No 163

Major GS Andrews, RCE

Survey, HQ First Cdn Army O/S

25 April 43

Dear Jean:

Mail was very good last week, your financial memo with Mary's swings & kitty kats, your airgraphs of 4 and 11 Apr, a parcel from you with tobacco and Mrs M's chicken, etc, a long letter from Frank, one from the Hon HG Perry Chairman of the Post War Rehabilitation Council, thanking me for my "Proposals for Air Survey", and an airletter from Bill Hall. First, the financial statement if fine, and you are to be congratulated on improving our position by over $1600. It is wonderful to have a wife, who in addition to all her other virtues, is a first class financial manager, and it is a great burden off my mind here to be able to entrust all these matters to you. I note we owe about $2500 on the house yet, and I suppose soon we will have the option of paying THAT off in a lump, or several lumps as we can afford it. I think we ought to and will eventually go into the financial reservoir behind the country's war effort. By the way, I forgot to tell you that I sent off £20 to you a couple of weeks ago. Will send more as I can accumulate it here. The army is still dipping my pay for $25 per month to make up an overpayment of $100 made back in 1940, so my bank account doesn't grow quite so fast as it might. This is a bit galling in view of the fact that they have held up my staff pay now for a full year, on 1 May, just a small matter of $640. I think if Gen McNaughton knew that, he would get it put right in a hurry, but unfortunately I can't with dignity bring the matter to his attention, and apparently his satellites think because I haven't been sent home to staff college, that I shouldn't get staff pay. The technical specialist in our army is penalized if he doesn't belong to the right "army clique", which means Royal Military College, the old space-time MPAN, or the Permanent Force, or influential "connections" at Ottawa Montreal or Toronto. However the main thing is to do our bit to win the war in whatever way we're best fitted, and I honestly think I'm doing that, however I sometimes think a lot of them not as though other things are more important. I am sorry I got you all excited about a possible trip, which apparently won't materialize.If it should, it would likely be very sudden, with little notice. Elsie Coldwell is the daughter of my rancher friend up in the Big Bar, who put us up on our honeymoon, and who wouldn't let me pay him. They had a lovely big log house. They were always kind to me when I was a young lad just starting out. The chicken was a godsend for Mrs M., as her tummy was a little touchy, and it is the one thing she can eat and enjoy. This was a blustery Easter, squalls and cold, but it rained mostly at night so we can't complain. I worked on the wood pile yesterday, and has lunch up there, your Hedlunds Beef dinner.

LOVE GER.