April 29, 1945

April 28, 201519. April 1945, Dart's LettersSusan

Dart writes this letter from the deck on a sunny spring day. There is just enough of a breeze to kick up an occasional white cap on the dark blue surface. He’d like to describe the scene around him, but he dare not. I suspect that means there’s an impressive fleet of warships all around and the censor would stop his description at first word.

Somehow, mail was delivered to the ship today, even though it is at sea. He received only one letter – that one from his mother. He’s still in the dark about Dot’s April 10th interview with the WAVEs. I’m sure his anguish on that topic is undiminished, but he has the grace not to say anything about it in this letter.

This is the first letter Helen Peterson has written to her son since learning that he was part of the raid on Tokyo. She was stunned that he would see heavy action so soon after arriving on the ship. Dart admits that, at the time, he was pretty stunned himself. The news of the raid hit the US just as Helen and Dot were shopping in downtown Cleveland.

He writes that he starts his new job in the mess on Tuesday. He’s steadfastly determined to withhold judgement on the new assignment until he’s had a chance to test it out. He’s heard there are some advantages to this post, such as no nightly watches. That means he’ll be able to stay in the sack for the whole night. He should be getting plenty to eat, and a few extra treats along the way. It’s unclear whether he’ll be eligible for an increase in rate during his tenure in the mess, but he doubts it. He welcomes the extra $5 per month in pay while on this assignment.

It being a fine day for taking pictures, the watch captain did just that today. He photographed the whole watch crew, two-by-two out on the deck. Dart says they had lots of fun in the process. He’ll try to send a shot of him and a buddy in front of one of the “Varga” girls.

He learned in his mother’s letter that a close friend, Homer Singer has been in a hospital in France for quite some time and will probably be getting an early discharge soon. His parents think he has malaria. That’s a far better fate than some of the Shaw classmates have seen.

Failing to think of any way to tell Dot how much he loves her, he says it in the same old way and then signs off.

What neither Dart nor the reader can know is that this letter is written on a fateful day in the life of the USS Haggard. Later that evening, a kamikazi pilot will crash his plane into the mid section of this proud ship, causing fire, destruction and a loss of lives from which the Haggard never fully recovers. You’ll not read one hint of it in these letters, but I’ll let the story unfold in it’s time.

Naturally, there will be no letters from Dart for a few days.

April 30, 1945

April 29, 201519. April 1945, Dot's LettersSusan

Dot’s letter begins in a jubilant mood. “Boy! Oh, Boy! Three super letters from you and a super letter from your mom today. That’s the way I like to start off a Monday morning – meet the postman on my way to work and spend my first hour of work reading what I collected from the postman. It makes me feel like singing, and if I didn’t have a hard enough time finding customers already, I think I’d break out in song for sure.”

Isn’t it cool that she could collect letters from the postman so early in the morning and again when she came home for lunch? Back in the day when the mail brought more than ads and pleas for money, wouldn’t it have been fun to get two deliveries a day?

She begins to answer these “precious documents” in the order they were written. From the April 17th letter, she sees that Dart has a little celebrity crush on the newest starlet named Lauren Bacall. “Say, what is it that Lauren Bacall has that I couldn’t find plenty of use for? That’s one woman who seems to have made a hit with every kind of man.”

She assumes Dart got sunburned the day he wrote this letter. She hopes it was more evenly distributed than the burn he got last July in Greenwich. As she recalls, it was mostly his wrists where they extended beyond is sleeves that got bright red then. “The color does become you, though. So much more so for you, when it comes from without, than on me when it comes from within.” (I think she means blushing.)

She scolds him gently for telling his parents that it was she who sent the Easter flowers and not Dart. She knows it took away half their pleasure from the gift. “So be it. It’s done now. But hereafter, do me a little favor. To put it bluntly, keep your mouth shut, or in this case, your pen still, PLEASE!”

For his letter from the 19th, she says she hopes he gets his fill of gun shooting while he’s out there, because that’s the last thing she ever wants to see. Guns scare her! Seriously, Dot – the type of guns Dart is shooting “out there” are hardly the kind he could bring home as a souvenir! He’d need a flat bed railroad car to move one from place to place.

