This collection consists of 37 letters written by Ellsberg to his wife, Lucy, from November 25, 1942-February 11, 1943.
 
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List of Africa Letters
 
Letter # 92
Nov. 25, 1942
En route westward by air
 
Lucy darling:
 
It is remarkable how fast events are moving. Only three days ago I wrote you stating I could leave my former station with a clear conscience to any successor, and was speculating on ways and means of getting relieved a few months from now to go home.
 
Then yesterday afternoon out of a clear blue sky came orders from the War Department (apparently initiated by the Navy Dept.) detailing me to proceed immediately to join our newly arrived forces for urgent salvage work in the ports they have recently taken over. And now, less than sixteen hours later I am in the air on my way.
 
That I kiss Massawa goodbye without any regrets is hardly true. As for the town itself and its infernal climate I can give three cheers for my departure. But I should honestly have liked to have stayed a month or so longer to see many of the major things on which I have sweated for long months and which are now nearing completion, actually put into service. But someone else will have that pleasure.
 
Ahead of me lies the wreck of the French ports. Judging by the tenor of the Washington cable ordering me there, I judge they must be a mess. But still they must be put into condition as the jumping off points for the main attack of this war. Probably there is nothing ahead but trouble – not in twenty years has the Navy ever sent me anywhere except where there was trouble and now the Army also seems to be getting the habit, as my orders are to report to the general commanding. So this also is still service with the Army. It has however some advantages over my last job, for here at least what is wanted will certainly get attention in Washington and no fooling. And no more of JDP (Ed: Johnson, Drake & Piper), though I had them thoroughly subdued anyway before I left, with their main trouble-maker booted out and not a peep out of any of the others for over a month.
 
I had quite a long day yesterday. I didn’t get back to my station from the hills until seven PM, after which I had to write a lot of final orders with directions to my officers, afloat and ashore, get my equipment ready to get underway for pastures new, and finally pack my things. I was going on that till 2:30 AM. On a doubled maximum air travel allowance (150 pounds) I am taking with me one steamer trunk, and my two zipper suitcases. That will give me clothes enough to get along with. The rest of my outfit, one trunk, my huge suitcase, my radio, and my books (these last in a packing box) will go later on one of my ships. But when I’ll see them is yet unknown.
 
I’m taking in that last shipment to follow me, the coffee percolator and the thermos bottles you sent me. All the rest of my outfit of dishes and mess gear I’m leaving for my successor, whoever he may be.
 
If you ever get the things back from the big chief, don’t send anything without further request. The summer clothing I won’t need for a while where I’m going; the toaster had better be kept at home, and whatever else was aboard I don’t remember.
 
I understand it is between cool and cold on that coast now. I’m taking with me one blue uniform and both my light and heavy overcoats, all of which I’ll certainly need. This plane is cold enough now so I’m wearing khaki trousers (not shorts), a sweater, a khaki coat, and my heavy overcoat and still feel cool, especially my toes in spite of heavy khaki socks. Which last reminds me you needn’t bother to buy and send me and knee length khaki socks at all now – the light ones I won’t need for the present and I have plenty of heavy of heavy ones and besides I probably won’t wear shorts anyway.
 
I drew all the money I had coming to me from the Army paymaster for per diem up to my departure, $144, which should take care of my needs for a while. I wasn’t able to get to Barclay’s Bank to draw the hundred dollars more or less I had there, as it was closed before I got the news, and hadn’t opened at 4:30 AM this morning when I left town to get up in the hills to catch a plane out. I presume I’ll be able to cash checks on it from elsewhere in Africa, though I may have to take exchange losses.
 
As regards mail, you can determine the new APO number from the N.Y. post office, I guess. I can’t find it out in Eritrea. When I get there, I’ll let you know what it is.
 
Now there are certainly over a dozen letters and all my Christmas packages on the way. I have left orders to have all of them readdressed to my new station, but heaven only knows when they’ll get to Eritrea, let alone get shipped back across the continent to me. But there is no help for the packages. The last letter I received from you was #135, with about six previous numbers missing as already reported to you. Any important information in any letters sent subsequent to #135 (or in the missing letters) had better be duplicated in the first letters you send to my new station after you get this letter or a cable advising you of the change. I’ll try to send a cable from Khartoum but I don’t know yet what luck we’ll have. And if I can, I’ll also send another when I get to my new station.
 
(Sleepier than the devil. I’ll take a nap for a while).
 
Had a few minutes rest, then my ears warned me we were coming down. And soon we were on the ground again in the city where I got Mary’s birthday necklace. It’s hot enough here. I’m staying overnight at the airport as the guest of the colonel commanding this station. Tomorrow early I continue westward over the route (in reverse direction) which I flew when first I hit this continent.
 
It’s fairly hot on the ground here, a dry heat. So once more it’s shorts, an open neck shirt, and a sun helmet. I took a nap this afternoon (a real one in a bed) and feel more rested. Right now the sun is setting, it’s cooling off a bit, and before me is the river. The flood season is over, and it is running placidly enough through the desert.
 
Last night, my last there, we had a lovely full moon shining over the Red Sea, wasted, of course, as usual, but anyway a beautiful night to remember for my farewell. Tonight no doubt, there’ll be the brilliant stars and the moon over the desert. But still no sweetheart to give them any meaning.
 
I was the envied center of all the army officers at Eritrean headquarters this morning at breakfast before I took off, not so much because I was leaving the country (where they are it’s always cool and pleasant enough) but because I was moving up to the front from which this was is going to be settled. I’m glad about it myself. If I must spend some more time on this continent, I’d much rather spend it on the active front than in the service of supply in the rear.
 
I guess they want me there rather badly for telegrams have been flying all over (literally) Africa looking for me. There’s a queer background to that situation. Early this month I got orders from Washington to proceed to a point some three thousand miles south of my station to inspect certain equipment, then jump four thousand miles across the continent to another place to inspect that, then back to my station and report, all to be done as soon as practicable. Inasmuch as I was wound up in that derrick job which I didn’t dare leave, I interpreted that “practicable” very liberally and never started. Which was lucky for when these last orders came I was on the spot and got away at once, while in our main headquarters they assumed I was wandering somewhere on this dark continent and started radio messages going everywhere to get their hands on me. I ran into one of the messages when I got here, which is the aerial crossroads of Africa, so they were able to notify the city down the river I was safely en route and to quit looking. My only regret about it is that I’ve missed a chance to see south Africa, but I’d rather have the derrick.
 
With much love, Ned
 
Letter #93
Nov. 26, 1942
En route by air
Thanksgiving Day
Approaching the west African coast
 
Lucy darling:
 
This is Thanksgiving Day and I can feel that I have very much to give thanks for. I’m still well, and for that I can sincerely thank God. And that I have you and Mary to look forward to on my homecoming, whenever that may be, is a cause for daily thankfulness.
 
Aside from all this, our victory seems now well on the road to achievement at least by early 1944 and possibly a little sooner. And for that may God be thanked from the bottom of our hearts.
 
I have been detached from my usual post and now that is all behind me. I don’t suppose I’ll ever see that station again. But I’ve left my mark on it and can leave with the feeling that I’ve accomplished there what Uncle Sam sent me out to do.
 
My orders now are to another command in Africa – sudden, unexpected, urgent. My new area will be full of action, and, I can feel, even more important in the success of our war effort than my last post, since I’ll be with the senior general and in the expedition which is now closest to America’s heart. By late afternoon I’ll be near the port at which I first landed on this continent, having crossed in one day going west what took three days on my first eastward trip. And tonight or early tomorrow morning, I’ll be flying north to my new post.
 
This is Thanksgiving Day without any Thanksgiving dinner. We had a grand one arranged in my late station, with turkeys native to Eritrea. But all I got today was breakfast at 4 AM somewhere in Egypt, a couple of sandwiches and coffee at 2 PM somewhere near Lake Chad, and possibly I’ll get dinner when we land on the coast. But the missed dinner means nothing to me – the real meaning of Thanksgiving Day as a  day in which to give thanks to God for his gifts and for his mercies I now understand in the same sense as the Pilgrims back in Plymouth understood it.
 
And so today I give thanks that God has given you and Mary, and earnestly pray that before long we may all be reunited. And until then I pray that God may give you health and sustain you in your trials until our separation is ended.
 
With all my love, my dear.  Ned
 
Letter #94
Nov. 27, 1942
On the opposite coast
from “as usual”
 
Lucy darling:
 
I was quite suddenly detached from my usual post and ordered quite a distance away for the same work in a more active area. I left the day before Thanksgiving and today, the day after Thanksgiving, I am awaiting transport to my new post.
 
To determine where I’m going, get a map and do the following:
            First: Take the distance (straight line) from where you live to where my younger brother lives.
            Second: Lay this distance off on a map from my former station in the same direction as from your home to my younger brother’s.
            Third: Take half this distance and lay it off at right angles to the second distance, in the direction (generally) that Clara’s home is from yours. This will spot the area (on the water, of course) to which I am now ordered.
 
I sent you a cable this afternoon from the point where I am today, as follows:
            “Detached. Send all future mail APO 625 care Staff Headquarters. Happy birthday to you.”
On account of cable censorship rules, I could not be more specific.
 
I regret to say that no one here knows nor can find out what the APO number of my new station is. Perhaps it hasn’t any yet. APO 625 is not the APO number of my new station. However, all mail for that station must now pass through this one where I am today, which is APO 625, and they promise here to forward to my new station all mail that comes here for me provided it is additionally marked “%Staff Headquarters” which is important, as otherwise it may not get into the hands of the staff officers who know where I am, and may otherwise never be forwarded.
 
