Dart describes his idealized Easter Sunday in the tropics, and then describes the rather disappointing reality. The men were soaked to the skin by salt spray on the boat ride over to the hospital ship for services on the fantail, soaked again by the salt water oozing from their pores as they stood too long on the sweltering deck, jerky and jumbled service. There were a few nurses in attendance – the first females some of the guys had seen in 14  months.

They’re enjoying holiday schedule on the ship today. “It’s strange to see guys loafing legally. They loaf a lot anyway, but today they don’t look so guilty. For a day, the busy tapping of chipping hammers and the gentle slap of paint brushes is stilled.”

He’s been enjoying some fine radio programs all day, especially the NBC Symphony with “Firebird Suite,” one of Dart’s favorites. The classical music is not appreciated by the “deck apes” around him. He says whoever coined that description of some of the characters on a ship hit the nail squarely. They give a bad name to simians. Dart is sure some of these guys have thumbs on their feet.

He was able to tell Dot that shortly after arriving on the Haggard, he was involved in a major raid on Tokyo. No more can be told at this time except that they ran into little resistance and it’s cold up north in Tokyo.

The letter ends abruptly, presumably due to lost pages, but he is in the middle of saying that he enjoys her descriptions of the kids she babysits for. He warns her not to look too much into Carter’s compelling eyes because… (we’ll never know where that thought was going because the pages that contained them are long gone.)

It’s a long and cheerful letter from Dot today. She had a beautiful Easter, which started off with the delivery of a perfect corsage from Dart that arrived minutes before leaving for church. She didn’t know they grew such fine American Beauty roses in the South Pacific!

The Chamberlain clan filled two pews of the Second Congregational Church of Greenwich. They missed having Gordon, Don and Dart with them, and said special prayers for their safe return.

Dot begs forgiveness for not writing last night and pledges to write twice one day this week to make up the deficit. She and her new friend Nancy went to see “The Fighting Lady” last night. It was a sort of documentary about life on board an aircraft carrier. She believes she now has a better idea of what Dart’s daily life is like. There were a few shots of the fire control equipment on the carrier. Dot says they look even more complicated than Dart described, and she’s in awe that he understands how they work.

She and Nancy stayed up until 2:00 A.M. cleaning Dot’s bedroom, in spite of needing to get up for sunrise services at church. She gave Dart a little more detail about Nancy; cute, with curly red hair. A very sweet girl. Dot suggested that Dart might have a friend who’d want to correspond with Nancy, who’s a big fan of the Navy. If he has no friend who’d be interested, maybe Dart himself could write her one of his great descriptive or satirical letters.

There couldn’t have been a more perfect day for parading around Greenwich in Easter finery. The temperature was in the low 70s and the sky was a brilliant blue. Dot’s father paid his family a sincere compliment today, first by attending church with them (a rare occurrence) and then by saying that he defied anyone to say there were better looking girls than his in the Easter Parade. How sweet of the gruff old guy to say. Dot says the feeling of the day reminded her of Thanksgiving because everyone in the States has so much to be grateful for. The war seems much closer to being over than it did a year ago, and now she prays it will be good and finished by next Easter.

She closes the letter by saying she doesn’t believe Dart can fully fathom how deeply she loves him. He has far exceeded her wildest dreams of the perfect mate.

The Haggard is in port again, and Dart is attempting to write but keeps being drawn into a giant gab session going on all around him. The men are talking, talking, talking about ideas, loved ones, desires, hopes and Navy, Navy, Navy. It’s just the kind of conversation that would attract an interested and thoughtful guy like Dart.

He calls this a “day of days,” but doesn’t elaborate much. He’s been on duty all day. His job is to wear a set of heavy headphones, listen for messages from the “talker” on the bridge, and then relay those messages to the stations in his line – mostly on the fantail of the ship. There’s no indication, of course, what those messages were or why they were being sent all day.

There’s a curious paragraph about him never knowing how much skin a nose could grow in a place like this. Is he referring to the noese that keeps burning, peeling, burning, and peeling again? Hard telling.

In one of Dot’s letters, she mentioned their hugging scene after they called Dart’s mother from Greenwich last July. “I guess most of our love scenes have been either on a stairway or in a car. I remember how it was that Sunday in Greenwich. And on Wednesday and Thursday in Cleveland.” I guess one of the advantages to them having had only eight days together is that each of those days is unique and memorable – none has blended into another, and each one carries with it very special memories of thrilling words, affectionate deeds and secret glances.

He takes her up on her offer to send pin-ups to him – of Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Linda Darnell, Ann Miller, Jinx Falkenburg (?) and Katharine Hepburn. Still the only one he’ll actually pin-up is a photo of Dot.

