March 29 – Fowey

Going crazy waiting, hon. The kids here in the hut who haven't been home in about a year and a half have launched a campaign of "simulated neurosis" in order to get home. In the middle of chow or a crap game or a muster, one of them will suddenly look up real startled and say, "What are bugles blowing for? Listen. Shhh!" Or "Did you bring those butterflies in here?" Everything stops and all the guys fall in with the gag. I'll guarantee that the whole base will be nuts in a week!

April 6 – Fowey

Starting at 3:30 this coming morn, I'm getting up to go to the sea again! Yep, we're going to start working for a living again. Maneuvers are usually fun, though. If I can only find my way down to the docks at that horrible hour through this bloomin' Limey blackout, I'll be okay.

When I got off watch last night, I came back up to the hut and reread five of your letters, darling. I've been doing that almost every night for the past week, and they make up the loveliest part of the day for me. I'm warmed and excited by the almost tangible presence of you in each one. I fall asleep wrapped in that loveliness.

April 23 -- LST 491

Seven p.m. in the evening, and a real busy Sunday it's been too. Tommy showed me the letter you wrote him. thanks so much. you're the sweetest thing God ever made, Junie. Why you should trifle with this sailor is more than I'll ever understand.

living on this margin, where values and standards are such impersonal entities, where "important" things are so temporal, where "people" stop and "jobs" start, where worth is synonymous with "efficiency" rather than the ability to harness dreams and make them so. Such existence is completely negative, so terribly foreign to that which we're fashioned for ourselves, June. You are the reason that only half of me can be regimented. The other half goes on dreaming. I have this most sincere regret than every man here doesn't have his June back home, preserving the sparks, mothering the fire of sensitivity and softness that these cold men will need so desperately. Humanity needs love and warmth, even as it does sacrifice.

I heard about My War on TV. I refuse to read books about war. Especially the second world war. This is the first book I've ever read on the subject and only cause I knew what it was about. If you're interested in reading about war, and even if you aren't, this book is beautiful and truly unique. May we all have the kind of love Tracy and June had.