Quite possibly the quickest dispatch mail to my new station will ever get will be via APO 625, but of that perhaps the New York post office can give you better information.
 
It is quite possible that no letter you wrote since #135, which was the last I received at my former post, will reach me for a month yet or more, even those forwarded from my former station, as I have also to inform them there of my new station address and the mail to my new station is bound to be in a chaotic state for some time yet as you can easily deduce. Consequently, any information contained in letters sent between #135 and the first letter you send after getting news of this change, should be duplicated in letters sent to the new station.
 
Two persons on the plane with me coming here (only they were bound immediately home) promised to get in touch with you and advise you of where I was going.
 
(Ed:  Lucy received the following letter:
 
December 1, 1942
RAF Ferry Command
Berry Field
Nashville, Tenn.
 
Mrs. Edward Ellsberg
714 Hanford Pl.
Westfield, N. J.
 
Dear Mrs. Ellsberg:
 
Recently in Africa I met Captain Ellsberg traveling by air from Khartoum to Accra. He asked me to let you know that he is being transferred to Oran for special duty with General Eisenhower. He should be on the scene by now.
 
Captain Ellsberg thought this particular bit of news might be censored – hence my note from within U.S.A.
 
It was a pleasure to meet Captain Ellsberg and I hope our tracks will cross again.
 
If there is anything you would like to send out to him, I can take it along with me on my next trip. I expect to leave at the end of this week.
 
Address whatever you send to me here at Nashville and I will take it to Accra (Gold Coast) and arrange to have it sent up from there to Oran.
 
It won’t be any trouble to me. The aircraft will take most anything. However, it would be advisable to keep the weight down to fifty pounds to expedite movement from Accra to Oran.
 
Sincerely yours,
 
Nicholas Pickard
Capt. RAFFC )
 
 
Tomorrow morning I’m due to leave here by air for the second leg of my journey. If I can, I’ll advise you from there by cable of my arrival, but I doubt the existence of any cable facilities there. At any rate, I’ll write also, but the mail, because of a circuitous route from there, will probably also be slow, so don’t worry if you hear nothing for some time after you get this. This may be the last letter I can send for some time from a spot where the mail facilities are excellent.
 
I ought to get action enough at my new post. I’m not likely to be told there when I want something, that it won’t be furnished because I’m in “an area of British responsibility.” If I don’t get it, it’ll be because of the physical difficulties of delivery and nothing else – Washington won’t be able to wash its hands of responsibility for this area.
 
I spent a couple of hours this afternoon looking over the town where I now am. This apparently is the coast where most of the American negros were taken as slaves – the types are very similar and radically different from the types on the other coast where I lately was. But this town isn’t much, and a couple of hours there suffice for a lifetime. This is not the port at which I first entered this continent, but is a little closer to home, its only attraction.
 
Since I was moved, I’m very anxious to get along and see what it is they’re so anxious to have me do that they hastily detached me from my old station by wire, and then started to scour Africa with telegrams trying to locate me under the mistaken impression that temporarily I was away from my post on an inspection trip.
 
With love, Ned
 
Letter #95
Nov. 28, 1942
In the air
 
Lucy darling:
 
I’m on the second leg of my journey to my new station, by air of course. Before I get through with this war, I’ll have had a very good bird’s eye view of this country.
 
I am, of course, still in the hands of the Army and I’m shortly going to be much more so. But everything so far goes well. I have an idea they expect some miracles of me on this task, but until I’ve seen something of the situation I must struggle with, I don’t know whether any seeming ones are possible.
 
There’s an article in Time of Nov. 23 that will interest you. It relates on page 28, the odyssey (misspelled?) of Colonel C. (Ed: Chickering) who sent you my waterlogged letter. You know the story of his torpedoing, no doubt. But what interested me was  the account by Time (completely erroneous) of how Colonel C. broke his health by engineering work in a climate with temperatures of 120° F., and was sent home as a result.
 
Colonel C. would never claim that and never did. He never worked in temperatures of 120° F. He never was away from his post high in the hills for over ten scattered days in his whole time in Eritrea and never had occasion to suffer from the Massawa heat.
 
According to his own statement (and he was very bitter about it) what caused his heart trouble and got him invalided home, was his continuous battle with JD&P (Ed: Johnson, Drake & Piper). He saw through them, all right, and it was a knockdown scrap with them all the way for him.
 
But as I’ve often found, the big boys can’t take it physically as well as some of us of more moderate dimensions, and his heart went back on him from the strain. It nearly killed him then to be ordered home an invalid in the middle of a war, and I always felt it was ironical (and ill-advised) to refuse him permission to fly home because his heart couldn’t stand it, and make him face the submarine danger instead for months. Rotten medical judgment in my opinion.
 
At any rate, I know that when Colonel C. cracked up, JD&P spread the word around my command that I was going out of there a nervous wreck soon – I’d crack too. They couldn’t understand how I could work really in a hot climate and work, especially with their damned machinations on my mind, and not have a nervous breakdown which they confidently predicted to my men.
 
But I’m afraid those dumbbells didn’t realize I’d been through some real troubles in my life before with both engineering problems and with men like Barton and (at one time) Rex Rogers, who really knew how to make trouble. At any rate, the ones who cracked up weren’t me but some of the JDP gang themselves, and when it was all over, I still had my health, my job, and my command intact, and they were the ones who were either invalids or out or silenced in frustration, gnashing their teeth in jealous rage. I guess they still can’t understand it, but I think I can. They drank too much whiskey, against which I could oppose a low blood pressure, a little intelligence, and an intense interest in doing my job, and so far as I was concerned the result was never in doubt, physically or otherwise. I was sure I could outlast those bums in any field, and I did.  That is not the least of the satisfactions I can take away from my late stations.
 
In case my letter of yesterday is delayed, I repeat here that my new address is
            APO 625
            %Staff Headquarters
That is not the APO number of my new station, which apparently hasn’t any yet, but it is the APO of the station where I was this morning and through which all mail for my new station must naturally pass. The officers there promise to see all mail coming in so addressed (the “%Staff Headquarters” is very important and must not be omitted from the address) promptly forwarded to me.
 
I repeat also that the last letter I received from you is #135. All information of importance which I should have soon, between #135 and the first notice you get of the change, should be duplicated in the letters sent my new station.
 
I sent you a cable yesterday advising you of my detachment and of my new address. The cable cost $6.50; please advise me as to when you received it, if ever, and exactly what you got as transmitted, with some statement as to whether the point of origin was included, but without (in your letter) quoting the point of origin. The point of origin was not, of course, my new station, but merely a major transfer point on the airline.
 
Mail will probably for the present be much slower from my new station than from my last one, due to unavoidably chaotic conditions in that new area. You may not hear anything from me there for some time after my arrival, and there probably are no cable communications open there either. But any such delays will mean only that, nothing more.
 
I hope to get into action quite quickly with my work under my new commanding general. The job is going to be of considerably more immediate importance to the American was effort and I guess I’ll get 100% backing and no contractor to worry about. I expect I’ll transfer all my men and all their equipment. My one fear is that they may expect me to start pulling rabbits out of a hat, and there may be none there.
 
One thing I’ve discovered on this trip is that I have a reputation in the Army all over Africa. Too bad I’m not in the Army itself – I’d probably be a general by now. But I’m afraid what I do for the Army doesn’t do me much good in the Navy in the way of promotion – it’s another world. However, it’s all the same war, and if I can only do my bit in helping win it, the inward satisfaction will be the same no matter what the outward rewards.
 
I sent you a picture from my late station as your birthday present. I hope it arrives in time. A happy birthday to you, dearest, Ned.
 
Letter #96
Dec. 2, 1942
Elsewhere in Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
For the moment I have finished my major trekking about Africa and am now arrived generally at my new scene of operations.
 
I may say that the change is a welcome one, for instead of  suffering hot summer weather even in December, I am now where the seasons seem to be back in style as I used to know them. It’s cold here at night, and even reasonably cool during the day. Blue uniforms instead of bare chests are the preferred dress. I have only one decent blue uniform with me, which I don’t dare wear except evenings, so I’m still in khaki (but not in shorts). That dark blue sweater that Mary knitted me comes in very handy under my khaki jacket to keep me from freezing, and my overcoats have come out of storage into use also.
 
This is a busy coast, as you may well imagine, and no doubt will be busier yet. German bombers are giving it some attention but they are being rather badly smacked around here and for the present, at least, seem somewhat discouraged.
 
There is plenty to be done here of immediate importance and no doubt for a while I’ll be busier than heretofore. As usual, the job has to be organized and I’ll have all that to go through again, though some of my gang should be here soon to lend a hand.
 
I am at the moment at Headquarters for this area, though I may work at several different cities along the coast. I am told here that the address temporarily assigned to this area is
            Allied Force Headquarters
            APO 512
            %Postmaster, N.Y.
 
The personnel in this office promise to forward any mail coming in for me to whatever other port along here I may be in. So you might try it out. The mail to APO 512 will undoubtedly travel a different Atlantic route from APO 625 which I last wrote you of. Whether it will be faster or slower you can tell by the time of delivery of this letter, as compared to the delivery times of the ones I sent you a few days ago which went by the southerly route that served my former station also.
 
