A Story of War

Out and sick in quarters. Lts ‘Art’ J. Welling and F.J. Theison U.S.A.A.F. are staying in the mess for a few days. They produce a Chinese banknote and make me a ‘Burma Roadster’. I get out my .22 and shoot a couple of piedogs round the mess. Dawn and dusk sorties. One takes four bullets to kill, I miss another at 15′ with my .38! When Burt Mann was running Jean around he used to dine at the B.N.R. hotel frequently and tell the mess corporal (Allard) to ring up and get a table. Eventually the Corporal used to say “The usual, sir?”

That Jap a/c might have been a JU88. There has been a stripped down one over several times (Calcutta etc) and a Hurricane got near it once but the Jap pulled the ‘tit’ and shot away.

We have a society in the mess called ‘The Red Hand’. We sit and discuss ways of getting rid of S/Ldr Hammerbeck and we chalk up the unit or formation to whom we have ‘spread the gospel’ – i.e. 221, 224 Group, 15 Corps, 70 Division etc. We read in the papers that ‘showers of flowers will be dropped by an aircraft in Ranchi on the R.C. Festival on 25/10/42’. That’s tomorrow, but we have heard nothing official yet.