January 22, 1945

January 21, 201516. January 1945, Dart's Letters, Dot's LettersSusan

Dart’s letter begins on a high note, but fades into melancholy by the end.

For openers, he tells Dot of the surprise he had last night when the “passengers” were allowed to sit up on deck after dark. The brilliant half moon nearly dowsed the stars, but the sky was beautiful, nonetheless. The ships surrounding Dart’s were barely discernible shapes that appeared only after the boys’ eyes grew accustomed to the blackness. As Dart leaned on the rail and gazed into the inky water, he could only wish that Dot was there beside him, enjoying the splendor and beauty of the night time sea.

While he enjoys seeing the beauty of this part of the Earth, he says “As far as I’m concerned, I’ll be satisfied after the war if I can stay within the limits of the State of Ohio for most of the rest of my days.” Well, he and Mom ended up traveling to Europe a few times, New Hampshire nearly every summer, and much of the rest of the USA for business or pleasure, but he did manage to live in his beloved Ohio for the rest of his life.

At one point in the letter, he had to scratch out a couple of words in the paragraph. The reason for his break in concentration was the cause of his surly mood for the remainder of the letter. A rowdy group of Marines swiped his prized lifebelt as he turned his back to get a drink of water. Then he found one of them sitting on his seabag which was full of clean clothes, ink bottle and precious photographs. “If those thugs don’t get some of that rudeness taken out of them before they’re discharged, there’ll be a whole new law enforcement problem after the war.” He suspects none of what he writes about the Marines will get past the censor, but every word comes through in tact. Maybe the censor shared Dart’s opinion of the “rowdy thugs.”

He finished up this letter the following day after discovering that some other things had been stolen from him by the dirty poachers. The greatest loss was a large map of the Pacific that his folks had given him.

He reports that he and the other Peterson from his class at Treasure Island spent most of last night up on deck talking about education, machinery and two women named Dorothy. If you recall, Pete is married to a Dorothy and he seems to miss her as much as Dart misses Dot.

“I’m getting anxious to get all my 25 months of liability to the Navy ended, and get some of that training into use. From all the way out here it seems so futile to keep telling you how much I love you, but I’ll keep telling you anyway.”

Dot begins her letter with a vow that it’ll be a long one, in spite of the fact that there is no news so she’ll have to fill it with useless chatter.

She awoke this morning feeling like “the fag end of a mis-spent life.” She explains “My right arm aches from all the bowling I did over the weekend. My left arm aches from opening the heavy elevator door. And my legs ache to keep my arms company. An extremely sad case!”

She reports that they are not having as much weather as they had last week, but it’s always doing something outside. (Now that must be the epitome of a nonsense sentence!)

Exactly three weeks from yesterday, she’ll receive her masters degree from Andrews School for Girls. “What I should have said was that I get the 3rd degree from the Master of the school – a very different situation but one to which I have become accustomed.”

Another nonsensical paragraph follows about her falling into the swimming pool yesterday and discovering that the water is much wetter when one has her clothes on. She adds a goofy limerick about a maiden named Dot who love a boy named Dart. She pauses to think of other silliness to fill the pages and follows that with a giant underlined “I love you!”

Here, the letter abruptly stops after only two pages. There’s no signature, and certainly not enough material to constitute the long letter she promised, so I guess the rest of this masterpiece must have been lost. Well, she was right about one thing – there is absolutely nothing new to report so she had to fill the letter with useless chatter. (I’ll venture a guess that Dart is as happy to receive her useless chatter as he would be to read the great American novel.)

January 23, 1945

January 22, 201516. January 1945, Dot's LettersSusan

Well, the mystery of the abruptly ended letter from yesterday has been solved. Dot simply continued it past midnight and dated the new page with today’s date, fooling me into thinking there were two separate letters

She begins with “Don’t tell me you’re still sitting on your bunk waiting for me to finish this thing! Well, I guess I can keep it up just about as long as you can stand reading this stuff. This shall be a case of the ‘survival of the fittest.'”

Does Dart remember that Thursday night when they had a nice long talk and he said something about her nose and Dot made a crack about how stupid it’ll look when she’s sixty? He tried to console her by asking how she thought his bony frame would look when he was sixty. Well, she’s been giving it some thought and she knows there’s hope for his bony frame. There are a number of things that can be done to put some meat on him, but there’s no viable solution for turning her poor square nose into a pretty little triangle. (Note to reader: There is not a living creature on Earth who ever found anything objectionable about Dot’s nose, except Dot. It’s a lovely nose, well-suited to her pretty face.) She goes on to tell Dart the sad story of her cousin who was born with no bridge in his nose. He recently underwent a painful surgical procedure with very little improvement in his appearance. She suggests she should quit stewing about that which can’t be fixed and worry more about the size of her body rather than the nose she seems to be stuck with.