There is still the same blue water along here that we all sailed over together in 1936, but it looks a lot cooler and less blue than that of the Red Sea. This city, however, for beauty has it all over my late station, as well as being far more cosmopolitan and larger. In a way, this seems like being back in Paris again, although without question, the inhabitants here are now infinitely more free of care than the Parisians and seem honestly very glad to have us in their midst.
 
I watched night before last (from my hotel window) a company of American soldiers going down the street with a band leading playing “Mademosells (sic) from Armientieres,” “America the Beautiful (?)” and “Over There.” You should have seen third and fourth story windows fly open, French women and men leaning out, and with real smiles on their faces looking delightedly down on our boys. Without question those people were showing their real feelings, for far above the street where they were, there wasn’t compulsion on them to dissemble. And I thought of the difference in any Norwegian or Dutch town of how the inhabitants would look down on a marching company of German soldiers who had within a few weeks seized their city by force of arms. It seems to make a difference what your aims are.
 
Naturally I haven’t had any mail from you since I left the Middle East, but some may be forwarded from there before long, I hope. And as soon as I am reasonably settled down for work, which I think will be in the next city west of headquarters here (where more damage seems to have been done, starting two years ago when the British fleet smacked it) I’ll let you know specifically what my address is.
 
This should get to you before Christmas. As happy a Christmas as is possible for you and Mary is my wish, and I hope before too long I may get home from here, at least on a brief leave when I get things going and perhaps another dry-dock or two up.
 
With love, Ned
 
Letter #98 (97 skipped)
Dec. 5, 1942
New station,
Somewhere still in Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
After some kiting about back and forth on this coast, I am now back in the city which will, I believe, be my own headquarters and the probable scene of my immediate labors. I just got back here day before yesterday from a visit farther east for inspection.
 
There is plenty to {do} in this vicinity. The situation in great measure resembles that in Massawa when I first saw it – wrecks in every direction. Only here everyone seems to have taken a hand in the destruction. Over two years ago the British first bombarded this port for reasons which you will remember. More recently we and the British lambasted it in the recent battle for possession, sinking more ships, and then the French scuttled an assorted lot to block the harbor before the cease firing order was issued by Darlan. Now the harbor is a mess, with oddly enough, British, Americans, and French all interested in clearing it up, and frankly, the French doing most of the work and eager to do it.
 
France is not dead. You can see that in every Frenchman here, and particularly in the French naval officers, who seem to have a keen desire to restore their ships so they can have something to get back into action with. It was almost pathetic the anxiety exhibited by several French officers about some new submarines they recently scuttled in this harbor. Could I raise them? How long would it take to fit them again for action?
 
My major task just now hinges about a craft similar to the one I first lifted when I came to Africa, only this one is over twice as large and consequently proportionately of value. This seems to be the job the high command yanked me out of East Africa to do. But what to do it with?  Frenchmen. I have none of my own men, and I am uncertain whether and when if ever, I shall get them. So I must work completely with Frenchmen. How good they are  I have no idea. At least they are eager. But their equipment dates back to the Franco-Russian war, and I think their technique also. We shall see.
 
This spot has some advantages over my late station. It is roughly as far north as Norfolk, and it’s cool. As a matter of fact to me it’s cold. Then at least, it seems a civilized town, not a tropical adventure in discomfort. It greatly resembles other French Mediterranean ports, Marseilles, for instance.
 
The war goes on around here. A few days ago the city to the east I was in was bombed while I was there. At this point, torpedoed warships have made port recently, sides badly smashed in, dead seamen still in flooded engine rooms. Overhead, squadrons of bombers take off to drop their loads on Rommel (or his successor) to the eastward. The formations look beautiful enough, when they are ours. I flew myself in a large convoy of troop carriers shepherded by fighters. Apparently our cover was adequate – no enemy fighters bothered us.
 
I hope to God when I get this drydock up and in some kind of running order, the powers that be will let me go home, if only on a brief leave. How I long to get back to you I can’t express! The ache and the pain of separation seems even keener now I’m not so far away. And Heaven knows I’ve had enough time in hell and Africa already to have earned a respite. I do believe my chances of getting away by spring are better here than if I had stayed in Massawa, but I can’t be sure. The situation is very muddled.
 
The APO number of this station is 302. The mail here comes via the northerly route and then down. That is, it should. How well that functions, I don’t know. You can try it, in comparison with the southerly route of which I cabled you the APO number, 625. (If you ever got the cable). I haven’t sent any from here – it seems useless – any cable that is. I haven’t received any mail at all since I left Massawa. Nothing has been forwarded from there yet, and I have little hope any forwarded will get here without going back first to the United States – it isn’t a usual mail route from East Africa to here; the enemy is in between on the direct route and I think everything going the southerly mail route is in bags probably sealed for the U.S.
 
You may get this before New Years. If you do (or don’t) you’ll probably have to use your own judgment about the D.M. (Ed: Dodd, Mead) royalties. I think the understanding was they had best be deferred. Do what you think best.
 
Compared to getting home to you again, nothing else seems of any importance any more. I dream of you constantly. The nights are all I live for now; every night I am back with you in Westfield and in my dreams I live again. But every morning I wake to unreality in Oran amidst a lot of wrecks that typify the deadness of my days. Ned
 
Letter #99
Dec. 12, 1942
North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
I still have heard nothing at all from you since leaving my old station. Nothing whatever has been forwarded to me here yet, nor for that matter have I had any word from there on official matters either. I hope that some of the letters I have sent you en route have arrived, and perhaps also a cable I sent you from West Africa advising you of my change of station.
 
The APO number of this station is 302. I have every reason to believe that the mail service under that number is as yet completely unorganized. The service is via England, so I think, with transmission delays there, and probably elsewhere. Whether the service from here going home functions any better, I have no means of knowing, but it is dubious that it does. I am afraid it goes out of here by ship, though a week ago from a city to the eastward I was then temporarily in, they said an airmail delivery via England was going out and I sent a letter from there, (number 97, I think).
 
As I cabled you two weeks ago from West Africa, (at a point on the direct air mail route from home to my old station) the officers there offered to send up here by air any mail that came to that point marked APO 625, %Staff Headquarters. APO 625 was their number, not the number of my new station, but it is possible that mail sent that way might get here to me faster than mail addressed directly to APO 302. You might try sending letters at the same time via the two different numbers, and I could see.
 
Orders have been issued to furnish me with my previous equipage. None of it has arrived here yet.
 
I celebrated your birthday on a torpedoed British destroyer in sinking condition which I went out to sea to board and if possible bring in. She was in a desperate position with her stern awash, badly listed to starboard, a huge hole in her side where the torpedo had struck, and her engines completely dead in her flooded machinery spaces. With a small emergency pump, we managed to hold the water down in the stern so she sank no further while she was slowly towed in by another destroyer, but it was an interesting three hours nevertheless during which it was nip and tuck as to whether she would sink or not, and even more so as to whether the submarine which had torpedoed her would make another attack. We had fair coverage, with a plane circling us overhead and a third destroyer zigzagging about us all the way in, so probably the sub thought better of it, as we saw no more of her.
 
We got the destroyer into port two hours after dark, where I had some salvage pumps waiting her and a few men to help, so that by working all night, we got water enough out of her aft to straighten her up and lift her deck astern five feet clear of the sea, so she was safe. But she was an awful mess, with fuel oil from her broken tanks coating the whole after end where she had been flooded, her decks and sides torn and bulging from the torpedo blast, and six dead of her crew still caught somewhere down in the submerged machinery where they will have to stay till day after tomorrow when we can dock the ship and drain the engine room which is still wide open to the sea.
 
I came off that job last night not having been out of my clothes for thirty-six hours, and with a khaki uniform pretty well soaked in black fuel oil, which is particularly distressing because clothing replacements here are poor, and soap is scarce for washing anything. (The laundries in this more or less French town won’t accept anything unless the soap to wash it is furnished by the customer.) Most of my clothing (and everything that was on the way) is presumably still in East Africa and I don’t know when I’ll see any of it.
 
As regards the clothing and the other things that were originally forwarded via Whiteside’s ship, if you can ever get your hands on them again, don’t forward them but hold on to them at home. I won’t need the summer things here (winter clothes are more in order) and the dispatch on other articles as packages is very dubious. I hope long before I need summer or tropical clothes again, I’ll be home.
 
The situation here is very involved amongst the different nationalities and services present and may take some time to settle into clarity. Meanwhile, I’ll do the best I can and hope when a few major things are up, I can get out of here.
 
I’m still well, and see no reason why I shouldn’t stay so. I’m quartered in the Grand Hotel Doran (which isn’t so grand) and is very overcrowded. We’ll probably get thrown out of here soon in favor of the Army, but I won’t mind much.
 
This is a busy sector, with plenty of submarines offshore, frequent night air alarms and some bombs (not much damage from them) and plenty to do, but I’m quite willing now to let someone else do it as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I’m just aching for a letter from you.
 
With lots of love and lots of longing, Ned.
 
Letter #100
Dec. 13, 1942
North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
Outside my window the band is just playing colors – at the moment the “Marseillaise.” As the French flag on one pole and the American on another, are slowly being hauled down at sunset. And now they have just changed to “The Star Spangled Banner” for the final lowering of both flags. And now it is concluded to the wild applause of a  mixed crowd of French men and women, Arabs, Spahis, Foreign Legionnaires, and French soldiers and sailors, as the American color guard, two companies of infantry and the band, marched off. All very peaceful, with liberty, egalite, and fraternite spread all over the square here called, “Place de la Bastille.” Tonight we’ll probably have another air raid alarm, with somewhat less peace and fraternity in the skies.
 
