Dart’s letter is chock full of news from Camp Shoemaker. He received a huge package from Dot today, but he’s honoring her request that he not open it until December 25. He’ll honor it as long as he can, but when he gets his orders, he’ll need to stow the contents he’s permitted to take on board with him and send the rest home to Cleveland. That makes his departure seem so near.

This evening, he and a few other guys made use of the cocoa Dot had sent earlier. He hung around the office after his duty was over and decided to skip the inferior meal being served in the mess hall. His group chose to have coffee and sandwiches right there in the office. Chief Wagstaff sent a messenger to round up some sandwich fixings, milk, chips and ice cream. They used the milk to make cocoa on a hot plate and had a tasty little impromptu feast.

He plans to go to a nearby bottling company tomorrow and work for the day. He was able to secure a work permit and the yeoman got him a job, so the two will put in a day and see how much they earn.

With the return of the regular Ship’s Company Yeoman from leave today, Dart lost his temporary office job. Right away Lt. Forbes signed Dart up as Chief Wagstaff’s little helper on his duty days. He’ll take drafts to the warehouse to get them equipped with their overseas gear, recruit work parties, run around with the Chief on inspections, and generally function as his “little flunkie.”

A letter from Fred announces how happy the Marine is on his “little island in the Marianas.” Dart was impressed that the letter took only six days to reach California.

From the sound of Dot’s voice on the telephone, it seems like her cold didn’t stick around too long. He’s happy she was able to get some extra sleep to banish the bug.

He recalls how excited he was when he reached the Cleveland train station on his leave. He doesn’t even recall running up the steps – merely being lifted by the buoyancy of his own emotions. In answer to her question about what new things he learned about her, he says it was mostly, “the same, but more so.” More natural, funnier, sweeter, more playful, etc.

He has warned her about his moodiness, and even demonstrated it in some of his letters, so he hopes she’s prepared when she first sees that characteristic in person. He closes by telling her he sent her a package today with no note enclosed. She knows what’s in his heart, so a note would be superfluous.

Dot’s note is short and silly, written in a kind of Scottish or Irish dialect.  After about a paragraph, she begs Dart’s forgiveness and explains that some Irish girl with green eyes was singing on the radio and it ran chills up Dot’s Scottish spine. (How does one know the color of a singer’s eyes over the radio?)

Anyway, she says she’s too tired to write, and there’s no news to write even if she weren’t so tired. She hopes he’ll check back with her tomorrow when she hopes for better luck at writing a decent letter.

This is a brief note Dart writes from a hotel room in Oakland, where he and Spiegler have come on liberty. They visited the model railroad club, did a little shopping and are now looking forward to a good night’s sleep in real beds before heading back to Shoemaker tomorrow.

He feels guilty that he’s not spent enough time with Dot in recent days. He’s thought about her. He’s talked about her; just ask Spiegler and Chuck and the girls he danced with at the YWCA how much he’s talked about her!

He misses her terribly and hopes to get back to writing a decent letter soon.

Dot makes up for not writing yesterday by sending a six-pager today. I’m a little stumped about the content, but I’ll clarify what I can. A few days ago, although I didn’t mention it here, Dot sent Dart a little piece of string that she’d glued to a small card. Her caption said something about “dropping him a line.” Well, he apparently had a snappy come back for that, maybe written on the envelope, but it’s lost to time.

Unfortunately, she devotes nearly the entire first page of this letter going on about his clever retort. It seems she has shown it to the whole town of Greenwich and everyone has “practically gone into convulsions over it.” She’s told everyone how incredibly witty and clever he is, so she warns him that if his line was not original, he should plan on being on non-speaking terms with her for the rest of her natural life.  Now she must stop raving about how funny it was or there will be no hat in the US Navy large enough to fit his swelled head.

She feels the same way he does that the phone call makes it seem as though they are even farther away than before. But she confesses that even if she saw him every day, she couldn’t love him any more than she does right now.

