isn’t clear to me is how he came to the conclusion, without knowing where he’s going or where Fred is staying, that they will not be the same place! Once again, he asks Dot to send him Gordon’s address so that he can keep on the look out for his ship. What fun if they could meet each other for the first time on the other side of the world!

He writes a little about the movies he’s seen recently. Apparently the ship’s crew gets movies almost every night, but as a passenger, Dart has seen only three.

As much as he’d like to be together with Dot, he’s grateful she can’t see him right now. His fair skin has taken quite a beating (or shall I say “broiling”) on the open sea and he has peeled twice already. He mourns the fact that he can’t tan like most of the other guys.

He closes with “I wish you were here, or even more, that I were there.” I’m sure that’s true!

More from Dart tomorrow.

It’s another bonus day, with two letters from Dart. He begins by telling Dot how much he misses being out in a big snow storm. Last winter, he stared out at the snow for weeks on end from inside a hospital. This winter, he’s sailing around endlessly under a tropical sun. That’s quite an adjustment for a boy born and reared in the Snow Belt!

This morning he attended a radio broadcast on deck. It’s a show called “Command Performance,” produced exclusively for the boys serving overseas. Today’s cast of performers reads like a Who’s Who of Hollywood and New York; Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Lena Horn, Judy Garland, Cab Calloway and Count Basie, to name a few.

Last night, Dart stayed up until midnight writing to Dot and his folks. When he tried to go to sleep, the Marines kept him awake with their raucous card games. “They sleep all day and play poker all night when good folks are trying to sleep,” he groused. I’m beginning to think Dart’s not too fond of Marines.

Now he has to quit writing so he can move around and hope some of the perspiration drenching his shirt evaporates.

Later that day, he’s inspired to write again. Everyone on board is chased down below decks at night fall, for security reasons. He’s heard the night sky at sea is a beautiful sight, but he’s yet to witness it himself.

According to the ship’s scuttlebutt, which is even less reliable than the rumors heard for weeks at Shoemaker, this voyage is nearing an end. Of course, he’ll never be able to tell Dot when they land, or where, but when it happens, he hopes to quickly be assigned to a ship, and “begin at last the business of helping to win the war.” He calls himself an innocent parasite, getting a college education and hospital care from the war bonds people bought thinking they were purchasing guns and jeeps. “More power to the war bond purchasers, and may they live on forever in blissful ignorance of Peterson the Parasite.”

He expects there will be another religious service on deck tomorrow morning. Last Sunday was mostly a hymn and prayer service, with “organ” music provided by an accordion. A brief sermon by a jolly, rotund chaplain followed. Dart, who has never considered himself religious but who’s tried to live a moral life, has had lots of time to think about religion recently. “I believe in it a lot more strongly than ever before. I have reason to, now – probably because never before have I asked for help.”

I’ve heard the expression that there are no atheists in a foxhole. I guess the same can be said of Navy ships.

I’ll be back tomorrow with an update from Dot.

This one-pager crams lots of news into a small space. There’s a small notch excised from the upper corner of the paper where the censor has removed the final word in the phrase “An island in the __________.”  Dart and his shipmates are engaged in the Navy’s favorite occupation – waiting. They’ve not begun unloading onto land yet, and no one seems to know when that operation will begin. Meanwhile he says, “the tiny bits of land here and there are the first ones we’ve seen in many days and they look cool and inviting to the guys who are still on the ship.”

Dart has joined the ranks of the “fuzzy-wuzzies” and had his hair clipped to a quarter inch. It feels much cooler. His skin has stopped blistering and peeling – even starting to darken a little, although he still dreams of getting a real tan some day. I think we see here the origins of the many bouts of skin cancer he experienced much later in life!

He’s bubbling over with things he wants to say which can’t be said. All he can tell Dot is that the sight of the island is beautiful from his ship in the harbor. Furthermore, he loves her.

We have only one letter left this month from Dart, and that one won’t come until the 31st. As I mentioned yesterday, Dot has no more for this month. I’ll try to check back during the week to add photos or other items of interest to the blog. Stay tuned!

Dart has a lot to say after a week of not writing. Ever since his group arrived at their current location, drafts have been called up every day for men to become replacement crews for various ships in the fleet. Guys he knows have gone to all sorts of ships, from destroyer escorts to mighty battleships. Now, there are only seven members of his Treasure Island class who remain unassigned, and Dart is one of them. I wonder if they feel like the last kids picked for dodge ball in a grammar school phys ed class.

Those who remain aboard the USS ___________ must remain available for work parties on other ships or on any of the many coral islands that make up the area where he’s docked. He writes, “I can’t tell you how many ships there are here. I don’t know. But I don’t think I’ll ever thrill at the sight of ships again until I see this many warships in Frisco Bay or maybe in New York.” It would appear this young sailor is not inclined toward a career in the Navy.

Although they show movies every night on the fantail, and Dart has seen some of them, the real news is that he finally had a mail call and was thrilled to have a stack of 25 letters waiting for him! Until today, he’s not been allowed to mail letters since he was in Pearl Harbor, but now the system is in place for men in transit to send some letters out. Dart took the opportunity to stuff the mail box with all the letters he’d written up to now. He had cut back on writing, hoping to be assigned to his permanent ship before doing so, but now he realizes it may be quite awhile until that assignment comes, so he’ll begin writing again.

He’s often called out for a work detail, generally from late afternoon to midnight on a supply ship nearby. He was happy to be moved out of the compartment with all those Marines and into a larger, quieter space. In the process, he was able to retrieve his prized map of the Pacific and several other pilfered items.

“Looks like we’ve missed the use of still another full moon. And believe me, the moon is really beautiful as it rises above the deep blue of the tropical sea. Almost as beautiful as it is when it rises above the dear state of Ohio. There are, or were, a huge number of Ohio men on the ship. Every place we’d stand turned out like a reunion.”

He paints a detailed word picture of the scene from his hatch cover where he sits to write this letter. A battleship engaged in gunnery practice leaving flak puffs in the sky, a carrier warming up her planes for take-off practice, colorful signal flags adorning a myriad of ships and the bright signal lights flashing messages from ship to ship. He tells Dot that the small landing craft that come and go, dropping off and picking up passengers make his ship look like a Viennese taxi stand.

He decides the noisy deck is not conducive to writing the kind of love letter he’d prefer, so he closes. “I miss you, Dottie. I hope I never get over missing you whenever we’re apart.”

I’m sure Dot was happy to find a one-page bonus letter when she finally began to receive mail from him again. The purpose of the second letter was to make a start on answering the 11 letters from Dot that came in his first mail delivery. Her letters span the time from December 22 to January 11, and he quickly realizes how fruitless it is to comment on episodes she wrote about that took place over a month ago. Instead, he uses the the page to tell her that he believes their long separations will serve to prove how much they need each other in order to be happy and to remind them of the value of their homes and country. He looks forward to spending the rest of his life trying to make up for all their lost time.

He warns her not to expect much in the way of letters any time soon. Airmail stamps are impossible to obtain where he is. I guess his only other option is to send them through the free mail system, but those will travel by boat and could take quite some time to wend their way to Greenwich.