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Date: August 23rd 1943
To
Family
From
Geoff
Letter

Dear Family,

This unfamiliar stationery is an English type of Form, and will go through the English mail, so I don't know how long it will take.

Just come back from a week-end, when I visited the regiment. The C.O. tells me that the technical adjutant's job is open, and I'll hop right into it as soon as the course is finished. Of course, I didn't go back just to see the regiment, there are other inducements where they are stationed. A Wren, for instance. I seem to have stuck pretty consistently to the Wrens for some reason. Must be the uniform! My present Wren has just been promoted to Leading Wren, about the equivalent of a corporal, and I have a bit of a job keeping her in her place. Maybe a change to the CWAC's is indicated, there seems to be quite a bunch around, up in London. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they seem to be a pretty ropey (scruffy) bunch, taken as an average, with about the same troubles in a very minor degree, as the male end of the Canadian Army had when they first arrived. They'll probably get over it.

The course is going very well. I can now talk with a certain amount of authority on splines, contact breakers and reduction ratios and such like. Only my vocabulary is strictly British, being an English school, with a touch of Cockney, because our instructor is a Cockney. Gas is petrol of course, mud-guards might be soldiers as far as they're concerned, because here they're wings. And a convertible coupé is a foursome drop-head. Or is this a tender subject now in Canada with gas rationing? I guess it is.

My civvy suit arrived at the regiment, but I havent got it yet. It should be very useful when it does arrive, and thank you very much for sending it.

By the way, some socks, if they are still possible, would be very, very useful. I'm getting pretty low and coupons are hard to come by. And, if you could send me some sock stretchers I could then beat my batman into washing my socks, instead of sending them to the local boiling and shrinking emporium.

Well cheerio and write often. Morale of the troops you know, although I know you're all pretty well tied up in work and things. Love to you all, Geoff. P.S. How does it feel to be a stock-broker again, Dad.

Glad to hear you're back in town. G