As for Ernie Pyle, she’s sure that Dart’s writing style is every bit as good as his was. “It’s not ability you’re lacking, Dart. It’s experience. But don’t think you have to go through all that he went through to be like him. I wouldn’t like that at all.”

She’s impressed that he’s up to 160 pounds. She loves him just the way he was when she saw him last, but every pound he gains gives her more to love.

“Oh-oh! Here comes the April 20th letter, or ‘Why Dot Should NOT Join the WAVEs!’ There’s little point in discussing it further, since she’s prohibited from joining anyway, but she appreciates that he cares enough to give her his honest opinion. “Thank you, my Darling, for caring enough to speak you piece (sic) and for guiding me in the right way.” She values his opinion so much that with every decision she faces, she finds herself asking “Which way would Dart decide?” She’s confident things worked out the way they’re supposed to, as they usually do in life, but she still hopes to do something useful someday.

As for kissing and making up, there’s no need – unless it’s for the “sheer joy of kissing.” He did not hurt her feelings. In fact, his carefully worded letter made her prouder and more in love with him that she was before. She wants to be a better woman for him because she knows he deserves the best. Once again she cautions him to stop building her up in his mind, lest the reality of her crushes his illusions when he gets home.

She wraps up quickly by telling him how proud she is of his grades and filling him in on a movie she and Nancy saw last night called “The Keys to the Kingdom,” with a young actor named Gregory Peck.

“I’m going to bed, but not before kissing your picture and praying that soon there’ll be no more ‘ifs’ to contend with.”

May 1, 1945

April 30, 201520. May 1945Susan

Because of the extensive damage to the Haggard, there is no letter from Dart today. Instead, I’ll post a somewhat fuzzy photo of him, taken sometime before the kamikazi attack. Doesn’t he look younger than the maturity of his letters would lead you to believe he was?

No letter from Dot, either, because the letter she began on April 30 ran into May 1. More from her and Dart tomorrow.

May 2, 1945

May 1, 201520. May 1945, Dart's Letters, Dot's LettersSusan

This is very brief note, scratched out in pencil before the lights go out for the night. The dateline says they’re in port. (Where they were towed by another ship, the small kamikaze plane and its dead pilot still embedded deep into the innards of the Haggard.)

He began his new job yesterday in the scullery, cleaning dishes and food containers. He says the work was rugged. What he doesn’t say is that since the ship has no power, the food has consisted of sandwiches and warm juice served three times a day.

He’s enclosing a page of interior sketches for their house. He’ll try to do more as the spirit moves him, although his new work assignment doesn’t leave much time for such things.

A couple of nights ago, he caught a glimpse of the brilliant full moon. It made him feel lonesome, staring out over the black water and wishing he were somewhere else, with Dot.

Dot has started a couple of recent letters with a corny riddle scribbled in the upper corner. I didn’t mention them because they are really terrible jokes. Now, it appears it’s might become a trend. In the spirit of accurately capturing the “truth” of these letters, I guess I’d better include them. Read the following at your own risk. Q: What’s the difference between a duck? A: One leg is both the same. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Dot had just finished writing to Dart’s mother, telling her of a great new plan Dot has hatched. She thinks it would be wonderful if Dart, Sr., Helen and Burke could make a road trip this summer to the northeast. It would be a fine celebration for their 25th anniversary and Burke’s high school graduation. It would also give Dot’s whole family a chance to meet the folks who raised such a terrific son as Dart. If Dot and Janie are able to spend their June vacation at Lake Sunapee, Dot would like nothing better than to introduce the Peterson’s to that little piece of heaven. She asks Dart to use his influence on them so they’ll say yes to Dot’s invitation.

She abruptly changes the subject to the fact that Hitler is dead. She cares little whether he was killed or took his own life, but she’s confident that the war in Europe will be completely wrapped up very soon. “And then ah, cheer up, my dear boy! Then they will send our European troops to the Pacific to give you and Gordon a hand with this war. I know how you hate to rush these things, but I’m kinda gettin’ lonely and I want you home soon!”

