January 30th, 1945
C23 Gne. R.A Francis,
A. Battery, R.C.H.A
1st Field Regt. of Can.
C.A.A.F
Dear Georgia -
Tonight I thought maybe I’d better drop a line as I haven’t for some time. I haven’t heard from you for ages and wonder if you have written and I’ve never received it. I never received any from you at Xmas nor did I from the Club. There was a big fire in Halifax that I thought destroyed hundreds of tons of mail and I assumed that was the cause.
I haven’t heard from Muriel for some time (roughly a week) which is the longest with the exception of when she had her broken hand. Of course, I haven’t been with the Regt. but a D.R usually brings the mail up every second night or a Jeep comes up to supplement our rations. We are eating exceptionally well, in fact better than one would ever think.
We are awake and our work is mostly done at night and we have coffee about every two hours. We found a ham in a house and we have fried ham in the mornings and three times today we have had potatoes in the form of chips and steaks. We also had hamburger steaks. The infantry cook for us and they don’t have many rations but they killed a cow and give us liberal amounts of steak. We usually “brew up” several times a night as we can’t have big fries during the day on the account of smoke. We are not doing bad for seaffs. We shall be going in to the Regt. for a break on the 1st. I’ll be able to get down to some decent letter writing.
The last I heard from Muriel she was getting ready for passport situation and having a medical so I gather it won’t be long till she will be on her way home.
If the Russians keep up the good work (for there are 85 miles from Berlin) I shall soon be home also and maybe even before my home leave comes up.
However, I will be home this Spring or early summer for a certainty and I’m looking forward to that. I’ll be sending a parcel soon for Muriel as it takes so long for England I fear she will have left. I’m coming close to the end so I’ll say hello to the kids and make this the end,
Heaps of love,
Raymond