In case he has doubts, she wants him to know that she gets the biggest kick out of his letters. Today at work she was thinking about something he wrote and the way he said it and she began to smile without knowing it. She was about 3,000 miles away when her manager walked in and found her grinning to herself. He brought her back to Earth when he said, “I bet that radiant beam on your face means you got a letter from ‘the one’ today. Am I right?” Because it’s so obvious, she’s decided there’s no use trying to hide how she feels from anyone.

In that vein, she thinks she should tell him that he’s more than a little okay. In fact, he’s so doggone nice that all she can think about is how lucky she is to have met him.

She hereby grants permission for him to open the Christmas package as soon as he reads this letter. She instructs him to keep what he wants and send the rest back. She really wants to get him something he wants and needs. Speaking of Christmas presents, she reminds him that he ignored her previous instructions to call her collect as his gift to her. She thinks it’s important to inform him that she controls 51% of their partnership, so she has the final say and he must obey. When she says to call collect and he ends up paying for the call, he has not obeyed her! To correct the error, she implores him to call again before he leaves the country and to do it by reversing the charges!

She’s impressed that the Navy lets him take civilian work at the winery. Maybe he’ll want to make a life of the Navy with rules like that. She just heard a story on the radio about an 83-year old man who had been with the merchant marine for 70 years and was still on active duty! She asks that he banish that thought from his head.

She confesses to a little scheme she has going on at work. About three times a week, Mr. Goldstein sends her to the tailor to deliver or pick up alterations for customers. As soon as she puts her coat on, word spreads throughout the store, and she is inundated with requests for errands. Today she went to the tailor, the grocer, cigar store, drugist and even stopped by her home to see if there were any letters from Dart. She fears that someday, someone will see her in the wrong place during work hours and her fun will have to stop, but for now, she enjoys the freedom.

It’s taken her several hours to write this letter, with all her daydreaming about a certain sailor, so she must get some shut-eye.

True to his intentions, Dart manages to write a nice, long letter today. He’s alone in the barracks, in the mood for nothing but writing to Dot, and hoping the guys don’t come in to bother him. He’s usually happy to talk with the boys, but they invade his privacy at times and make it hard for him to write sweet nothings to his favorite girl.

He’s very enthusiastic about sleeping until 0800 this morning. The hotel bed provided a good rest, and the room only cost him and Spiegler a buck a piece! I wonder if that was a service man discount, or if that’s the going rate for a hotel room in 1944. If it’s the latter, it’s no wonder my mother gets sticker shock whenever she needs to reserve a hotel room these days.

Tomorrow brings a minor shake-up at Shoemaker. They are trading the lieutenant and the ship’s company men with another battalion. Dart hopes the “old boy” they get won’t be as big a stinker as Lt. Forbes was. Chief Wagstaff, on the other hand is a 30-year Navy man, serving as a bandmaster; a good guy and a true friend to the enlisted men.

He tells her that the Christmas mail rush has slowed down her letters. He’s a little concerned that all the stuff he’s been sending to her won’t get there in time for Christmas. He’s mailed some first class, some parcel post and others were shipped by the stores where he bought them.

Perhaps he dwells too much on those moments when the two of them were in perfect sync with each other, but those moments, and the hope that they’ll have forever together in the not-too-distant future are all he has to dream about. He keeps thinking of their afternoon in the park and how much he wanted to ask her to marry him. I’d heard often when I was growing up that Dad told Mom he didn’t think it was fair to obligate a young woman to marry a man who was going off to fight a war. What if he didn’t make it home, or if he came back a different man? In the beginning of the war, Dart believed that engagements should happen after the war was over. It must have been hard to keep to that self-imposed rule while he held her in his arms for their last time together for many, many months.

He writes that his pleasant reverie of those moments was interrupted by his quick trip to the office to see if his name was on a new draft that just came down. It wasn’t. Then he and Spiegler had a little snack of crackers and sandwich spread.

He confirms that he gets the same question as she does about whether she still loves him. Lt. Forbes asked him today when he was reading Dot’s latest letter. Dart blushed so deeply that Forbes tried to read the letter over his shoulder. I think that really annoyed him.