While writing this letter, Dot has been thinking about what she was doing five years ago and what “they” will be doing five years from now. At the tender age of 13, she had just discovered a brochure from Andrews School and was determined to attend there. When she looks forward five years, it seems like an eternity in the future, but when looking back, she can scarcely believe how quickly those years have flown. How glad she is that she and Dart didn’t meet back in 1940, because a 16-year old boy would probably not had much interest in a 13-year old girl. Although she would like to have known him better and longer, she thinks the disadvantages of an earlier acquaintance outweigh the advantages. Still, she says the only reason she was happy at age 17 was that she didn’t know what she was missing until she met Dart.

Commenting on Dart’s portrait (the one where his eyes are turned away from the camera), she says his radiant smile is lighting up the wall in her bedroom. If she holds the picture at a close angle and closes one eye, she can almost imagine that he’s looking at her. She sure hopes he won’t flash those pearly teeth at any Australian girls, should he happen to meet any.

She’s proud that she’s gotten this far into a letter with very little effort. Is he starting to get bored? Has he been reading it on the installment plan? she asks. Having reached page eight, she declares that this has been loads of fun on her part and she hopes they can do it again sometime. She also hopes that by the time he receives this, he will have read all her other letters, too and that she will finally have heard from him.

Tonsillectomy adds a brief postscript and the letter is finally complete. As Dot prepares for her trip to Cleveland for graduation, she will write no other letters this month. We’ll have to rely on Dart to keep us connected.

January 24, 1945

January 23, 201516. January 1945, Dart's LettersSusan

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!

January 26, 1946

January 25, 201528. January 1946Susan

Today I’m posting another of the greeting cards that Dot sent on January 15th. It’s a “thinking of you” message featuring a little brown-skinned girl with pig tails and written in the southern black dialect made popular many years earlier by the poetry of Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Dot has indicated on the front cover that the card comes from “Tonsillectomy.” Dot writes her own brief note on the back.

January 27, 2015

January 27, 201516. January 1945Susan

To fill in the empty days between letters, I’m posting three photos that were taken in Cleveland in the fall of 1944, just after Dart graduated from his advanced training school at Treasure Island, California.

The pictures show Dot, Dart and his mother, Helen. Dot had recently lost 15 pounds and she’s looking positively gorgeous. The pictures show how skinny Dart really was in those days.

Thanks to my sister, Nancy Peterson Glidden for providing me with these snapshots.

January 31, 1945

January 31, 201516. January 1945, Dart's LettersSusan

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.

February 1, 1945

January 31, 201517. February 1945, Dart's LettersSusan

This sweet and affectionate letter from Dart is peppered with details of his daily life and with intermittent attempts to answer her Christmas Day letter.

As he begins to write, he has her letter on one knee and this letter on the other. “How I wish your letter were you. When I think of you saying the things you write and doing the things you talk about, I imagine you saying them right here and it seems as if you really are here with me. It seems as though I should be able to put my arms around you and rest my head on your pretty brown hair. Dottie, this war can’t last forever, and when it’s over we’ll never have to tell each other what we did on Christmas Day.”

He got a big kick out of her description of Christmas at the Chamberlain house, but he needs clarification of one mysterious point. He begs her to tell him what a “puff” is. The one she got for Christmas was light green. (I’m glad he asked because I’m not sure myself. From the context of her letter, I guessed it must be some kind of fluffy bed covering, but I’d like to have that confirmed or corrected.)

He likes the work details he’s had lately. They’re not too hard, but better still, the folks here seem to know what they’re doing and they treat everyone well. Both of those factors make any work more enjoyable, in Dart’s opinion. How different that experience is from the work details at Shoemaker.

He assures Dot not to worry about the Aussie girls, even if he does manage to get a liberty there. He explains that the only reason guys like them is that they are there and they are girls. But he already has the prettiest and sweetest girl all to himself and he’s not interested in any others. He has her right where he wants her – namely, safe and sound in the good old USA.

With mailing problems persisting, he suggests she keep his birthday gift until the next time she sees him. But he says if she ever has another picture taken, he’d like her to send him a copy. Apparently she will need to show this letter at the post office and it will serve as the “official request” required to be able to mail the photo. That’s a strange regulation. I wonder if the Navy was trying to keep the weight of mail to a minimum or if it was trying to discourage unsolicited pictures from boy-crazy girls. I’ll have to see if Dot knows the answer.

The last paragraph is so endearing. “Gee, but I love you, Dot. I feel radiant every time I think of you. It’s good for a fellow, to be in love.”

