Nov 8 /43 #4
Dear Mother:
Continuing on with my leave (it is now Thursday in case this letter beats #3). Uncle Geoff met me at the station and we drove back for tea. The rest of the family and an attractive girl friend of Valeries staying there were in Stratford until about supper. I like them all very much but it was no rest cure. Everybody works hard but I was in time for breakfast getting up about nine. They lent me some of Dicks pants and gumboots and Doreen, Valerie and I started in to dress wheat. This meant emptying 200 lb. sacks mixing in the mercuric powder and sacking up again in two smaller sacks. Valerie gets us started and then rides away on her horse after the cattle. Comes back in two hours and reprimands us for not having finished. What a slavedriver. I made her bring over 2 large sacks for that. The afternoon was easier. I drove one of the tractors and finished harrowing one field in the afternoon. Aeroplanes were buzzing around (not low) but I thought of how some of the instructors at SFTS used to make tractor operators dive overboard for safety. At supper I said I had to go back the next day which surprised them not knowing I had been so long in London. I can imagine what cousin Val was thinking. I saw more of Doreen than her because that night she went to a meeting of the Girls Training Corps in which she is a 2nd lieut. and on Saturday morning she went fox hunting soon after breakfast. Uncle Reggie was over on Saturday morning and he Uncle Geoff and I put in the morning bringing in some cattle and dressing more wheat. I had to rush off right after lunch promising to be back at the earliest opportunity. And so I will but I don’t expect any more leave while I am stationed here. Between trains in London I phoned Peter at the club. He had just left, on his way to a party at the Windmill. Financially and in other ways I don’t know how he does it.
I had a letter from Dick today. He has put in for leave Dec. 1 so I hope we can manage something then. If I am still here I should be able to wangle a few days but can’t say yet. I haven’t heard from you since leaving Canada.
With love from
Tony
[Note: Transcription provided by collection donor.]
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