Just as she imagines wrapping gifts in her sleep, he finds himself stooping to pick up crates of empty bottles as he’s drifting off.

If his memory is correct, she was the first one to use the salutation “Dearest” in a letter. He believes that letter arrived the day before he was sent to the hospital at Great Lakes and he was overjoyed to get it. He’s always been grateful that he fell for her so hard and so fast that he was able to throw caution to the wind and be bold. He was bold enough to ask for a goodnight kiss on their date in Cleveland. The overthrown caution let him write that he loved her in the December 4, 1943 letter. He has no regrets.

It’s true that she has never told him to his face that she loved him, but she’s said it on the phone, and she’s said it in different ways. He loves the way she’s said it and he loves her, all of her. He fears the “short time” until the Big Day his pop wrote about is going to pass painfully slowly until the war is over. It’s all he wants in the world.

Dot gets a little start on her letter while at work  because she has plans for this evening. She and her friend Jean are going to the Greenwich H. S. basketball game of alums vs students. Although Dot doesn’t care a fig about Greenwich H. S., she likes basketball and spending time with Jean, so it should be a fun evening.

She didn’t get much writing done at work because Mr. Goldstein got sick and Dot had to run the department alone. The game went well, with the alums winning on account of Dot screaming for them. Now she’s hoarse and tired.

Since Dart plans to go to the admiral to complain about a change of officers at Shoemaker, she decides she won’t make him also complain to the Postmaster General. Dot’s getting Dart’s letters all out of order, even though they’ve all be sent Air Mail. She’s so happy to get them at all, that she supposes it’s not necessary to complain about when they arrive.

She’s getting a little nervous about the day when Dart will reveal some of his faults to her. She can’t really believe he has any, and she won’t be the one to insist that he reveal them. If she had her “druthers,” he’d keep them hidden always so she’d never have to be disillusioned.

This is a long and thoughtful letter from Dart, revealing in equal parts a gloomy, frustrated sailor and a positive, cultured young man.

He is seriously out of sorts today. Camp Shoemaker – never a pleasant place – is starting to wear him down. He’s angry that he’s wasting three, four, five weeks here doing nothing of value, waiting for what comes next and unable to make any plans. Why did the Navy give them such short leaves after their advanced training school just so they could rot in this God forsaken hole?

Every day is filled with endless queuing up. There are lines for the toilets, lines for chow, lines for dirty dishes, lines for showers, lines for liberty passes, lines for bowling and theaters, lines for buses, and lines for finding out what line to stand in. There’s never an opportunity to sit while in line, unless one wants to sit on sharp gravel or muddy muck.

He was able to score a single ticket to the San Francisco orchestra concert last night – a full program of Russian music. He was enchanted by the “Francesca Da Rimini” piece by Tschaikowsky and amused by a humorous collection of four short pieces called the “Suite Diabolique” by Prokofeiff.

Quite the critic for a non-musician, he deems the SF orchestra inferior to Cleveland’s. To his ear, the brass sounded “tinny” and the string section lacked the full, rich, harmonious tone of his home town’s orchestra. Still, he was happy to have been able to attend the concert.

While crossing the Bay Bridge yesterday, he saw the hull of a huge new battleship looming out of the fog. As he got nearer, he saw that it was the USS Missouri, in town for a check-up after her shake-down cruise. He was so impressed with her size and the number of guns on deck. She was moored next to a tiny destroyer, fondly known by sailors as a “tin can.” Dart expressed a keen interest in being assigned to a giant battleship rather than a flimsy little destroyer. He believes all that massive steel and the mighty guns would feel much safer to him. No doubt.

The new battalion commander at Shoemaker brought a larger support staff with him, so Dart has lost his cushy office assignments to the regular staff. I guess now he’ll take his turn on the work crews again.

He’s happy to have mailed all his Christmas cards and hopes they and his packages all arrive in time. He’s mailed several things to Dot; some are Christmas gifts and others are ideas he’s had for awhile that he’s only recently had time to buy.