There are no letters tomorrow or the next day but Dart returns on the 4th. See you then!

February 4, 1945

February 3, 201517. February 1945, Dart's LettersSusan

This is Dart’s first letter aboard his new ship! He’s been assigned to the USS Haggard, a destroyer of a new design. He says most guys wouldn’t trade their destroyer duty for anything, so Dart is hopeful he’ll learn to like the small ship eventually. “It’s a good thing I’m already stoop-shouldered. Now I won’t have so far to go when I duck for the low overheads. I guess I’ve bumped my head a dozen times on things, as these ships do not seem to have been designed for long people,” he reports.

He explains to Dot that he’d tried to send more letters from the Admiral Coontz but running a censor board for such a huge ship became problematic and the men were ordered to stop submitting letters. Now, he says that his active duty will render his letters shorter and less frequent from now on.

At orientation today, Dart was assigned to the deck force, along with all tho other newbies who came aboard with him. He hopes to get assigned to the fire control stations in short order so that he can use the technical skills he was trained to do. For now, he’s a lowly deck-hand.

He was one of three fire control men added to the Haggard crew today. The other two were in his barracks at Shoemaker and in his compartment aboard the transport for the last several weeks, so he’s not entirely friendless on the ship.

He’s fervently hoping for mail very soon. He says he’s read all of the letters he’s received from Dot lately about 20 times. Now he longs for the time they can hear the sweet endearments rather than read them.

In his spare time on the previous ship he did several more sketches for “their” house, which he’ll send along as soon as he’s able. “We don’t have to have a second floor, do we?”

He loves her so much that he can hardly believe she happened to him. After his signature of “Goodnight, my Darling,” he signed his first name, but he also wrote his full name at the very bottom of the page. I’ve noticed that is his new practice for all the letters he writes from the ship. Perhaps that’s to help the censors identify whose letter they’re reading, although I don’t think it would be too hard to nail down which “Dart” was the author.

February 5, 1945

February 4, 201517. February 1945, Dart's LettersSusan

With this two-page letter, Dart’s prediction about the his letters getting shorter came to pass, if not the one about their frequency.

He begins by telling her about another meeting today that explained more policies and regulations to the new guys. The ship’s Executive Office even said the Navy had no trouble with the crew griping about conditions. With that permission, Dart begins, “They can take their tin can Navy and push it as far in any direction, any place, as they care to. It’s rough, wet, cramped and crowded. I slept on the deck inside last night. Some fellows were not so lucky. They slept on the deck in the rain. It threatens to be months until we get bunk space. I’m disgruntled.” Bear in mind, all this was said in clear view of the censors!

His next complaint was about the daily “Dear John” letters received by men on board. He refers to the bitter pills wrapped in sugar that announce that Miss So-and-so is now Mrs. Somebody Else. Dart says it’s tough to watch these men as they read the painful news and feel their hearts break. He confesses he wouldn’t know what to do if Dot left him. He hopes this letter doesn’t give her any ideas. “I’ve seen stronger, more level-headed guys than I am sit down and cry like babies.”

Finding his way back to a more positive note, he thanks Dot for the pictures she sent of the Chamberlain house at Christmas time. He thinks Gale has a cute, devilish look and Doug looks much like Dart’s brother Burke at the same age.

He reminds her that even if he can’t write as often, he thinks of her just as much as before and his love grows daily.

February 6, 1945

February 5, 201517. February 1945, Dart's LettersSusan

This is an rather upbeat note from Dart, except for a brief commentary on the war near the end of the second page.

He was put to work in the fire control area today – an assignment he hopes will last. He can say nothing more of what he’s doing, except to say that it’s “interesting.”

The ship is having an inspection later today, so all hands are polishing shoes and scrambling to find clean clothes in their sea bags.

Dart reports that last night he found a nice airy section of floor (deck) on which to unroll his mattress and get some sleep. When he returned there today, he found “wet paint” signs, so he must locate another place for his nightly snooze. What a strange set up!

He writes that Dot’s comments about the people getting rich inventing tools for the killing of people closely reflect his own recent thoughts. “Here I am, with most of the fellows my age, chasing all the heck over the biggest ocean in the world, taking pot shots at a few measly hunks of coral or lava with only useless monkeys and palm trees for shade on them. When we get through, the monkeys are dead, the palm trees are charcoal and toothpicks, and we have to erect our own shade. Why did we ever teach the monkeys to throw rocks anyway? It’s a giant farce.”

He’s decided that he and Dot’s new friend Nancy Lou have something in common; they both like the way Dot sparkles when she’s having a good time. “Your eyes and teeth are brilliant and your whole face radiates warmth and joy. Boy! do I want to see you again.”

Spot and Arrow

A great love story