I wrote you yesterday (#99) mentioning that I had received no mail since leaving East Africa. Well, today, to show me I had spoken too soon, quite a bit came, all forwarded from the Middle East. There were two letters from you, #133 of Nov. 4 and #136 of Nov. 8 (from Baltimore). That leaves missing 118, 119, 120, 129 and 130.
 
Your letter #136 opens with how excited you all were with the landing of our troops Nov. 8; you would have been twice as excited I guess if you had known that landing was suddenly to yank me out of the Middle East into the middle of the new area. And today here I received orders designating me as Chief S_____ Officer on the staff of the Allied Naval C in C for the whole of the area involved plus what is expected also to be acquired.
 
Incidentally, I also received today a letter of commendation from the admiral commanding this area for my work in the episode involving a destroyer in dire distress of which I wrote you yesterday.
 
How thrilled I was to get your letters after this long silent interval I can’t express. Last night I dreamed again you were drawing me to you in a tender kiss – loving, caressing, wonderfully lighted by the glow of your eyes and ecstatically warmed by your soft breasts – and then in the instant before our lips met I woke to lonely reality! Soon, soon, I hope the dream will turn to solid fact that I may clasp you to my heart and find you there in truth. Meanwhile your letters are the only real things in my life – when they don’t come I’m sunk in gloom enough to match the devastation of this war. Letters are a poor substitute for your living presence, for the love you have lavished on me, for the whole-souled abandon you have made yourself one with me in body and in soul – but letters are all of you I now can get and even for those shreds of you I am in these circumstances deeply thankful. Believe me darling, all I want out of this war is neither success, promotion, decorations, nor any public notice, but only you, my dear, once again in my arms. Ned
 
P.S. I received also a letter from Mary, one from Ed Smith enclosing a tax pamphlet, two packages from Altman’s sent last Sept. 26 & 30, containing two cans of coffee-ets in one and 3 lbs. of coffee in another, the slide rule from George French for which please give him my sincere thanks, and a V-mail letter from Sophie (Ed: his cousin, Sophie Milroy). Mary’s letter contained a small photo album of herself and her friends at Hollins.
 
All the above were forwarded from the Middle East. No letters have yet come here direct.
 
Letter #101
Dec. 15, 1942
North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
I am informed that this may go by special service from here tomorrow, so I hope that if nothing else recently has reached you yet, this will soon. Consequently I repeat some of the things I have said lately.
 
The campaign in this area had the effect of yanking me out of the Middle East the day before Thanksgiving. I traveled here by air, arriving Nov. 30. I cabled you en route about Nov. 28, being then at an air junction route where part of the traffic from home turns north for here, and the rest keeps on east for my old station. The officers at that junction point, of which the APO number is 625, offered to forward here any mail for me coming to them marked “%Staff Headquarters.” I believe that for the present that may be the quickest route here, as it should be all the way here by air. It is worth trying. However, nothing if anything sent that way, has yet arrived here.
 
The APO number of this station is 302. I am generally about in the middle of our new occupation area. Last week I was for a few days to the eastward of here, in the headquarters city for this area, and I may later make my own headquarters there also, but that is not the case now. The APO of that station is “512, Allied Force Headquarters,” but for the present don’t use that, though I did mention it in a letter sent from there.
 
I have every reason to believe that the mail for APO 302 comes all the way by sea, and perhaps via England. At any rate, nobody here seems to have received any mail here since they landed over a month ago, so up to the present moment, the mail service here via the regular route must be considered to be unorganized (if not worse).
 
Yesterday there was inaugurated here the canned cable service, which I took advantage of by sending numbers 1-7, which being interpreted mean “I have arrived safely in North Africa and am well. Love.” As regards #1, the news is a little late, since I got here Nov. 30, and you may know it already. As regards #7, I have loved you since first I ever saw your eyes sparkling amongst some hospital bandages swathing your head, but I had not previously imagined I should be reduced to having to tell you so in numbers. If the wrong number comes through, and the cable as you get it says something else, you must understand I still love you in spite of the cable company. Anyway let me know when (if at all) you received either or both of the cables mentioned as of Nov. 28 and Dec. 14 respectively.
 
There has been lots of action in this area, not counting the occupation battles of which plenty of evidences are yet visible. We now have only Hitler and Mussolini to fight, the French being now on our side as the press has already noted. Air raid alarms are not uncommon, particularly to the eastward. Submarine activity covers our whole sea frontier, and that is one of my main interests. I celebrated your birthday by helping to get safely into port a torpedoed and sinking destroyer for which I already have a letter of commendation from the admiral here.
 
I have just been appointed on the staff of the Allied Naval C. in C. as chief _____ officer (you can probably guess what the blank means) and I’m to have charge here for all the nations involved all along this coast and sea so far as his command now extends or may extend in the future. Quite a lot of sun kissed sea. It looks as if I may come out of this war with a far better acquaintance with the topside British admirals than with American ones. I don’t seem to deal with anybody but C in C’s any more, no matter at which end of this sea I am at.
 
Most of my clothes had to be left behind when I flew here. They are supposed to follow in my ships, but it’ll be some long weeks yet before I see them. Fortunately I brought one blue uniform and my overcoats with me. I need them here. No more shorts and sun helmets here. My latitude is almost exactly that of Mary’s college, though I guess it may be somewhat warmer here. No snow, just cool autumn weather, but it may feel cooler to me than to those who descended on this spot from points farther north.
 
Some of my men should be here by air early next week, perhaps a few days sooner. The French presented us here with a lovely drydock in a state requiring attention in which my new chief is intensely interested, so I hope we can get some quick results for him when my initial crew arrives.
 
I believe that my chances of getting home from here before next summer are considerably better than they were from the Middle East. God knows how much I hope so! This is a more important sector from a naval and a military point of view than the one I’ve just left, but after I’ve got a few things pulled up from the bottom and my squadron organized for action here, I’ll be quite satisfied to let matters roll under someone else’s command on the shores of Mare Nostrum as well as along the Red Sea while I devote my attention to a campaign along the shores of the Mindowaskin.
 
With love, Ned.
 
P.S. This may get to you in time for Christmas Day; I can’t wish you a Merry Christmas, for I can’t imagine how anyone can make merry on this Christmas Day, but I can wish you a happier New Year. May we all see peace before next Christmas Day! And the joy of reunion long before that!
 
 
Letter #102
Dec. 16, 1942
Somewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
I sent another letter off this morning which I was told would go with a batch getting special dispatch, so you may get #101 much sooner than this. I shall be interested to know ultimately.
 
I am having a devil of a time getting things done with French workmen here because of my total ignorance of French. Somehow in East Africa, I was never much bothered by lack of knowledge of either Italian or Arabic, but that was, I suppose, because my principal assistants were Americans and I could make signs to the others as to what they were to do. But here at the moment, I work with French divers or none at all, and I can’t even find out what’s going on. This will, I hope, soon be cured, as some of my own men should arrive in a few days, and I’ll also see if I can’t hire somebody to serve as interpreter.  Meanwhile, the gist of all this is that I’ll be forever grateful if you can get me a small pocket size French-English and vice-versa dictionary which I can carry with me. Such a thing is completely unobtainable here, for what stock the bookshops had of them must have been gobbled up immediately by the first troops to land. (There is, humorously enough, a very large stock of Allemand-Francais dictionaries on hand in every bookstore, with absolutely the bottom dropped out of the market for them). In addition, if you can get me an English-Spanish dictionary that will help also, as most of the French here seem to speak Spanish also. My Spanish vocabulary is very rusty, but I feel I could brush it up much faster than I can ever learn enough French to do me any good. The Spanish one also should be small enough to go in a first-class letter, as otherwise I’m afraid it would never arrive in time to do me any good. Meanwhile I got a paper-bound version of Don Quixote in Spanish, which I’m reading to refresh my memory on Spanish, but unfortunately Don Quixote’s adventures have very little bearing either on diving or mechanics, and it doesn’t help me much either on verb conjugations (or is it declensions?) on which my recollections are nearly a blank.
 
As I mentioned several days ago, I received (forwarded here from East Africa) two of your letters, two packages from Altman’s containing coffee-ets and coffee, a letter from Ed Smith with a tax booklet, and a small set of photos of her school friends that Mary sent me. Nothing has arrived here yet addressed here.
 
Thanks a lot for the slide rule donated by George French. It will be very helpful. And thank him for me for it. I’ll try not to lose this one.
 
I think I told you I’m domiciled at present in the Grand Hotel Doran. The name makes me laugh. It probably was a grand hotel when it was built about forty or fifty years ago, and it is the grandest hotel in the city, but it is not so hot. (Literally). What annoys me most are the lights, of which the most powerful in the room is all of 40 watts. When I get a chance, I’m going to see if I can’t find a 100 watt light somewhere and insert it so I can see enough either to read or write at night.
 
As regards the rest of the hotel (it’s loaded with army officers and a few naval ones, no civilian ones now at all allowed) it has one of those French elevators which run once in a blue moon, and the hardest water I have ever been up against anywhere. A cake of soap just flatly refuses to lather in it and nothing can be done about that. It’s also rather cold around here, and while there are radiators in the rooms, they are kept just warm enough so they’re not cold to the touch, which reminds me of Dr. Boucker, only now I sort of feel “C’est le guerre,” and let it go. In some ways, Massawa had its points, though I didn’t realize them till I left. After all, soft water and automatic heat at all hours are not to be sneezed at – at least not in North Africa.  (I could sneeze at them cheerfully enough in Westfield).
 