The final paragraph is sweet. “Well, it’s time to crawl back into my shell for the night. So I’ll kiss you goodnight in the doorway and hold you close for so long that we almost lose our balance (and our minds.)”

The big news from Greenwich concerns El and Don. Eleanor has been worried about Don because she hadn’t heard from him since his leave ended. Then she got a call from his mother saying she would be bringing El’s Christmas gift because Don is in quarantine. The gift is a beautiful, sparkling diamond ring. Although they’ve been engaged for awhile, El has been wearing Don’s high school ring this whole time. She is so enchanted with her ring that tonight at dinner, she was dazzled to the point that she put mounds of salt in her coffee!

Dot’s father has been down for the count the last couple of days. It’s the first time he’s been too sick to go into his shop in years. When Dot asked him this morning how he was feeling, he replied, “Well, I’m not feeling fine, but I’m feeling a lot less worse.” See what a Yale education will do for one’s grammar?

Ruth Chamberlain has been holding the shop together during Arthur’s illness, in addition to her work at the library. There’s no taking it easy for her, even though she just got out of her sick bed the day before her husband fell ill. Dot explains “My cold meant so much to me that I simply had to share it with my whole family.” It seems like the entire eastern seaboard is under the weather.

With six more shopping days until Christmas, Dot’s beginning to doubt she’ll survive. She’s exhausted.

It’s a melancholy note from a homesick sailor today. He hasn’t heard from Dot for three days – must be the mail system, because she’s been pretty faithful. “Aside from the pay line, laundry and sweeping a road, I have nothing to talk about. I’m hungry, but that doesn’t make much for talk.”

He claims people around the camp are doing their best to make the place look nice for Christmas, but without cold weather, sparkling decorations, cheery words and songs, Christmas seems hollow.

He recalls the Christmases of his childhood; awaking so very early, a reluctance to get up off the floor and try on the new scratchy clothes, the toy train chugging around the Christmas tree.

A restlessness tonight inspires him to want to take a long drive in a car. He’d love it if Dot would come along.

There was a card in the mail today informing him that Dot’s parents have given him a gift subscription to Readers Digest. He asks that she thank them on his behalf until he can do a proper job of it.

With tongue in cheek, he cautions her not to get drunk on New Year’s Eve. He tells her he’ll be thinking of her from his little bunk at sea. This strikes me as an unnecessarily snarky paragraph. Will he not be writing between now and December 31? Does he have orders to ship out? If he doesn’t, why taunt her that way. I guess this is an example of the moodiness he’s warned her about.

With a hope he can do a better job on a letter tomorrow, he sends his love and signs off.

Dot’s letter is also brief, but more cheerful. She’s curious why his mother sent her a card saying that she’d mailed a package from Dart that he’d sent to Cleveland. Why did he send it home first? Also, what’s with all the packages he’s told her he’s sent? Is he trying to make her feel like a bigger heel than she already does? She’s buzzing with curiosity and excitement.

She wishes he were with her tonight (and every night.) The lovely old town of Greenwich is having her first snow of the season. With the gracious homes, welcoming streets, and stately trees, the whole town resembles a Christmas card. “The earth looks like a soft white blanket sparkling with diamond sequins and the air smells like a freshly laundered sheet, just taken off the line. It hardly seems possible that there could be anything but ‘Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.’ And yet, there are millions of people who have never seen such a night, nor will they ever have the opportunity. God bless them, and I thank God I’m an American.”

Yawning, and with one eye propped open, she sends her love and closes the letter.

What a change in mood from yesterday’s letter! Dart received three letters from Dot today, held up by the postal service. She still loves him, and he is overjoyed. He calls the letters “thrilling, heart-warming love letters, newsy and humorous as well.”

He has serious doubts about how he’ll survive long days at sea without regular mail from her. He thrives on her letters as he thrives on memories of their time together and dreams of times in the future. He and Dot certainly strike similar themes, don’t they?

