Somewhere in England
May 3rd, 1940

Dear Mom,

At long last the order for leaves has come through and some of the boys have gone on seven days leave with full travel warrant to and from their destination and two pounds ten in their pockets. That doesn't seem very much for seven days but the Army has a rule "no advance in pay" so they have to do the best they can with what they have. I intend to go up to Scotland for I figure that as long as the government is providing transportation, I might as well go as far as I can. Sometime within the next few weeks should see me on my way and as you can no doubt guess, I am looking forward to it eagerly. I have heard such nice things about the Scotch hospitality that I want to experience it myself.

The news from Norway is not so good this morning. It looks as though the boys should consider themselves very lucky indeed that they didn't get there after all. All Allied troops have been forced to withdraw from Tronheim and, although the Prime Minister says that nothing has been lost, I think he is very wrong for the loss of British prestige in the Scandinavian countries has been very great. There is certainly a lot going on over there that we know nothing about and something has been happening in the past week that is viewed with grave concern by the neutral countries, by Sweden and by our own government. What it is, whether a severe loss of personelle or a decisive victory for the Germans I cannot say. But something is going to come out very soon.

I hope Peter H----- is in the Air Force and I wish I were in with him. But there is no use kicking the best of it. I had hoped to be able to transfer to the Air Force but it appears the I joined the wrong regiment for that. No one is allowed to transfer out of the PPCLI: not while "Shorty: C--- is Colonel anyway. He says that if this outfit is not good enough for us, no other one is either.

Sorry this is so short but there is not much more to write about.

Love to you all,

Jim