Dear Folks,

So you see this is two letters. I blush at the date of the other, but just got so tired of carrying it around in my pocket and getting it more and more crinkled that I decided it was too stale to send. On second thought it seems a supplement should mend the situation—except for my stupid absent-mindedness and possible and quite justified impatience with me at home.

We finished up with the red tape of arriving, yesterday, and though they won’t be ready for us to fly for a couple of days, our group has been formed. We have both an instructor and an assistant instructor, and there are ten of us, which makes for a squadron of 12 altogether. Three of us were instructors at Lee. Five were students there, whom we instructed, and the other two are from Miami. For the most part we’ll fly together—formation, navigation, gunnery, dive bombing, etc., though we’ll start with a few hours of familiarization with the SBD. It should be excellent training and mostly fun.

The station here is so new as to have its disadvantages—no heat in rooms and consequent damp cold in this mostly cool, wet weather we’ve been havng. The temptation then, with little to do and with rooms uncomfortable, has been to go “ashore.” It is only too accessible for a change, but waacs are everywhere in droves, and since they now have to be in uniform at night, do us little good—speaking of enlisted ranks, most of which are unattractive anyway. Officers aren’t too common, and the few pretty ones will doubtless always have dates—but still one hasn’t been here very long. There are four or five widely scattered movie theatres, at least one big bowling alley, a place where I can get the Boston Herald only two days late, etc., etc. A large part of the town lies across the Halifax river—actually a sort of lagoon behind the very long peninsula the ocean edge of which is the famous beach. There are four bridges (only two now opened), each perhaps about a half mile long—roughly the width of the peninsula too. The head of the lagoon, incidentally, looks on the map to be about 12 miles to the north, the mouth about ten to the south. The geography will become very clear from the air, and should be interesting. Hope to get my bicycle next Sunday, which is usually everyone’s day off.

Love to all,

T.R.

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