August 4, 1944
My assignment came through on Tuesday morning and on Tuesday afternoon,
little Elizabeth was on her way... I'm with 2 very swell girls and an
English driver (as yet unseen) somewhere in the midlands. We live in the
lap of luxury after London - a real home, with a bathtub of our own, hot
water and a garden! And our landlady is a dear - she has just brought
us coffee on a silver tray... I wish you could see me in my new battle
dress - a sadder sight you wouldn't see this side of the St. Joseph Vala.
August 9, 1944
This is our day off. After a week of it, I have never appreciated a whole
empty day as I am doing right now. We have been working 12 and 14 hour
days and I almost weep when I hear the word doughnut. The payoff came
when our supervisor dropped in and presented us with a new record to play
on our recording outfit. It's called "Dunkin' in the ETO" and
in theory is supposed to be the theme song of all the Clubmobiles. Ugh
and ugh again. All joking aside, we mix a mean doughnut and the coffee
is certainly better than the G.I. variety. Our Clubmobile is a converted
Greenline bus, fixed up with a lounge, sink, doughnut machine and serving
facilities. Also a British driver and us. We start out about six in the
morning, either make our doughnuts parked outside the local Red Cross
Service Club, or else we make them at camp with ten million G.I.'s and
an occasional Colonel watching the operation. Then we turn on our recording
machine and serve, all the time smiling like mad and dividing our time
between doughnuts, the mess sgt., the coffee and the sea of faces.
Our little guys take awfully good care of us and we are sort of community
property - they get us our weekly rations, fix us up with boots, see that
we see the dentist and all that. This afternoon we are going swimming...
We also go to the battalion and regimental dances and officer dances.
And then the cold bleak dawn and the doughnut machine.
August 18, 1944
It's strange and beautiful to ride through the blacked out night in our
merry Clubmobile. Everything is so very dark and yet filled with a feeling
of alertness and a thousand muffled sounds. The starts seem closer and
there are more of them. I feel like Columbus himself as I swing out of
the door to investigate the sign posts with a flashlight. Of course, the
very names of the cities and towns are still magic to me and a signpost
in a blackout adds to the spell.
August 28, 1944
In my pedalings [on bicycle] about the countryside, I've found some wonderful
old churches with ditto churchyards - one, especially, has parts that
are 14th century. However, the British can't understand our feverish delving
in search of ancient architecture. To them, an old building is an old
building and they are much more proud of a Victorian atrocity of a tower
to which their fathers each subscribed a sixpence back in 1906.
St. Mary's
Churchyard, 14th Century England
Photo by, Whissonsett Gallery
September 1, 1944
Some day, I'll be able to tell you about this, without the base censor
leaning over my shoulder and when that comes, we'll have a dawn to dusk
session, preferably in the melon season, with plenty of ice cold beer
on hand. At least, I consider myself very fortunate to be in Clubmobile
- can't conceive of anything else. It's a rugged and irregular and weird
life, but it's wonderful. That is, as wonderful as anything can be under
the circumstances.
October 20, 1944
We have just returned from work via jeep - our Clubmobile blew out a front
tire on the main drag of a largish hamlet and after calling our maintenance
men, the Ministry of Works, and finally our headquarters in London, we
hailed a passing jeep and left our driver to entertain the curious. You
see how it goes - if it isn't a tire, it's the engine and if it isn't
the engine, it's the driver, dead drunk in "The Rainbow and Dove."