Monday, 2 October, 1944

G.H.N.

2.10.44                                                                     187

My Very Own Darling,

How nice it was to find two letters from you awaiting my arrival back from my week-end.

I am so glad that you enjoyed your leave Darling.  I suppose that by now you will have got over your tiring time in Rome.  However, if you will go gadding about!

Hope that the Censor lets your sea letter come through this time, telling me all about it.

As I travelled back this evening I realised that it would be the last time I should be returning to the G.H.N.  That thought though did not give me any regrets.  As I have said before the only regret I shall have when I leave here is that I shall be leaving some very good friends I have made here.

I do not feel in any way attached to this place.  I cannot find the right words in which to express just how I feel about my four years here.  I feel somehow that they have just been a waiting period of my life and that that chapter is now coming quickly to a close.  I suppose that Fate intended that I should come here and that I should go on night duty and have my “nights off” at the same time as a certain young soldier had 48 hours leave and that I should meet that soldier and one day wake up to the fact that I had fallen very deeply in love with him.  For that reason – I am very glad that I came here but now that the G.H.N. has served its purpose and I have given my services to the best of my ability – well it is time that I left.

My immediate future is not yet settled.  I am still waiting to hear from the Labour Exchange.  Goodness knows where I shall be when they have finished messing about.

Wherever I end up though my Darling, I shall still be waiting for you to return and whisk me off to our own little house where we shall be together for all time.

I love you so very, very much my Precious – you are my very life.

For ever, your own, Grace

P.S. Started a sea-letter to you yesterday.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for your comment. I will post it on the page as soon as possible.

Popular posts from this blog

Monday, 4 September, 1944 - Two Letters

G.H.N. 4.9.44 My Very Own Darling, A letter arrived from you this morning dated Aug:27 th .   Your letters mean everything to me Darling – they are the brightest spots of my existence whilst you are away. As you say in your letter August was certainly a month of events.   Let us hope that September is even more eventful – if the happenings of these first few days are anything to go by. All I want my Darling is to get this war over quickly and have you home again.   I never thought that I could miss anybody as much as I have missed you. Once again I have been to see the Appointments Officer for the Ministry of Labour.   I told her that I was not going to Belper.   Kit came with me as we had both decided that we would go to Hull – we had been told that the Fever Hospital there was a good training school.   However, she had not any vacancies at Hull and asked us if we would go to Grimsby as there were vacancies there, so we said that we would. ...
Read more

Air Letters, Sea Letters, Air Mail forms and 'Airgraphs'

Image
 What is the difference between 'air letters', 'air graphs' and the air mail forms? It seems that the 'air letters' are ordinary letters sent by air mail (and presumably charged by weight).  Increasingly as the weeks go by, more and more of Stan and Grace's letters are written on air mail forms such as those shown in this photograph. The first 'air graphs' between Stan and Grace make an appearance on 6 April and look like a small photocopied version of a brief letter written on a special airgraph form.  North Lincolnshire Museum's web site tells us that airgraphs were invented in the 1930's by Kodak Eastman and a service was set up in 1941 to transmit airgraphs between the Middle East and the UK.  (northlincolnshiremuseum.co.uk/discover/curators-choice-airgraphs/).  The airgraph forms were photographed on mircofilm in Cairo and the film flown back to the UK.  This took up less precious space than paper letters on the aircraft flying between t...
Read more

Thursday, 6 January, 1943

Grace’s nights off were from 1 st to 5 th January, so by today we should have a letter from Grace, written after she had arrived back at the Nurses’ Home in Nottingham.   There is no such letter – why not? Stan and Grace know that, very soon, Stan is going to be sent abroad to join one of the campaigns in either North Africa or the Far East.   Stan has done the preparation for his unit to go abroad, they have had their inoculations – they are ready to go. Who can blame this young couple if they decide to snatch a few more days together? The story will unfold in the coming letters, but it seems that they went to a phone box and Stan, pretending to be Grace’s father, rang the hospital and spoke to the Matron.   It seems that he told the Matron that his wife was confined to bed by a bad attack of ‘lumbago’.    Their older daughter, Vera, was an invalid and needed care and, of course, he had to go out to work.   Could Grace be allowed to stay at home for ...
Read more