He’s delighted with his Christmas package, astounded by the assortment of candy bars that she managed to collect for him. He tells her they don’t even have that much selection at Ship’s Service these days. He used the ocarina today in an impromptu jam session with Lefty and Spiegler. He plans to keep the billfold, too. It’s the perfect thing to keep his pictures of her safely with him.

I’m not sure what she used, but he and his pals enjoyed the paper she wrapped the candy with. Dart says that Leffman and Spiegler copied the pictures with colored pencils to use in the future. It would be fun to see if Dot recalls what he’s talking about seven decades after the fact.

Among other letters, Dart got one from one of his Shaw buddies named Bob Braund from APO New York, containing a censor’s mark. Dart has no idea where he’s stationed overseas, but he’s happy to see this good guy received a promotion to corporal.

Dart asks Dot if she recalls a long time back when he first called her “darling” in a letter. Her response was not too positive, thinking it was too much, too soon and had a false ring to it for ones as young as they. He’s glad now that she had that reaction, because when they use it sparingly, it seems to have much more meaning than it would have otherwise. Speaking of terms of address, he hopes she notices how seldom he calls her “Dorothy.” He’s still quite fond of the name, ever since he was a small boy and dreamed he’d marry a girl by that name. “Now that I’ve fallen in love with a Dorothy, that dream seems like a prediction of things to come. At least I hope that it’ll come true.”

As he does with increasing frequency now, he falls into a lovely reverie of their last night together in Cleveland. He recalls that they didn’t say much, just sat holding hands, and kissing occasionally. That’s when Dot told him that he needn’t ask her permission to kiss her any more because she had no plans to be kissing anyone else. He recalls the sensation of her in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder. She didn’t say much, but everything she said thrilled him to his core and made him feel happier than he’d ever been.

He covers familiar ground on Memory Lane as he remembers the look on her face when she threw water on him, how eager she was to help him with his trains, how dirty her knees got from the shabby old rug in the living room. He was not able to look at her for very long without his eyes clouding up and without the fear that she’d dissolve into thin air like most beautiful visions.

Returning to her recent letter, he’s happy that the “nunny” feeling she gets when she hears beautiful music in church vanishes as soon as she leaves the building. He’d hate to be in love with a nun, and whoever heard of a Congregational nun anyway? Like her, he also experiences the odd looks from strangers when they catch him with a goofy smile as he thinks of her. “I guess we’re nuts, but ain’t it fun?”

Sadly, he admits they must abandon hope that he’ll be at her graduation. The Navy is a cruel master.

Because she often writes to him “after bedtime,” he asks if she has a regular bedtime. He tells her that the guys all think she’s too clever for Dart because her letters are so amusing.

Before stopping to write to his mom and pop, he takes a quick break to look at photos of other guys’ girls. He saw some cute tricks and sharp numbers, but none appeal to him as much as Dot does. He’s so glad she’s “spoken for” by him.

Dot’s letter must be short because she’s living in a Christmas rush. Home is hardly less hectic than the store.

Today brought a very long letter from Gordon. He told the family not to feel sorry for him on Christmas because he’ll be spending the day thinking about last Christmas when his whole family was together, so he’ll be happy. Dot teared up a little when he asked his sisters to think of him when they sneak downstairs before their parents are up to open their first present.

This letter from Dart is a little confusing because it refers to things I’ve not seen mentioned in letters before. Again I have a feeling that we may be missing a letter here and there.

Dot may have said something to him about the nearly identical letters he wrote last week describing the Russian concert in San Francisco. One of them was addressed to Dearest Sweetheart and the other to Dearest Dot. She may have questioned who “Sweetheart” was. He says he thinks one of those was intended for his folks, but he must have been tired when he wrote it.

Dart mentions that he is alone tonight because Spiegler has gone to the hospital for surgery tomorrow. He has a cyst exactly like the one Dart had removed in Chicago. Leffman will go to the hospital tomorrow for one or two operations. He has a cyst on his head. Cryptically, he adds that “we don’t speak of his other trouble.”  That of course leads me to imagine what ailment might have been considered taboo; testicular cancer or erectile dysfunction? It seems almost quaint to witness a time when medical conditions were considered too sensitive to discuss with others. Now it seems that everybody shares everything and we see ads for all manner of intimate products and conditions on television.

