A Story of War

I have Henry Druce in to dinner at the Club plus his dame, and an English girl who works in his outfit, one Doris Peake, such a beautiful blonde that it isn’t true. Once Anning, Lt Commander Philips and the Town Major and I were having lunch in the Club when she appeared with some guardsman and we are practically put off our food! Anyway, when I go out to Henry’s for that boating party I see her there and shake a limpid hand, though she doesn’t come out on the party. So I tell Henry to bring her in, and much to my surprise he does. We then go to the Metropole and dance around, where she improves, being a little frigid it seems, and then back to my room for some beer.

The next day I go to this Teddy, Hoekstra’s friend., with a half bottle of rum, and tell her that we cannot go to Noordwijk as my jeep lights are U/S. She is livid and makes all sorts of practical suggestions which I find great difficulty in turning down. We drink the rum and dance round the flat to three broken records, with pieces missing, and I eventually score a home base. Next day I go out to Wassenaar to collect Iris and have dinner there, going to a cinema later – the Club where we encountered Leslie Wall, and then to his flat to brew tea. I take Iris home, and suggest tomorrow, but no good, so maybe I have ‘had’ her too. She goes out with a guardsman from Rotterdam, one George Broderick, and she seems a bit distant with me, so maybe she is in love with him – hell, but she’s a beauty.