She ends with “It’s late and I’m tired.(Seems to me you’ve heard that song before.) But I love you like 60 tons of ice cream, and boy!!! Do I LOVE ice cream!”

Her P.S. is a “check” for 42 kisses, payable when he returns from the Pacific, but invalid if not redeemed immediately upon his return.

May 3, 1945

May 2, 201520. May 1945, Dot's LettersSusan

Dot begins by telling Dart that she found a poem that perfectly describes how she feels about him. It’s called “Why I Love You” and was written by an unknown author.

It begins with “I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you…I love you for not only what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me.” It goes on for a couple of stanzas with some nice thoughts about a love that brings out the best in the loved one. The final line is “I love you because you have done more than any creed could have done to make me good, and more than any fate could have done to make me happy.”

She continues with a weather report, describing the typical March day they are having – rain and a blustery cold wind. Unfortunately, it is May. The Chamberlain house is very cold because Arthur shut down the furnace in March when the temperatures ran high. Dot is quite chilly as she writes this. “Golly, I’d be in a _ell of a fix if I didn’t have my love to keep me warm.”

She confesses to doing something silly tonight. She was sitting on her bed when she thought she heard pebbles hitting her window. She jumped off her bed, ran to the window and actually called Dart’s name. All she got was a face full of cold rain. How disappointing! “When you do come to Greenwich, don’t throw pebbles at the window. I may think it’s only the wind and will pay no attention. Let’s see. Shouldn’t we have a signal worked out? Just to give me a little warning that you’re here. If you ring the doorbell, ring 3 short and 1 long. If you get inside the house and don’t see me sprawled on the floor, whistle 3 sort and 1 long. But if no one’s home, better use the phone in the kitchen to call the Fix-It Shop.”

She berates herself for these torturing thoughts. She knows it does no good to imagine what it’ll be like when she sees Dart next, but her mind keeps going there anyway. Gordon thinks it will be quite a while yet until the fleet comes home. Not until the war is over for Tokyo. How this girl wishes things would hurry up!

May 4, 1945

May 3, 201520. May 1945, Dart's Letters, Dot's LettersSusan

Dart announces that he has finally been assigned a real bunk. He says that enough men have “transferred’ off the ship that there is now space for him in a regular sleeping area. If one knows what happened to the Haggard just days ago, one might assume that “transferred” is a clue about it. Transferred to a hospital ship, perhaps? Or, tragically, transferred Stateside in a casket? In any case he says, “I expect to rest my raw bones in a real bunk tonight, for the second time since I left the good old USA.” He explains that his first occasion to sleep in a bunk came one night in sick bay aboard the Admiral Coontz, en route to the Haggard.

He writes a humorous description of those bunks. They were stacked five layers high and constructed of canvas slings that sagged very low beneath the frame work that suspended them. He drew a little sketch of a tower of skinny sailors lounging in their bunks. Each man’s “center of gravity” drooped low into the space that the man below him would have occupied, if he, too were not drooping far below his bunk frame. The poor guy on the bottom was essentially resting his rump directly on the deck.

Having filled one whole page with chatter about his sleeping arrangements, Dart describes his new job in the mess. He’s up before reveille and doesn’t finish until after 7:00 PM, but he’s not required to serve on work parties. Yesterday while he washed dishes, other sailors hauled heavy ammunition all over the decks. This job has it’s perks.

He closes with the wish that they will get mail soon. It feels like months since he’s heard from Dot, but it’s really only two weeks. Perhaps some of his eagerness for news is because he himself has so much news to share that cannot be shared.

As Dot begins to write, she finds herself wishing she were curled up next to Dart on the couch, talking to him instead of writing. She misses him so much, but she finds one fault in her wish – that is the fact that she does better “talking” in a letter than she does face-to-face. “I hope by the time you get home, I’ll be cured.” She recalls that Wednesday afternoon when she tried to explain why she couldn’t express herself. “As soon as you parked the car I started to pray, ‘Please help me prove I have a heart and a tongue. Keep me from blushing and silence my heartbeat so it can’t be heard way down at the Square.’ Oh, but alas, I couldn’t say ‘boo,’ my heartbeat fairly shook the car, and I blushed so violently the sky reflected it and we had a gorgeous sunset!”

