#10 Repair Depot
June 19, 1941

My darling Jill,

Here is your very penitent husband sweetheart – away behind in my letters as usual but awfully lonely for you and I have so much to say I hardly know where to start.

You must be pretty busy these days, wrestling with the absorption of all the knowledge necessary for your exams. I still wish to God I had it all to do over again, but I guess I’ve lost my chance. I really missed your letters this last little while, until I got this one on Tues and a long one at that. I’m getting to be like a kid that finds a dollar, – every time I get a letter from you I hibernate and peruse it – all the time imagining you writing it all and doing the things you write about. Time out for supper darling – be back soon. Loads of love and stuff.

Here I am again darling having replenished my energy and had a good smoke.

About this station and my present status. First I must tell you that this is no promotion, mearly the second stage of our training and there will be no promotions till I pass I.T.S., although we get a ‘dime a day’ more in pay when we enter this, our first school.

We are here for a period of three to ten or twelve weeks, depending on the time when the schools are ready to receive us.

It is quite a good station all in all, having far better food than Penhold and they issue us plenty of passes. We get a blanket pass till 1 A.M., two reveille (6:15 A.M.) passes a week and we are all getting at least one 48 while we are here. I have been going into town fairly often and just cruising around, or hitch-hiking out into the country, which is really much more interesting.

I’m awfully sorry about Amigo getting cut up as she did. These things happen so quickly and easily when one leasts expects them and are so hard to heal after they happen. The main thing is to keep them washed out every day and have a good film of ointment over them. This will help the cuts to heal cleanly and from the inside first, which will mean that there should be no scars left.

I can quite understand how the rope got in behind the shoe, and have occasionally had a horse get her feet caught in a fence in the same manner. It is necessary to have the shoes slightly longer than the hooves to maintain a proper balance and it is here that a shoe usually starts to loosen. This is quite understandable when you visualize the amount of weight, in motion, on the back of the hoof in comparison to the toe, where the movement is much more stationary. I’m sure you can see, darling, how a short shoe would soon result in strained pasterns. There is just one little thing I would like to point out – please don’t take it as an admonition, because it is something we all do. You should never tie a rope too tight on a horses neck, which is axiomatic, but, conversely, you should always tie it close enough so that the rope cannot get caught on anything.

These little things are the beauty of accidents. One can take an accident as a catastrophy and it it will be purely detrimental, or one can take it as an abject lesson and derive a great deal of good from it. So please don’t worry over it sweetheart – it gets you nowhere fast.

About your bridle. I have one on ice at the Great Western Saddlery and will send it next Mon., that being payday. while I was at Peehole (pardon me), I had the money for the bridle, but couldn’t get one and when I arrived here I was in exactly the opposite position.

Our pay just disappears these days and will continue to until we get into I.T.S. We are all getting as much for our money as we can at present, because as soon as we get into school, we will have no time for playing around.

So far I have not got tight while drinking with the boys, but I have to watch myself and keep slipping glasses over to the next fellow when he isn’t looking. I get quite a kick out of watching them drink glass after glass, till all of a sudden they find themselves tight, much to their surprise. However they are a damn find bunch of men, with practically no exceptions. This of course is in reference to the aircrew, and there is quite a difference between the airmen and the ground crew.

We have a pretty good complement of officers here although everything is pretty strict. Most of the commissioned are technical experts of one type or another. As there is a lot of assembly work going on it is, of course, necessary to have experts on hand to supervise and check on the work. Also, only officers are allowed to test fly the new planes, so we have several test pilots around.

By the way there is something I forgot. Would you try and get me a couple of good pictures of my saddle and for the love of mike dearest send me some more of yourself. If you can get one of your Mother and Dad I’d love to have them.

I have heard the Naval band quite often – in fact every morning when I was working at Ft. Rodhill. They are an A+ outfit aren’t they? It is really inspiring to hear them play their own

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