Then Dart tells a surprising tale on himself. It seems he is about to get into big trouble, or as he so picturesquely puts it, “Your sailor’s about to wear his anatomy in a sling.” It’s a complicated story that I’m not sure I follow completely, but it has something to do with Dart ignoring regulations about the handling of his liberty pass, holding on to one signed by the former commander for a special use. Under the former commander, the rules might have been more loosely enforced, so Dart took advantage of that. Now the new commander is more of a stickler and Dart’s liberty pass is missing. He’s a little worried that his clean record will be tarnished and, worse yet, that he’ll have to go the rest of his time at Shoemaker without liberty. Dot’s “weegie” board says he’ll be there five more weeks, and that’s a long time to be stuck in this pit. He says other guys can get away with murder, but the minute he tries “a mild job of underhanded dealings,” he chokes on his own feet. It serves him right, he says, because he’s been “caught with the goods.” He hopes Dot won’t think less of him.

Now I wish even more than before that I knew what these two were talking about with Dart’s clever response to Dot’s little prank about dropping him a line. Now he confesses that his retort was indeed all original. Everyone thought her line that started it was very good and he’s glad she liked his reply. Well, as long as they can make each other laugh, I guess we don’t need to be in on the joke, too.

He’s decided to keep both his Christmas billfolds. The one from his folks is too big to fit into a Navy uniform pocket, so he’ll use it to store precious photos. Dot’s will be used for its intended purpose.

He must clarify that his recent phone call was not the one she told him to make collect. Besides, he can’t be expected to do everything she tells him to. “You don’t want a henpecked BF do you?” While he’s on that subject, he asks her where she got the idea that she has 51% of their partnership. When he asked the married guys about this arrangement, they said, “You don’t know it yet, but she’s right.” Now, that’s funny!

With a slight hint of caution, he tells her that her tailor and shopping scheme at work sounds a bit like the deal he’s caught up in now. At least he was saving his contraband liberty pass for a good reason – like the East Bay Model Engineers operating night!

He’s decided to keep her guessing tonight and not tell her how much he loves her, so she won’t know.

It sounds like Dot and Betty had a great night on the town – another topic I don’t recall reading about. With Betty’s generous Christmas gift from Gordon, he suspects she may have a few more grand times.

It comes as no surprise that Dot has made a big impression on Mr. Goldstein. He knows a good thing when he sees it and he knows what draws in the customers.

Several days ago, Dart tried writing a letter while on the local train back to Shoemaker. His handwriting suffered from the bumpy track. Dot quipped in her reply to him that the track must have been made of cobblestones. Dart now replies with a little railroad humor. (And I do mean “little”) that when they were building the first section of the track, they had the blueprints upside down and they placed the rails underneath the ties. After discovering the mistake, they didn’t want folks to notice the screw-up, so they did the second half of the track the same way. Ouch.

After breaking his vow to keep her in the dark about how much he loves her, he adds a P. S. that reminds me of the early letters between these two. He asks her what I.W.D.G.M.P S.I.G.N. means. Will she break the code for him?

Dot’s short letter, which she begins at work, spans two days. In the first part, she asked him to confirm the names of his aunt and uncle who live in Ashtabula. Are they Arthur and Flora Crowthers? She was paying more attention to Dart than to them the one time she met them in Cleveland, and she forgot their names. Today she received a Christmas card and a lovely handkerchief from the Crowthers from Ashtabula. Since his relatives are the only people she knows from that town, she assumes it was they who sent the items.

She picks up the letter the next day to tell Dart she’d gone to the movies by herself the previous night. The film was very different from what she expected, but she liked it all the same. There was an actor who reminded her very much of Dart’s Pop.

Today on one of her trips to the tailor, she stopped by home to see if there was mail for her. She was rewarded with three letters from Dart. She says there have still been no packages, but she’ll try to be patient. She signs off, saying she’ll write more tonight.