Page 26 - 1944 VES Meteor

COMPLETE OPTICAL DEPARTMENT
Expert Watch Repairing
LETTERS
~larch 8. 19-U.
Dear -----•
1 wrote you not long ago in an~wer
to your letter ahout enlisting. Hope you got my letter and hope you feel hetter about th e proposition. Don't waste any of the happiness and good time which you should have now. Don't waste in vain regrets (that you are not eighteen) because happiness we waste is gone and cannot be re- gained, so the sooner that one start>. to take what happiness is offered to him, the less he will have lost. You may have more than enough of war before it is over.
Our forces have certainly made headway since the Gilbert and Mar- shall Islands campaigns began. The raids on Truk and the Mareanas, and the headway in the Southwest are very encouraging, but after all, we have so far just gone into Japan\ outer de- fense rim. The rest of the road is a long one and will be a tough one. I think that progress will be good thi> year, but that the war in the Pacifir is still far from finished.
\Vish I could tell you where T am, etc. \Ve are working away as usual. There is nothing very romantic about most of the coral islands I've been on. Often they have been shelled and bombed to smash the Japs; there is not much left but tangled, burnt out wreckage, broken coconut stumps, and scarcely a sprig of living green. The ground has been churned to dust. and it is almost choking at times. It takes a long time to get all of the dead Japs from under the debris, and in the meantime the smell is something you never forget. I have seen heavy bombers come back with one or two motors shot out, and once a B-14 re- turned to the place where I was with a Jap flag stuck on it. The bombers were flying so low that the bomb from one bomber blew the fla~ up agaimt the next bomber ...
DAD. Somewhere in the South Pacific.
~larch 1-1, 19-1-1.
Dear -------•
We are working away as usual.
Haven't seen a Jap plane in quite a while now. I think we must have chased them back to Japan. As far a~ wrecked Jap planes go, I have seen 90 in one batch on the ground. \\'hen our forces shell and bomh a place, they certainly wreck it .
Love, Somewhere in the South Pacific.
T HE l\1ETEOR thanks a member of the student body for sharing with others parts of two letters from the war zones. Particular attention is called to the advice given to boys under enlistment age.-ED.
. . . 1 have iound that England J• much the same as l left it, but part> of London are a bit shabby. ~Iy mother told me that there have been 17 bomb< in our grounds since the start of the war, and they have left some of them uncovered for me to see, and I mUll say that they look like small swimmin~ pools. You have no idea what a large land mine can do when it blows u1• There is one crater in Epping Fore