Tonight she is babysitting way out on the outskirts of Greenwich with two “devil children.” They’ve been running her ragged all evening and their parents won’t be home until about 2:00 AM.

She talks about her little brother and her niece going into Madison Square Garden tomorrow to see the Ringling Brothers Circus, courtesy of Franklin Simon. The store purchased enough tickets for nearly every child in Greenwich to attend.

Dot reminds Dart that just a year ago tonight, she was having her second visit to his family’s home in Cleveland. While she was there, Dart called from Great Lakes Hospital and it was so wonderful to hear his voice. “Golly, it doesn’t seem possible a year has slipped by so fast, and yet, some ways it seems ages since that time.”

Dot believes this has been a wasted year for her. She seems no more mature than when she left school, her bank account has grown very little. “I have neither taken from society that which might benefit me, nor given anything to the world that would help in solving its many problems. The only thing she has learned is the value of a lost year – a year that can neither be relived, replaced, nor renewed. Perhaps this lesson will awaken her to the need to make something of her life. “With you as the model, I should be able to come as near to perfection as you, but you have the makings already there. I’ll have to scout around for some.”

What little regard this young woman has for her tremendous qualities of hard work, good humor, patience with young children, honesty, compassion and a positive outlook. I’m sure Dart will be happy to enlighten her.

May 5, 1945

May 4, 201520. May 1945, Dot's LettersSusan

Wow! Dot sure does cram a lot of chat into this little letter! For the first time in ages, she’s back babysitting at the Pecsok’s house. Little Chuck has grown a lot and Linda is almost a year old. For the second time in as many days, Dot reminds Dart of events that she wrote about last year when he was a perpetual patient in Great Lakes Hospital.

As soon as Dot arrived today, Mr. Pecsok put on some square dance music and began to twirl Dot around the living room. When the music switched to a waltz tempo, he danced with Dot in perfect 3/4 time. She drew the line when the marching started! “Do you realize that’s the first time I’ve danced since October 16th, 1943? That is, if you stretch the meaning of the word dance and call what I was doing tonight dancing. Little did I know a year and a half ago that I’d want to spend the rest of my life dancing with you. Oh sure, I had big dreams, but I didn’t think they’d ever come true.”

Tomorrow, she sits with Chris and Eric Miller. She has plans with the Millers every Sunday throughout the summer. They have a very nice sail boat that Mr. Miller built by hand. On alternate Sundays, she’ll escort the boys for a Miller family sail. On the “off” weeks, she and the boys will stay home while Mr. and Mrs. Miller sail alone. What a great way to spend a summer, if you love to sail as much as Dot does.

She and Nancy are going to see “A Song to Remember” tomorrow night, on the recommendation of her parents. Although Dot’s not too keen on Merle Oberon, any movie that took seven years to complete must be worth seeing.

She hopes Dart forgives her for ending the letter to get some sleep. She was up until 3:00 AM this morning, and she’s been cleaning or babysitting all day.

No letters tomorrow or the next day, but Dot will return on the 8th and Dart on the 10th.

May 8, 1945

May 7, 201520. May 1945, Dart's Letters, Dot's LettersSusan

There’s little to say and not much time to say it, but Dart manages to fill three small pages nonetheless. The ship’s mail petty officer has taken the launch out every day in search of mail for the Haggard, but to no avail.

Dart’s payday was today and he had earned $126. From that he withdrew $15 to live on. He wishes he could have bought a money order to send something for his brother Burke to pay for an anniversary gift for his folks, but the sale of money orders was prohibited this pay period for unexplained reasons. Besides, he hasn’t heard from Burke to know what he decided to buy the folks and how much Dart owes.

He says that whether he’s able to write of not, he has plenty of time to think up ideas for their house. Unfortunately, by the time he gets a chance to sketch out his ideas, he’s forgotten half of them. He hopes a 12 x 18 living room is large enough, because that’s what he and his buddies have based cost estimates on. That room, adjacent to a 9 x 12 dining room will look quite impressive. He says rooms that big are usually hard to heat, but he and his friends have worked out a solution to that problem. Our Dart is still a frustrated engineer, I think, in spite of washing out of engineering school at Case.