We put that destroyer I mentioned previously, on the drydock yesterday and got a good look at her. Fully out of the water, I got a shock at what the torpedo had done to her, and I marvel now that the two halves ever hung together while we were towing her in.  It seems unbelievable we kept her afloat and in one piece long enough to get her safely into port.
 
With love, Ned.
 
Letter #103
Dec. 22, 1942
Somewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
Your letter #142 of Nov. 17 reached me here yesterday, forwarded from the Middle East. This leaves quite a husky gap in the correspondence, as your last previous letter to arrive was #136 sent from Baltimore. There are unfortunately now a devil of a lot of places where the forwarded letters can get hung up between M and O. I have still received nothing at all which may have been addressed to me since my change of station. And whether you have received anything from me since, of course I don’t know. Please be explicit in several letters in reporting what has arrived and in what state (especially those sent from here). Your forwarded letters received here are still coming through completely unmolested.
 
I think it would be well if you put on every envelope addressed here, in addition to the regular address, in the lower left hand corner, something like “%Naval Headquarters.” The mail here must pass mainly thru army hands, and I think that intended for a few naval officers is likely to get lost in an army post office, which is likely to interpret captain in an army sense, without paying much attention to USNR, and after a cursory search among the army captains’ list, give up the search.
 
The first small group of my men have just arrived by air, and I think in a day or so I’ll have them actually at work. Along these lines I have been having a tough time the last few weeks looking at lots highly essential from a strategic viewpoint to get afloat and gnawing my fingernails over the wherewithal. I hope soon now to get some results.
 
I lived last night through a nightmare that today still leaves me sick at heart. The usual thing, a message in the morning, “ship torpedoed. Get to sea.” Out we went posthaste, prepared to salvage a sinking ship, to meet on our way out one destroyer after another coming in laden with troops taken off, thousands of them. They saved them all, thank God!
 
We got our salvage pumps ready on deck for quick service, our suction hoses lead out. Five hours out, the last destroyer bound in which passed us signaled, “Ship heavily on fire and abandoned.” Six hours out and we got there, to find a large troopship (not American) down by the stern, listed to port, and blazing from bridge to poop on every deck, with a solitary destroyer still circling about, a trawler and a few other small vessels still near.
 
We circled her for a good look. Deserted. All life boat davits swung out with the boatfalls hanging loosely down both sides. Everybody gone. But when we steamed close in through the smoke on the lee side, on some rafts still tangled in the lines alongside, I thought I saw a man seated motionless, clinging to a line. There was no certainty, but we lowered a boat anyway, sent it in through the smoke. It was a man all right, the last survivor, asleep somewhere below, who had come to to find himself alone on a blazing wreck, abandoned even by the rescue ships by that time. We got him aboard, shaking like a leaf, inarticulate, half dead from everything.
 
Then we circled to the port quarter, secured alongside, and our crew (fifty men) went in to fight the fire in a last forlorn attempt to save her. By then it was night. And a weirder situation I never dreamed of. All about us as we lead out our fire hoses on three of her upper decks, we had reason to think we were in actual combat, for anti-aircraft guns were firing irregularly, shells were exploding, and pieces of shrapnel were plentifully in evidence. The roar of guns firing kept up continuously as the heat exploded the cartridges and the guns automatically reloaded themselves to fire again, all on a deserted ship!
 
We made some progress working from aft against the fire. But with every deck blazing and the ship amidships a regular torch where the torpedo had set off the oil in her boiler rooms (probably from ruptured oil tanks) it was soon enough apparent that between the smoke and the heat, after an hour’s time at the business end of a firehose, a man had to have some relief. So I signaled the nearest destroyer to send us forty men to help. She sent them, and I figured then I might work the hose crews in relays, and we might perhaps win out before the night was over.
 
But a few minutes closeup with the flames were enough for the lieutenant sent in charge of the destroyer’s party and he signaled his captain “Too dangerous to remain.” I think myself those guns firing through the flames was too much for him. At any rate, that party was hurriedly withdrawn. My own crowd fought the fire over two hours, but with no relief in sight then, it became a hopeless task and I had to withdraw them all and cast loose to drop clear astern in the night. We all got away with nobody hurt, in spite of the fire, the smoke, the guns, and the shrapnel. (All thoroughly soaked with salt water, though).
 
And then I had the trawler nearby pick up a hawser from the bow of the burning ship and try to tow her in, burning as she was, in the hope that we might perhaps get her beached and get more help from ashore then to fight the fire. So we got underway that way to tow through the night, with the ship blazing up luridly through the night while we slowly dragged her shoreward, and the destroyer circling about in case the submarine came back to attack us, or another one was attracted by the flames. And thus slowly we dragged her shoreward, with the unchecked fire spreading from end to end, and down the holds fore and aft till every port glowed red in her sides. Then at both bow and stern the magazines for her main battery guns started to explode with shells going up like rockets in every direction. And so on till four o’clock this morning when, still under tow, she had settled so far into the sea that her lower deck ports submerged, she began to list more heavily, rolled to port till her flaming deck went under and the flames went suddenly out. For another moment with the sky now all black, a huge cloud of smoke with no flames at all covered the sea there. Then it lifted lazily, leaving only the undisturbed water where the ship had vanished completely, leaving no wreckage and the towing ship with her hawser parted and no longer anything to tow.
 
We turned homeward ourselves then, to steam the last sixteen miles to port (we were that close to getting her in) very tired and very sick inwardly at our failure to save her after all our work.
 
Tonight I guess I’ll get some rest. Tomorrow I’m flying a few hundred miles to the eastward for a general discussion on the organization of the forces (I hope they will be forces) under my command. We’re going to have quite a problem to cope with along this coast. Actually we’ve got quite a problem already, only it’s growing fast.
 
And so to bed.
 
Your very tired but always hopeful lover, Ned
 
Letter #104
Christmas Day, 1942
Somewhere in Africa
In the air
 
Lucy darling:
 
This is Christmas day morning, as dismal a one as I have ever spent, and such another I hope to be spared. I am in the air again this holiday, bound from east to west along this coast. On the ground it was muddy as usual; in the air it’s cold.
 
I think of you and Mary all the time, and what it means to be so long apart, I hardly have to tell you. But on Christmas the agony of separation seems much worse. The feeling of loneliness which I have had so long is deeply intensified, and the knowledge that every  thing that Christmas means is completely absent adds to the desolation. Here in the middle of this war area is nothing but destruction on sea and land, and any sign either of peace or friendliness or goodwill is wholly missing. I spent yesterday in the harbor working on some torpedoed wrecks. In the afternoon I happened to drive by Admiral Darlan’s headquarters. A few hours later I learned that he had been assassinated shortly after I passed – a sanguinary prelude to Christmas eve.
 
Christmas eve I spent alone in my hotel room, after a brief visit with the naval C in C and some British officers at headquarters. They felt I suppose as I did – home and families were far away and no one had the slightest desire to make any pretense of making merry. I left very soon, tired, sad, and sleepy with only the desire to crawl into bed and avoid any further reminders that by the calendar it was Christmas Eve but not by anything else.
 
I achieved a little here. One torpedoed troopship here I managed to get under repair by kicking some action into those on the spot who had been dilly-dallying for some weeks over what to do. Now I’m on my way back to my middle city to see how my drydock salvage is getting along.
 
One thing only cheered me up when I arrived three days ago at the city I’ve just left (which is G. H.Q. out here). Four letters from you were there for me, forwarded from the Middle East, which as those there knew I was coming shortly, they held at HGQ instead of forwarding to O. They were #137, 138, 146, and 148, plus a note from Dora enclosing a Times magazine and a Christmas greeting card from the Reverend Mr. Robinson’s church with a prayer that particularly touched me.
 
Commenting on your letters. Of course you know we successfully raised that derrick, my last job on that station. Now to me that seems in the dim distant past.
 
As I no longer have anything to do with JDP (nor do you except to recover my baggage from Whiteside’s ship) there is no longer any reason why you should not forward me a copy of Mrs. Whiteside’s letter. It still may do me some good to know the whole history of that ship and of JDP’s relations with it.
 
As regards our oil consumption, if the news has not previously reached you, our normal oil consumption is about 2800 gallons. There were approximately 900 gallons in the tank (probably 950) when you started the heating season of 1941-1942.This was bought as I remember it, mostly during the previous June.
 
So far, the second slide rule has not arrived, though it was mailed between two letters which have.
 
Sorry that Tuttle’s gave you such a hectic time with your storm doors, and that the clock was so long delayed. With respect to the clock’s losing time, you might try adjusting it yourself. If it is like the old one, all that is necessary is to take off the glass face of the clock (which you must do anyway to wind or set it) and you will notice on the far right side, a regulating lever sticking thru the dial with probably an S for slow on one end and an F for fast on the other. Simply push the lever a point or two (perhaps an eighth of an inch toward the proper mark, faster I think you need) and then observe results for perhaps a day. After that you can correct it further as necessary. I will be interested to learn whether this works. (Ed: diagram is in the letter)
 
About noon, still Xmas
On the ground
 
We came down at my destination to plow thru more deep mud at this end as soon as the plane had rolled off the runway to its disembarkation point. It rains in this area every night and part of the day during the winter season, cold, heavy downpours at night and cold drizzles during the day, which make a mess of everything. I am reminded of some general’s observation shortly after the last war, anent the prophecy that the next war (this one, now) would be fought in the air, “that no matter where a war starts, it always ends in the mud.” He was right. Even the air fields out here are seas of deep mud (this is no news to the enemy) and it is a serious military factor as well as a devilish fast for the poor doughboys whom by the thousands I see camped in pup tents in muddy fields. Thank God, at least I’m in the Navy, which on sea or land always gets a bed to sleep in.
 