Where she and her family think Gordon is, is not where Dart is. All he’s able to do is keep saying where he isn’t.

He seems a little surprised to realize how much he’s grown to like his little ship. She has seen all kinds of actions since she was commissioned in  1943, and she’s conducted herself with honor, earning a fine record along the way. But he assures her that no matter how proud a sailor might be of his ship, no matter how much he may enjoy the Navy life, his only desires are to get home and see the ones he loves. How he hopes this war will end soon!

Dot’s letter is sweet, typically funny and long! She is ecstatic to have received four letters from Dart in today’s mail.

She tells him not to worry about the folks at home. They may get a little antsy when more than a week passes without letters from him, but they understand that it only means his letters took a while to get off the ship. All he should be thinking about is getting home soon.

She truly appreciates his frequent letters. But, she’s come to appreciate so many things about him – the first of which is that she did meet him. When he refers to his boyhood days in his letters, it almost feels that she knew  him then. By the time he gets home and they have plenty of chance to get better acquainted, she’ll know much more about him than he does about her. She’d like to tell him about her early life, but when she tries, it sounds “as interesting as a cake recipe.”

She pleads with him to please send the house plans, if he is able. She’s so eager to see the improvements he’s made to their future dream home. She only hopes it doesn’t remain a dream for too awfully long.

“Right now, there’s only one thing I’d rather be doing than writing to you. That, of course, is to be sitting here talking with you and remarking how well you look in your new sport jacket and slacks. Or do you have on your best suit this evening? The tears of joy in my eyes make everything except your eyes a little blurry.” (And this girl claims she can’t write!)

His description of the sunrise was so good that she shared it with her family. (She hopes he won’t mind, and she assures him she saves the more tender bits for her eyes only.) Her father said to thank him for describing the sunrise to Dot because she’s never seen one. She sleeps until nearly sunset every day! Well, we know that’s not true, but the statement gives us a glimpse of what a tease Arthur Chamberlain could be.

He asked about the big dinner party that she and El were supposed to serve. Well, it was cancelled, but they were both paid anyway. Even though the catering part of their business earns her an additional 15 cents per hour, she much prefers babysitting. “I tell you, I was born lazy. Why, did you know I did almost nothing but sleep and drink the first year of my life? Now if that isn’t the height of laziness, I’d like to know what is!”

She spends a little time actually answering some of the queries in his recent letters. She doesn’t recall seeing any of the scenes he asked about in “I Love a Soldier.” She hopes he’ll have a chance to see it someday. (Although, the title doesn’t sound like one they’d choose to show on a Navy ship, does it?)

Today she got a sweet note from his mother, thanking “them” for the plant. As it turns out, she got two plants from “Dart.” Did he happen to ask someone in Cleveland to take care of that for him? Dot urges him not to confess to his mother that the plant she sent was her idea. Helen seemed so pleased with it, that Dot is afraid her pleasure would be somewhat diminished if Dart confessed and gave her all the credit. Just this once, she thinks it would be best if Dart were slightly less than totally honest.

While she’s on the subject of flowers, she wants to thank him again for sending the lovely Easter corsage. She wore it into work this morning and received lots of positive comments, including a few “hot tips” on how to hang on to a man like him.

Before closing this letter at 1:30 A.M., she asks him “Why does a bee buzz? Answer: You’d buzz too, if somebody took your honey and nectar (necked her.) “Yes, there are homes for people like me, but in these times, they’re overcrowded. I’m waiting for a vacancy. Meanwhile, I’m renting the vacant space midway between my neck and the top of my head.”

Dart’s is a playful letter, talking a lot about photos. First, he mentions the cunning bathing beauty photos of Dot’s, including some “leg art.” Then you realize he’s describing the photos she sent of herself as a very young child. He says he’s learned to be more specific in his requests and ask for recent photos of her.

He rebuked his folks for showing her all of his baby pictures and then learned from his dad that the one he feared most that Dot had seen remains hidden from her view. (Only because Dart senior couldn’t find it while Dot was in Cleveland.) Dart, Sr. has dubbed that photo “The Famous Grand River Nude.”

He wonders if the pictures she sent had been taken at Lake Sunapee. There’s a torpedo man named Martin on the Haggard who lives near Blodgett’s Landing on the lake. He says the name of Chamberlain is familiar to him, but he can’t place it exactly. Is Dot’s family’s place near Sunapee Harbor and Indian Cave Lodge? (Note: Hal Martin and Dart stayed friendly for years after the war. Mom and Dad often visited with Hal and his wife when they were at the lake.)