In response to a letter from Dot he says he’s never been to any of the places her brother has seen, but the Haggard did have a hand in preparing for some of the actions that Gordon has been involved with. He’s by now managed to figure out the time difference between where he is and Greenwich. If he told her, however, Dot (and the enemy) would be able to pinpoint where on the globe he is, so he must not tell her. “It’s awfully far to be away from someone you love so dearly.”

He has thoroughly enjoyed the hour he’s spent writing to the loveliest girl in the world.

It is V-E-Day! The exclamation point at the end of the sentence is all the celebrating Dot will do. Anything else would seem like throwing a party when the guest of honor wasn’t there. She’s putting all her prayers and hopes into a speedy end to Dart’s war in the Pacific. She is. however so grateful that millions of families in Europe are breathing freely tonight for the first time in 5-1/2 years.

At Eleanor’s birthday dinner tonight, the family sang the Navy hymn and offered prayers for Dart and Gordon’s quick return.

Franklin-Simon closed the store when the news broke about the victory in Europe today. Dot and some of the other girls stopped in a church on the way home to say a prayer of gratitude. She doesn’t think God would mind at all that they prayed in a Catholic church, even though none of them was Catholic.

Dot believes that if everyone on earth loved someone as much as she loves Dart, there would be no more war. Everyone would be so focused on making their loved one happy that there’d be no time for anything else.

The lull in mail that Dart predicted two weeks ago has now been going on for about 10 days. She’s not complaining because he’s so dependable when he is able to write. She takes comfort in thinking that the two of them might be thinking of each other at the same time on some days.

She loved “A Song to Remember,” but she was a little shocked at Chopin’s “shady” life. Even though her Dad explained that his lifestyle was common for artists of his day, Dot doesn’t believe her ideals would have allowed her to live like that, no matter what the majority thought was alright.

She must sleep now. There are no letters tomorrow, but Dart returns on the 10th.

May 10, 1945

May 10, 201520. May 1945, Dart's LettersSusan

What a wonderful letter from Dart. It reels out at a leisurely pace, stopping at intervals to chat about the weather, answer a bit of an old letter from Dot, and lingering over house plans. There’s a touch of sweetness, a dose of nostalgia, a snippet of humor. Dot will eat this one up.

First, he explains that he received a letter from Dot today, although there was no mail delivered to the ship. The letter, dated March 10, was somehow misplaced and had been languishing in the mail room for nearly two months. The postal officer found it today while bundling up letters for men who had been transferred off the ship. Dart was delighted to receive it, but is still eagerly awaiting her letter from April 10th. More on that later.

“I liked your description of Spring from the 3rd floor windows of Franklin Simon. Boy, how I’d like to see a nice Spring in Greenwich, or (if you’ll pardon me) better still, in Ohio. There is no Spring season in the tropics, you know. It is so foreign, yet so like July and August all the time, that we forget there are such things as delicate filmy greens of new leaves after a Spring rain; or the soft, white quietness of a Winter snowfall; or the rich, crisp, comfortable-looking colors of an Autumn countryside.”

He describes the fierce, quick rainstorms of the tropics – popping up in an instant and leaving without a trace. He describes seeing steam rise off the decks of the ships after a rain shower – a similar effect to the steam he once saw rising from the fresh hot asphalt of a new Cleveland street.

Her letter also answered a mystery he’d been puzzling over for a while. He remembered that she said she’d sold her bike, but then she described all her efforts to restore her bike. He was curious if she’d repossessed her old one for lack of payment, or stolen a bike from some poor little girl who had sold shoe strings to earn the money to buy her own. Today’s letter informed him that Mrs. Miller had given her an old bike as a graduation gift.

He wishes she could be in on some of the house planning discussions. They not only talk about materials and design, but the ease of cleaning and maintaining the structure. He has one buddy who is sure the first floor could be completely wired for between $75 and $100 dollars. At last, he has included some exterior elevations of the house and a small floor plan in the body of the letter so we can have some idea of the pictures in his head. I can assure you, there is not much similarity between this house and the one Mom and Dad eventually had built when we were young children.