I mentioned to you in a letter a few days ago, I had a nightmarish session with a torpedoed and burning troopship off this port. I found later that one of the passengers on her, rescued and brought in by a destroyer after some hectic night hours in a lifeboat, was Margaret Bourke White (Mrs. Erskine Caldwell), and that she was then in the city from which I have just come. Inasmuch as we met in the spring of 1941, (when we both spoke at the N.Y. Press Club) I looked her up there a couple of nights ago and got her version of what had happened the night the ship was hit, and gave her my version of what happened later the following night while we fought it out with the fire trying to save the ship, none of which she saw because the lifeboats were left far behind. She says she expects to be home in a month or so and will get in touch with you.
 
I received a real Christmas present when I got back to my office this afternoon to find there had just arrived there six letters from you and one from Mary. Two of yours (of Dec. 7 and Dec. 8) were written after you learned of my change of station and arrived via APO 625. Since from Dec. 8 to Dec. 25 is just seventeen days, I think that fine, and I have every reason to believe it will beat by far letters sent directly here via APO 302 (or is it 502? I can’t just now remember which, so don’t take this as correct). Of course I can only check that when the first letter via APO 302 (?) gets here. I have in some letters past explained why I think so, but I may say here that via APO 625 (thru the courtesy of the staff there) they go all the way by air from U.S. to 625, and are there sent by air north up here, while I have a hunch that those sent via APO 302 (?) will come from New York here by slow freighter when if and as convoys of such sail from there to here. At any rate, up to now, no one here (even those who arrived some three weeks before I did, being the first pilgrims to land on these shores so to speak) has received here any mail from home yet.
 
The letters I got here were #147, 150, 151, and 152 (all forwarded from Middle East) and 162 and 163 sent via APO 625.
 
I see that I wasted $6.50 in sending you a cable from APO 625 advising you of my change of station and the APO number of that place, since you got the information by mail from that place, while the cable sent Nov 27 had twelve days later not arrived. I did not use the canned cheap cable message; it wasn’t available there. You might tell the cable office in Westfield what you think of it, and if when you get this, you still haven’t received the cable (and it would still be money wasted even if you have) I’ll try to recover my money from the cable company somewhere in West Africa (and have my labor only as a reward for my pains, I’m sure). My belief is that cables at the regular rate from this continent are a joke (they can’t be sent from here, anyway) and whether the canned cables, which are offered here, are any less humorous, I’ll learn when you report on when (if ever) you receive the canned cable I sent from here about ten days ago. The exact date I mentioned in a letter at the time; you can learn it from that.
 
As regards the missing letter list: I find I have #118 which I once listed as receiving and then included in the missing list. It got misplaced in my stack. The first number actually missing is #119 (including the sixth undershirt). The others missing yet are #120, 129, 130, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 149, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, and 161. (#162 and 163 have been delivered today as noted above). Everything sent in any letter not listed as missing has been received, whether specially acknowledged or not. Why the missing list is so scrambled, I can’t understand, except that starting with 153 and ending with 161, they probably haven’t been forwarded from Middle East yet. Up to 153, one would expect that as all were addressed the same way, they would all have been delivered before #152 was (which came today, forwarded).
 
I will appreciate it if you will send me a complete list of my missing letters, up to the last number received. You mention having received #87-95 (presumably up to Dec. 8) in your letter #163. And a statement itemized as to how my letters from here have arrived as to their contents if they show any excisions, and also their time in transit, and the various censor’s stamps they show on them.
 
I would also like to know if you now know where I am stationed. (Yes or no will do; you don’t have to mention it specifically). Also how you learned it; by mail or by anyone of several people going home who promised me they’d tell you.
 
Since you haven’t mentioned it in your latest letters (perhaps it’s in one of the missing ones) I trust the La Salle is now running reliably. What finally was the trouble? And the same with the oil burner?
 
About the thermostat setting, I think the interval marks are 10° apart.
 
If you think Mal is in Africa and can tell me specifically where or by APO number, I’ll look him up, as I get over this whole American area in the course of my chasing wrecks. (of course, I don’t include Mal as one of them).
 
I don’t need any more knee length socks, either thick or thin. I wear only trousers now; no more shorts. My only interest is in hoping my old blues will arrive from Middle East  so I’ll have something old and warm to wear. I have now only one decent blue uniform, which I don’t dare wear on a wreck, so I’m reduced to khaki cotton trousers most of the time. I think I’ll have to get some army olive drab woolen ones here; I’m practically in the army anyway.
 
Tell the oil war rationing board in Westfield that if they don’t revise your oil quota on the basis of the oil we actually burned in 1941-1942, I’m going to quit fighting in this war and let it go to hell so far as I’m concerned. Why should I risk my life out here fighting for a gang of home staying red tape bound cits if they insist on freezing my wife to death? If anything happens to you as a result of a cold house, the war here is over for me and I’ll come home and murder them. I mean it.
 
Sorry Shackamaxon burned down. I hope you find somewhere else for your C.C.H. charity.
 
That’s an interesting report you mention as coming thru Wendell Willkie’s sister about me. Her husband, Commander (now Captain) Peale spent a day on our job in Middle East. While I think myself the chances are slight, there might be an opening there thru Wendell Willkie to have him suggest where he thinks it would do most good, that I be  promoted to rear admiral. My present task as Chief Salvage Officer for all North Africa warrants the rank, but I am unfortunately directly under Admiral C____ of the British Navy, who can hardly make such a recommendation on an American officer, and on the staff of General E____ of our Army, who commands everything, army and navy in this area, and who asked for my assignment here (on Admiral C___’s request) but who naturally otherwise knows little or nothing of naval affairs, responsibilities, or the rank that should go with the assignment, though God knows he has brigadier generals out here by the dozens on assignments far less important than mine. (Admiral Broshek might lend a hand there if Willkie wanted information on me).
 
I wrote you I heard over the radio the transcription of the ringing of Britain’s church bells. They thrilled me as they did you.
 
I have decided I’ll wait to pay my own income taxes after the war is over. However, I shall want the money required put in either a separate savings account quarterly or in war (or other) bonds which can be used later for that purpose.
 
I knew both Admirals Callaghan and Scott, killed in the Soloman’s battle of last November, as midshipmen. Scott especially, who was captain of the fencing team my plebe year. I fenced him often. I was very grieved to hear of their deaths. As you say, even victories are dearly bought.
 
I was exceedingly sorry to hear you were laid up some days with intestinal grippe, but as you finally went to Willimantic (Ed: where her parents lived), I judge you recovered, at least somewhat. How I hope it’s all gone!
 
Thanksgiving Day was specially celebrated by the British in Eritrea in our honor, with turkeys and everything, but unfortunately for me when it came, I was in the air west of Khartoum, flying all day from early dawn till late at night and all I had for Thanksgiving dinner was a few hardtack biscuits in the plane. Today I had the same experience nearly, but as the trip by plane was much shorter, I arrived here in time for a noonday dinner (chicken, anyway) at my hotel.
 
Regarding the American flag, as it hasn’t been sent, I don’t think it had better be as I could no longer have any personal connection with it, and other arrangements out there for a flag may have been made. Thank the American Legion for me and suggest they cancel their order, return the flag, or make whatever other disposition of it that suits them. I have myself the remains of the original flag I hoisted there, which I shall bring home with me.
 
I’m sorry, but I’m keeping no notebook. I started one, but carried it on only till my arrival in Middle East (Ed: See Diary of Ellsberg's 1942 voyage to Africa on the S. S. Fairfax). Since then, what little time I’ve had to write till I tumbled into bed, has gone wholly into writing to you. That was, and still is, far more important. And unless we’re completely busted after the war, I doubt whether writing any more boys’ books will interest me.
 
As regards attending movies, the only one I’ve seen in months was about ten days ago aboard a British dreadnaught here, when I was invited to dinner there. I had quite a pleasant time (had unfortunately to drink some whiskey I didn’t want, however) and saw Jack Oakie and Alice Faye(?) in “The Great American Broadcast.” Considering all the gloom and destruction I meet constantly in my work, it was refreshing to see something both humorous and sentimental. (Especially the latter; I live in the hope that it will not be too long before I can crush the girl I love in my arms and kiss her so long and passionately the movie kisses will seem insipid by comparison).
 
I still have Bob Palmer’s filter somewhere. When I’m surer of mail conditions from here, I’ll send it back.
 
I’m certainly glad to hear the returns from Mr. Kandel on my torch have been so good (Ed: Charles Kandel was president of Craftsweld Corporation, which manufactured Ellsberg’s underwater cutting torch), and also that he is so generous as to include us in his bonus payments. Thank him for me. We certainly can use the money.
 
I guess we can pass on the question of year end security transactions, even though it now is so close to the year end we couldn’t make any anyway. I haven’t time to study the situation, and even less interest in it. However, thank Ed for sending Ira Haupt’s booklet on the subject.
 