Talk of yet another photo makes it into Dart’s letter – the street picture Dot and Helen had taken in Cleveland. Helen has not sent it to Dart yet, so he’ll ask her to do so. “If it’s as bad as you say, I’ll hide it and look at it only in secret,” he teases.

In a recent letter, Dot commented that Greenwich begins to collect moss after 9:00 PM. Dart asks if she was disappointed because she’d been trying to get into mischief then. He writes a cute, illustrated paragraph about the gnomes who roam Cleveland, beginning at 11:00 PM, rolling up the sidewalks and storing them underground. He’s definitely in a playful mood, despite the fact that the surgical incision on his back is flaring up and becoming quite sensitive again.

He’s not being so playful in the plaintive closing paragraph when he talks of how desperate he is to begin their life together. He fears the war will drag on for a very long time. He can’t know it now, but the war will be over for the Haggard much sooner than anyone could guess.

This is the day Dot promised – the one when she writes him two letters to make up for a skipped day last week. She even throws in a bonus note from her boss, Mr. Goldstein.

Today is Betty and Gordon’s second anniversary. Although Dot can’t believe they’ve been married that long already, it’ not a marriage she envies. “Personally, I think it would be kinda nice to have my husband around after I marry him. Perhaps I’m queer, but that’s how I feel.” Betty’s day started with three dozen roses being delivered to the Chamberlain household; two dozen red and one dozen yellow. Gordon even planned ahead enough to send the card to the florist in his own handwriting, to attach to the flowers. Betty was over the moon!

Things are very slow at work, so she’s able to start this letter during the day. She thinks the store won’t get busy again until just before the next holiday, and she hopes to be gone by then. It’s so slow today that even Mr. Goldstein takes time out to write to Dart.

Temperatures in Greenwich are expected to drop to 30 degrees tonight and Dot fears that all the beautiful blossoms that decorate the town will be lost. “It’s days like this that make me wish I were a hermit with absolutely nothing to do but enjoy the beauties of nature. Ah, what a life! Ah, what a lazy loafer I am and would like to be more of.”

The family just got word that Dot’s cousin Walter, a lieutenant in the Naval Air Corps, is on his way home from the Pacific! He’s coming for some rest, having been involved in the long bombing raids of Iwo Jima and other places.

She closes the first letter of the day by saying she’d love to go for a long walk in the country with Dart by her side. She proposes they take a rain check and add this to the growing list of things they’ll do when he returns.

By the time she begins the second letter of the day, she’s received another one from Dart.

She says again how great it would be if he could meet Gordon while “over there.” The whole family likes to talk about how nice it would be if these two men could meet. Somehow it would make them both seem closer. She knows it will do no good to ask, but she wonders if he’s been in on the invasion of Okinawa. Surely if he writes “yes,” or “Your hunch was right,” the censor will let it go. She’s intensely curious to know where he is.

Like Dart, she will forever be grateful that Johnny passed on to Dart the fact that Dot would like to get a letter. She poses the question of whether he would have ever written to her if he’d not received that hint. She thinks that some way or another, they would have gotten to  know each other because they both wanted that so badly. She certainly likes the way things have turned out.

Dart’s letter is brief and feisty. He spent the entire day working on an unloading party, lugging several tons of food (he thinks) from a supply ship up to the Haggard’s decks and into refrigeration. The work was hard, but that’s not what has him so riled.

While he was laboring, he heard a guy who is entrusted to keep their letters private, reading them to a bunch of other men! Dart describes them as “those ignorant men who become boatswain’s mates when they learn to read and count up to ten.” A stunt like that puts the man who read them in the same class as the “crude hoodlums who are his only friends.”  Dart continues with his diatribe. “That man has a reputation as being the most two-faced and partial man aboard. If he reads this, his ears will probably burn, and the rest of him may burn for all I care. If I’d been writing for publication, I’d have sent those letters by registered mail to a magazine. If I’d intended them for the eyes and ears of a bunch of stupid low-lifes I’d have sent them to some magazine like Laff or Famous Comics or some other yellow sheet which caters to their juvenile minds.”

Dart doesn’t know if it was his letters that were read aloud, but the principle is the same, no matter whose letters they were.

Having vented, he calms down a bit. He tells Dot that in his two months aboard ship, he’s made some enemies and some friends. The friends were slow to come and hard to find. The enemies deserve no further mention.

He likes life on the Haggard and the duty he’s seen. He’s proud to serve with most of her crew.

That completes Dart’s letter for this day, but I’m happy to say I’ve found the missing pages from April 1. (Clumsily misfiled by yours truly.) If you recall, that letter ended with Dart cautioning Dot not to look too long into the eyes of her young charges. Let’s continue with that thought.