Changing the subject, he writes, “We learned, of course, of the surrender of Germany. I greeted the news, I guess, just about as other people did: with a broad grin, a sense of relief, and a continuation of work. It’s nice to know that there’ll be more attention paid to the Pacific war from now on.”

Before wrapping up this edition of “Spot and Arrow,” let’s return to his desire to receive Dot’s April 10th letter – the one written after her interview with the WAVEs. “But the letter I’m really interested in is the one dated 10 April. You know why. I can’t say why because I’m already in enough of a jam over it. That’s probably another letter which will be delayed awhile in reaching me.” The back story to this passage is that Dart received a serious dressing down from a high-ranking officer over his letter to Dot about the WAVEs. In the first place, the officer reminded Dart of the court-martial-able offense of trying to discourage enlistment in a time of war. In the second place, he informed Dart that despite the young sailor’s harsh assessment of the women in the WAVEs, this particular officer was particularly proud of his wife, an officer in that much maligned organization! Dart was in deep trouble, but I suspect he would not have gotten off quite so easily as a tongue lashing, had Dot written to say that, because of his letter, she had decided not to join up. That’s probably why Dart suspected that letter would be delayed in reaching him – while the officers took a first look at it and determined his fate.

“The lights are going out now, one at a time, so I think it’s time I took the rest of the night off for some bit of sleep, and perhaps, (I hope) a spot of sweet dreams of you. You’re just about getting up to greet this very day which I’m closing. Isn’t it a pretty morning? It was when it left here, anyway.”

May 11, 1945

May 11, 201520. May 1945, Dart's LettersSusan

This is a sweet letter, written by a love-sick sailor who was smitten by an unrelenting love for a pretty, perky, practical girl and will never be the same.

The opening paragraphs mentioned lots of work, no time to write, and a rare game of cards he was roped into last night. He’s never liked cards before, and his opinion remains the same after his experience last night. For what it’s worth, he never came to like cards and could hardly ever be persuaded to join in any type of card game. It was quite the opposite with Dot, who was always up for any number of games. It was she who bore the responsibility of teaching their future children everything they knew and loved about cards.

Then he tells her that he has been entertaining himself by repeatedly writing the name of his cousin Jim’s wife – “Mrs. Dorothy Peterson.” He thinks it’s a perfectly lovely name and vows he would not find it confusing for one moment if there happened to be two women of that name in the family. In fact, he’d quite like it.

He resumes the letter when it’s nearly bedtime. Two hours ago, he moved a buddy off his locker so he could retrieve the start of this letter and Dot’s picture. Since then, the gang has been engaged in lively conversation with no letter-writing being done. Topics have ranged from good books to sports (for which Dart, I’m sure had very little to add), past Navy actions (which he cannot write about here), and girls. “Just between you and me and anyone who’ll listen, I think I’ve got the sweetest, prettiest, most completely lovely girl of any fellow on the ship. Your pictures are really admired by all who see them. ”

He continues, “Something I wish I could do is make a reasonable facsimile of interest when fellows show me pictures of their girls. But I begin seeing you instead, and with your smile lighting the back of my mind, I can’t praise any other girl at all.”

The rest of the letter is filled with such poetic sweetness that I cannot paraphrase it with any justice. He says, “Boy, how I wish I could look into those pretty brown eyes with little flecks of gold in them, again. Want to hold you in my arms, feel your cheek soft against mine, whisper things in your ear and kiss you again and again. I heard my buddy Vernon Hite talk about all the girls he’d kissed before he met his wife. He discussed several (lemons, spicy, firm, warm, cold, etc.) and said that his wife reminded him of rosebuds when he kissed her. I’d heard that expression before, but I’d been looking for it to describe in some way the girl I wanted to go on kissing forever. If I had a nickel for every girl I kissed before I met you, I could ride downtown on the streetcar. But even that amazingly small (for a lad of 21) experience is enough for me to know that you’re the one, the only one I want. And knowing you feel the same is the greatest consolation I could have for not being with you.”