I am deeply interested in Mary’s heart affairs, but very loath at long range to make any comments to her. That she gave Mike the cold shoulder is in my estimation both a high tribute to her judgment and her courage. Mike is attractive, without doubt, but other than that he is a complete washout and I am sure will make any girl who ever marries him completely miserable, and that before very long. As regards the other boys, I do like Jack Snel, but I agree with you he’d be better off with more punch and initiative. Whether his restraint is a natural Dutch trait, I don’t know. Of all the boys Mary knows, Ned Benson is tops in my belief but what his dreams are I don’t know. What does he write Mary, other than the highly important fact of being remembered to me? (Ed: Mary married Ned Benson, my father; I was adopted by my stepfather).
 
This being Christmas Day, I’m glad to read in your letter #151 that you sent my mother for Christmas from us the same gift as previously. I’m sorry that my own Christmas giving had to be so negligible, both for time reasons and transport reasons and the inability out here to get anything suitable.
 
I hope you did have the two RAF boys to Christmas dinner. What it means to be that day in anybody’s home under homelike conditions, today made me realize only too fully. And I like the RAF boys (and most of them are boys). I have a high admiration for their work, of which I’ve seen plenty of results, including one sunken German U-boat on this coast which the Admiral wants me to salvage when I can get around to it.
 
And now it being practically midnight, and Christmas nearly over on the most un-Christmaslike Christmas I have ever seen, I shall end by saying with Tiny Tim on Christmas Day,
            “God bless us every one!” and may He give us Christmas Days to come on which we may be merry.
 
With love
 
Ned
 
Letter #105
Dec. 27. 1942
Somewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
Thanks for all the New York Times clippings you have sent me, which have given me many more details of what’s going on in other areas than I’ve been able to get otherwise. I read a French newspaper here, but you know my French, and besides it’s only a one page sheet which can therefore publish only skimpy accounts. I am returning to you for saving for me one Times clipping you sent me. Some day it may have a sentimental interest as I look back on the pictures of these marching and camping troops.
 
History repeats itself (why it has to, I don’t know). Once again I find myself in a battered, war-torn harbor full of wrecks desperately requiring clearance, and with slight means only for the task as yet. We have almost only our fingers to work with (unless one includes our heads). How long this war will have to last before proper salvage equipment is included in the planning of an expedition or an attack on coastal cities, I don’t know. Forever, I guess, before that happens.
 
For once I have looked on a smashed and battered wreck of a friendly warship with an appreciative smile. We put on our small dock here the other day a sloop (British for a small destroyer type) with her bow neatly mashed back for about twenty feet from the stem, which sloop had just come in with a convoy. She looked as if she had rammed a stone pier.
 
“What did you hit?” I asked one of her men after we’d docked her.
 
“Oh, we rammed a U-boat,” he answered.
 
“Bad smash you got,” I said. “What happened to the U-boat?”
 
“She’s down below,” was the brief reply. And judging by the looks of that sloop’s bow, there’s no doubt of it. And having seen plenty of dead sailors already in torpedoed ships, I’m damned glad of it. I won’t care how many bows smashed like that one we have to repair. And that’s one sub I’ll not concern myself on salvage.
 
Aside from lack of men and equipment for my job, my greatest drawback out here is that my reputation is too good in the British Navy for my own good. Almost every officer I meet in that service, from the Admiral himself down, promptly greets me with the news he’s heard all about me, and apparently expects me to raise ships by my presence alone, and that with amazing speed. As an instance of how it works, the other night at dinner on a British warship, when I objected (courteously enough) to being introduced as the American salvage expert, taking exception to the expert which I don’t like, the British captain whom I was meeting said,
 
“Oh, it’s quite all right, Captain, it’s official. I saw you put down so in an Admiralty report.”
 
I’m none too modest, as you well know, and I don’t mind praise, especially when I think I’ve earned it, but it doesn’t help me any to have almost the impossible confidently expected of me. When I look at the few men, the worn out diving suits, and the negligible other equipment we have to work with, it almost makes me laugh. By the time I’ve managed to collect a decent outfit here for the job, I’ll probably be sent somewhere else –home, I hope.
 
With love,
Ned
 
Letter #106
Dec. 28, 1942
As usual now
 
Lucy darling:
 
A few months ago if anyone had suggested that before I finished my African campaign, I should be laying in woolen underwear, I should have thought him cuckoo. But it’s happened. Today I finally managed to get myself a complete army outfit (all woolen) of ankle length drawers (which I can’t remember wearing since I was a child), long sleeved undershirts, woolen trousers, shirts, and a wool lined windbreaker, together with, most important of all, a pair of high topped army shoes with soles about half an inch thick. Up to now, I’ve nearly frozen to death in my summer khaki, silk socks, and a pair of low cut black cit shoes (French Shriner & Uoner’s {?}) which were all very nice once on the sidewalks of New York, but which here, shrunken, patched, and resoled over five times, were no match for the mud. Now I’m completely Army dressed in woolen olive drab, except for my Navy cap and shoulder marks, which rig I suppose goes well enough with the fact I’m technically under Army command. About all I need now to make the layout complete is an Army commission and the transformation would be complete.
 
Tomorrow I’m flying westward to look at that part of my territory outside of Mare Nostrum, and that will complete my survey of our newly established outposts. There will be wrecks aplenty to inspect, I have no doubt, if one can believe the newspaper and radio accounts of the taking of that place.
 
I enclose the Christmas day edition of one of the journals out here, showing how Merry Christmas was celebrated in this area. Your French will probably be up to it. There is nothing exceptionally new in this account, since Darlan’s death was no doubt fully covered in the American press but here it practically pushed the war off the front (and except for the back, the only) page. This paper is a fair sample of what we get to read – one sheet only, with the back page taken up mostly with ads and local notices. For myself, as my radio is still among my missing possessions, I read the front page religiously. In spite of the fact that it is all French to me, I usually manage to gather in what it’s all about.
 
With love,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #107
Dec. 30, 1942
 
Lucy darling:
 
I flew here (Ed: written on Hotel Plaza, Casablanca stationary) to inspect what is going on in my line in this port. There is as usual, plenty of business set up for us by the pilgrims when they landed here, so to speak, on Plymouth Rock de Afrique du Nord o’ de Oeuest (or something like that).
 
Of all the French cities this is the most modern in Africa, and unquestionably the whitest, though Algiers runs considerably that way also, and Oran hardly at all. However I don’t look at them with the tourist eye anymore.
 
It is as usual, quite cold here, but not so wet as farther east. I am quite comfortable in my new army woolies.
 
It is getting now quite close to 1943, and closer I hope, to the day when I get out of Africa, whether east, north, or west, and get home to you.
 
A much happier New Year to you and Mary!
 
With love,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #108
Dec. 31, 1942
Somewhere in Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
This is New Year’s Eve. It’s rather a coincidence that I spent Christmas Eve in the major city on the east of this general area, and now I’m spending New Year’s Eve in the major city on its western side. However, the wreck situation is nicely balanced as between the two and in the middle – there’s little to choose.
 
If New Year’s Eve seems a little less gloomy here than Christmas Eve did to me, it’s only because I expect less of it and it means less to me. Otherwise, there’s a remarkable similarity in the two occasions – I’m alone again in a strange hotel in a strange city, after spending the day inspecting the results of bombs and torpedoes on ships, and the sight is not cheering.
 
Still, it’s New Year’s Eve, and if I can do nothing else, I can at least look back over the weirdest year in my life, and give thanks I’ve been exposed to mines, to torpedoes, to bombs; to the deep sea, to the upper air; to ungodly heat and considerable cold; to desert sand, unbelievable mud; and on the human side to devilish intrigues enough to drive a man into nervous prostration (as was hopefully expected of me). But in spite of it all, I’m ending the year safe, well (I’ve not had a single sick day in Africa), and with the feeling that I have achieved something to help win the war. If only during this time, I could have had you with me to share the triumphs and to ameliorate the trials, I might look back on this year 1942 as perhaps my most soul-satisfying, but in the light of our long separation, I can regard it only as one long ache in body and heart.
 
What will the New Year bring? In the darkness here, I can look out my window over the stormy Atlantic breaking on the African shore below me, and hope that before long, it will bring me back across that ocean to you. And as I review the change in the military scene in Africa this year (and all over the world) and note about me the visible evidence of striking power in war that America has sent to these shores since first I landed on this coast, I rest assured that 1943 will see Hitler and his satellites dealt such a staggering blow that if 1943 does not see the end of this war, at least the end will not run far beyond it. And that’s a hope I had no warrant for cherishing when 1942 dawned.
 
Tomorrow morning early, I start back by air for my present headquarters. My inspection here is completed. In this last week, I’ve pretty well covered the whole of the territory (except a little to the farthest east) for which I’m responsible.
 
But still it’s New Year’s Eve. I sit here alone in this chilly hotel room (there’s next to no heat in any of these French hotels) and try to imagine what you are doing tonight – hoping, I suppose, like me, for a happier New Year, but I trust, doing your hoping amidst somewhat cheerier surroundings, with at least some of our friends about. Oddly enough, I can’t help thinking of our first New Year’s Eve together – the one we spent not in any wild celebration, but in getting down to the post office in Brooklyn to deposit some War Savings Stamps, which in our busted condition, loomed large enough to warrant the trip lest we somehow forfeit them. (Ed: the Ellsbergs were married on June 1, 1918). That wasn’t very gay, our first New Year’s Eve, but at least I spent it with you, and if only this New Year’s Eve I could do the same, I shouldn’t care if once again we were down to the need of preserving a few twenty five cent stamps.
 