He thinks the kids will soon learn that she’s easily mesmerized by big, blue eyes. “I hope you don’t spoil your kids that way. They might be mine, too, the way things look now; and the way I hope they’ll turn out.”

He comments that the crew is complaining about the hard seats on their ship. They’ve all been sitting all day, and the only seats are the lockers under the bunks and “various hunks of ship.”

The map of Dot’s room gave him a chuckle. Now he’ll know just where to go when he comes to steal her away. Sadly, she neglected to tell him which window was hers, so he’ll have to lug that tall ladder to every one of the upstairs windows until he finds hers.

When he had the chance to see “30 Seconds over Tokyo,” he passed on it. Having not seen it, he still can’t imagine any girl’s eyes sparkling as bright as hers, even if that girl is an actress.

He willingly gives his blessing to her writing to the Marine who writes to her. He must be alright, if Dottie wants to write to him. Besides, Dart answers the monthly letters from his friend Jeanne Kirby, who knows all about how deeply in love Dot and Dart are.

As he closes, he tells  her that his whole world revolves around her. He remembers her eyes, her smile, her hair, her “winsome blush,” which he wants to gently tease out of her again. Everything about her is dear to him.

This is the third letter Dot has written to Dart in the past 24 hours. All she wants to do is sit down and write to him. Could that be because in that same time, she’s received five letters from him? How much easier it is to write outgoing letters when she’s also getting some incoming ones!

Franklin Simon has given her the afternoon off in exchange for the overtime she worked recently. If it were a nice day, she’d take a long bike ride. However, it’s quite cold so she may go see a movie, instead. She remarks that she could clean the house, but that thought doesn’t seem like a good idea for filling her rare time off.

She reminds Dart that a year ago, their letters were filled with hopes and plans for him to attend her prom. When those hopes were dashed at the last moment, she was devastated. In retrospect, she’s grateful for the way things turned out. If he’d gotten leave then, he would not have been able to come to Greenwich in the summer and he wouldn’t have met her family. Now, every letter and every day leads them closer to his real homecoming – the one that ends in a one-way ticket, instead of a round-trip. She can’t wait for that day!

For now, she’s content to let everyday occurrences remind her of their times together. For instance, right now, she’s chewing clove gum. That reminds her of the time Johnny, Betty, she and Dart went to see the “Phantom of the Opera” and Dart offered her a piece of clove gum. She had a difficult time getting it from him because she didn’t want to turn her head and let Dart see her in her glasses!

Her memories even hold images of what Dart wore that night; a navy  blue suit and a black tie. The suit was trimmed in white around the lapels and the jacket cuffs. She doubts he can describe what she wore, but I’m not sure that’s a bet I’d take.

Her final paragraph is so tender: “I love you, Dart, and the memories of the few days we had together and the plans for the future are more precious to me than any material thing in the world.”

Dart has time for just a single page tonight, but it accompanies a photo from a magazine. He thinks it’ll get past the censor because this magazine photo has been published in the USA. It’s a photo of an early version of a destroyer similar to the Haggard. Dart says his ship is nicer because it’s an improved design and has just a single-color paint job and some design improvements.

He has just discovered two new songs that he really likes. One is recorded by Bing Crosby called “Let’s Take the Long Way Home.” It reminds him very much of Dot. The other is the first Andrews Sisters’ song he’s ever liked, and he believes it’s been banned on US radio, but it’s called “Rum and Coca-Cola.”

He’s tired and out of time.

Dot begins her letter as she began her day – in a terrible mood. She can’t put her finger on any particular reason, except that Dougie was entirely too rude and rough when he woke her up this morning, and that set her off for the day.

When she picks up the letter again at 11:30 that night, she’s in a far better frame of mind. Dart is responsible, of course. She came home from work and thought she’d feel better if she read some of his old letters. She started with one he wrote a year ago today and was instantly gratified. You see, he began his letter then by announcing what a foul mood he was in. She believes it was fate that led them both to be so irritable on the same day, one year apart – that’s how close and sympathetic they are! He had just been demoted once again to strict bed rest in the hospital and had received conflicting orders from two different doctors. It wasn’t a good time for him back then.

Inside the envelope of that letter, Dart had written that he’d held onto his letter for 24-hours, just to see if he still loved her. He did. “Now that a whole year has passed, can you safely say that that still holds?” asked Dot.

Hours have passed since she started reading his old letters. Her hands and nose are frozen and she can barely stay awake, so she closes the letter with a familiar old shorthand squiggle from those long-ago letters.