A Story of War

Quite a pleasant evening with young Mary and I am told that in Holland one cannot sleep with a girl after knowing her only two days – I feel like asking “how long”. Next day I track down Kieks and make a date for 8pm. I go out to collect her and we go to the dunes, but it is damn windy, so we go down an underground passage to the local Kommandant’s room in a portion of the West Wall, where is a bed-less mattress and a chair. I set to work at once plus half a bottle of whisky, only to find myself up against principles – the one of ‘husbands only’. I point out that she is not married, but no go. I return to bed a bit drunk on a quarter of a bottle of neat Scotch.

Yesterday I meet a US Colonel Mackolinger (?) who is sitting in the hotel lounge with a bottle of Scotch and Bourbon, a dame (Midge) and her husband, a flight lieutenant in the Dutch airforce and ADC to Queen Wilhelmina. I then meet an ENSA dame in trouble, and nearly finish my Scotch with her in my room, lending her my electric kettle to wash her hair. I go and collect Mary but we find all the cinemas booked up, so sit in the Club and drink Scotch and then go and see her friend Yotja, whose mother is just out of Dachau. I see her home and kiss her in the car and we all have a date for tomorrow – Saturday.

I have a room in the Terminus Hotel with a very comfortable bed, but no hot water. I have to feed in the SHAEF PWD (Psychological Warfare Division) Mess across the road, having fed at various places before. My office is in the hotel writing room with two telephones and a third on the way, and a staff of six, a 30 CWT lorry, and a utility that I have borrowed from the Air Component of the SHAEF mission. My job, not yet organised, will be to book people on aircraft to Croydon, and on the SHAEF Command squadron Austers to wherever they want. As for the rest, I am enjoying it, and provided I could find some nice thing to sleep with occasionally I should feel content. However, no doubt I shall have to go – Transport Command may provide their own officer or the Indian Army may catch me – Bah!