Thursday July 27/44

Dear Phyl

Guess its high time that I dropped you a line so here it is. I received your airmail letter of July 4 on July 15 tanks a lot.

Things have been pretty quite around here as usual, not much sign of leaves and passes opening up, but last Sunday I did get a bit of a break. There was an army sponsored tour to Hampton Court Palace which is at Hampton Court in the suburbs of London. It is an old mansion built by Wolsley and later used by Henry VIII as a palace as well as by several succeeding Sovereigns. A good many of the valuable fixtures have been removed for safe keeping till after the war but it still is a most lovely place with most of the original paintings and carvings left. It has been altered or rebuilt at different periods by various kings. A good deal of the work has been done by Sir Christopher Wren. There are alto-gether 1400 rooms but some of them are still being used.

After we had gone through the palace two of us went for a boat ride on the Thames. Its been quit some time since Ive been boat riding but boy it was sure swell. After that it was time to get back to Camp.

The weather here has been indifferent the last while or I should say most of all summer. Our best weather was in May and since then it has been about 2 days a week of nice weather and the other five days were of any and every kind of weather you can think of. Dads parcel which he sent on June 13 arrived yesterday July 26. It was a bit slow in coming but it was well worth waiting for. There were cookies, candy, bars tobacco, handkerchiefs, cheese

Well Phyl can’t think of much more for to-night so Cheerio for now

Love
 Allen

my address –
M40905
Cfn Cochrane AG
A Coy
1^st Cdn Base W/S
R.C.E.M.E.
Cdn Army Overseas.