A Story of War

I get onto walking between crutches, and tomorrow will get a pair of sticks. There is one Gus Sherrit here with a Ford 8 and Chris Arnell of 268 and myself go into Swindon several times. We get into the cinemas free for being crocks, and later go to the Kings Arms, The Bell or Goddards Arms to drink beer and get into conversation with the dames – not too successfully though. Gus meets and fixes one of the ward WAAF orderlies. Three of us go in one night on six crutches, which looks a bit odd.

I ring up Daph when they suddenly want to turn me out, and she cannot have me until the 22nd so I am in a bit of a quandary, until they change their minds. I hear from Mhairi that she is going to marry a Russian. I see an ‘Erk’ in the reception office who has just come back from Singapore, who after drinking some local hooch, reputedly brought across the Causeway by Chinese women in the tyres of their bicycles, 21 die, 2 are paralysed and he and another go blind. I see a somewhat emotional U.S. film called “When You Went Away”, which reduces me to tears – I always seem to get right into the mood of a film, and usually come out in a sort of daze afterwards.