What do I want of the New Year? Victory first, but that because I know that without victory I can’t have you. But it’s you I want and need, or life isn’t worth a snap to me. And victory second, so that we can live out our lives in peace and dignity. But I must have my own share in that victory, regardless of the cost, so that when next and many times after I crush you to me, I know myself that not at the price of other men’s sufferings do I come to you, but of my own – and yours.
 
My darling, my darling! How I hope that that will be soon!
 
Ned.
 
Letter #109
Jan. 1, 1943
Somewhere in Africa
 
Lucy dearest:
 
I’m back at my usual (for the present) base. We had a good flight this morning in spite of some mud at the takeoff, and plenty more at our destination. Crossing the mountains going east, I saw plenty of snow on the ridges, with one peak, somewhat resembling the Matterhorn, striking through the clouds (we were above them) like an island floating on a fleecy blanket. Cold, of course, as usual.
 
Life continues exciting, but I could do with less and not feel bored. For instance, night before last, in the city I then was in (not this one) at about three AM, I was awakened by three heavy bomb explosions quite nearby. Usually it’s an air raid siren that wakes one up, but not this time – the bombs came first. Looking out over the harbor, there under low lying clouds, caught already in the searchlight beams, was a large German bomber streaking across the far side of the harbor and making a wide circle around its perimeter, while everything in the way of AA guns from ships and shore were firing at it. Red streaks from tracers cut through the night, shells burst continuously all about it, the racket was terrific, and the volume of fire was amazing. That plane had dropped the three bombs which woke me up, and three more before the searchlights caught it, but after that it lost all interest in the harbor and never got over it again. What happened to that plane I don’t know. Some tracers went through, so it seemed to me, and it finally vanished on the landward side. Meanwhile a second plane above the cloud ceiling, tried also to get in some bombs, but apparently the show of flaming iron below discouraged it, for it never came into sight enough to get a decent bearing, and in twenty minutes, the “All Clear” sounded.
 
But at 4 AM, more planes were over again for a second try. One bomb (an incendiary, I think) started quite a blaze that lighted up the harbor but as it hit only a house half a mile away, it didn’t last long, except for its own white glare, and once again a huge volume of AA fire kept the planes off, except for one that came diving down toward the ships, was caught in a crossfire from two of them, dropped as if hit, managed to recover some altitude, and shot across the harbor and the seawall without dropping any bombs, going down at such a sharp angle again that those nearest believe it crashed into the ocean beyond (which was very rough) but that’s problematical, as no wreckage was found next day. Anyway it caused no more trouble.
 
And then again quiet for another hour, when a third wave came over to meet again a heavy fire and vanish, letting their bombs go at random.
 
Net results: Eighteen bombs dropped, no damage whatever to ships or harbor, no military damage at all, and possibly some sixty to eighty Arabs killed or injured by the bomb that landed in the native quarter half a mile from the harbor. I personally went over the place next day and verified the situation, so that I know the usual military report – Some bombs were dropped, no military damage, and only some casualties in the civilian population – was quite accurate – a damned sight more so than the German aiming, which was completely deranged by the rain of bursting shells they ran into. This was the first German try at that particular city, and the results will probably not encourage another soon. Where the planes came from however, is a puzzle: Bordeaux in southern France seems closest. An interesting feature of the action was the fact that the heaviest AA fire from any vessel came from a French warship in the harbor, which not so many weeks ago was quite busily engaged in firing at us.  I think she fired at the Germans with more enthusiasm, so far as I could judge from the amazing barrage she put up.
 
Watching the whole thing made me a little sicker as I thought back to Pearl Harbor. If only the ships there had had their AA guns in action before the first wave of Jap bombers came over in that daylight raid, they could have filled the sky with fragments of Japanese aviators floating in all directions before a single bomb could have been dropped effectively. Oh, well – we’ll yet make the Japanese regret December 7 even more than we do.
 
How’s this for drama, let us say, an episode in a movie of the war (not this one, of course)? Time, New Year’s Day, mid-afternoon. Scene, anywhere perhaps. Weather, beautifully clear, for once, with the sun shining over the sea to the horizon some ten miles out, where one looks seaward from a high cliff road toward where a long line of laden freighters is outlined against the sky, just turning in to make port, having completed a hazardous journey over thousands of miles of wintry ocean and the perils of U-boat warfare. All about circle destroyers, overhead guard flying planes. The spectator, descending the cliff road in a car, scans it appreciately (sic), struck by its quiet beauty, the loveliness of the sea, the far off ships, the sunlit skies.
 
But while he drinks it in, the middle ship in that line suddenly erupts from end to end in a volcanic burst of flame which billows brilliantly upward perhaps a quarter of a mile with streaks of fire rising even above that like a thousand rockets streaming skyward. And then the flame which for a few seconds has curtained the whole horizon there with the crimson fires of hell itself, vanishes, to be succeeded by a rapidly ascending cloud of smoke rising like a huge geyser to a height of well over a mile, when as it lifts from the surface of the sea, there is the clear horizon again and no sign whatever of that ship, only the others steaming with a gap in the line now, towards port.
 
One might throw in a heroine, a hero, perhaps a villain or two to round out the scenario for a movie, but I rather imagine the essential tragedy of the scene could well enough be brought out by a close-up of that gap in the line where once had been a ship with all her crew, rubbed out in a twinkling within sight of the harbor entrance after their battle of weeks to get safely inside that final haven. And it might be high-lighted finally with another close-up of men with strained faces on a salvage ship, with clenched fists and in tears almost, gazing seaward at that gap, in agony at their helplessness to aid a ship and its crew which has vanished completely.
 
How’s that for a highly imaginative scenario for a movie? Of course, such a thing couldn’t happen, but one might get by with it in the films, where anything goes if it’s fantastic enough.
 
With love,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #110
Jan. 3, 1943
Somewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
I have seen the old year go and the new one come amidst three rather hectic days and nights, two of which I have mentioned in preceding letters. I have been bombed in one city (not this one) which as it has been the subject of an official communiqué is no longer secret. I enclose a clipping from a local paper, giving the official notice, in two different items. The only sufferers were some 60 Arab natives, on whose quarters landed a bomb intended for the harbor, but which missed badly. How much it cost the enemy to hurt a flock of unoffending Arabs, I don’t know, but they missed every military objective with their bombs, and I think the German planes had a damned worse time in the air than we did on the ground.
 
I got back here next day, to witness (if I was in my right mind) one of the weirdest sights at sea imaginable, reminding me of the old story of the magician and the parrot, who when the magician as his last trick, made an entire ship vanish in a twinkling, leaving the parrot floating in the waves, all the poor bird could mutter was, “Incredible!” I am inclined to agree with the parrot. I must have been seeing things.
 
And now after another session of all night out on the wild waves, I’m back again to try to catch up on my lost sleep. The story, this time, had one of those happier endings. We brought home the bacon.
 
So now, having unpeeled all the various layers of woolens and waterproofs I wear on the bounding main (and it bounds plenty around here this winter season) I’m about to roll into bed, thanking God I’m in the navy and have a bed to sleep in, and not a pup tent out in the mud like the army.
 
If I only had one thing more to greet me after a session like that at sea, I wouldn’t mind this business – much. That would be your arms around me when I tumbled into bed, and your loving eyes looking upwards into mine.
 
Goodnight, my dear.
 
Ned.
 
Letter #111a
Jan. 4, 1943
Somewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
The mail service this way is still notable for its absence. Since Christmas Day, I have received nothing. The missing list stands as it was then. The last letter received was #163 of Dec. 8 (with a long missing list before that: #119, 120, 129, 130, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 149 and 153 to 161 inclusive. I assume all the above were sent to Middle East, and if delivered there as is probable, have not yet been forwarded or have been side tracked here and there on the way to this station. The only two letters received here which you wrote since learning of my change bore the APO 625 address. (these were 162 and 163). Nothing addressed via APO 302 has yet arrived, but this situation is common to all those here (even the first arrivals here on Nov. 8 have yet to receive their first mail with the APO 302 address). Meanwhile so I can check what’s happening in the reverse direction, please send me a list by number of all my missing letters and the date that those sent from this area have reached you (if any have).
 
I had a relatively quiet day and a decent night’s sleep last night (I could stand them for a change). Today was pleasantly clear and warm, the best day yet for weather since I’ve been here.
 
Last evening for a change I read the Reader’s Digest. The September number is the last I have. I finally got around to the Radio Quiz on page 95 of that issue and to see how ossified I’d become since a year’s separation from the American scene, I decided to try it. I find I scored an 80 on it, which according to their heading puts me with the experts. I missed on #5, 11, 12, and 18. Apparently when I get back, if all else fails, I can get a job on a quiz program. But other use all that miscellaneous knowledge has, I don’t know.
 
You might spring this one on some of the smart boys being overpaid to help win the war by answering questions on the radio.
 
“How long does it take to get a letter from New York to Somewhere in North Africa via APO 302?” If any of them can answer it, let me know. I’m curious.
 
With love,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #111b
Jan. 6, 1943
Somewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
I enclose a clipping from a local French paper (not in Casablanca) covering a letter from General Patton to the Moroccan Pacha at Casablanca, expressing his sorrow and sympathy for the natives who lost their lives there when the city was bombed on the night of Dec. 30-31.
 
I saw that bomb fall, to come down some considerable distance from the harbor, its objective; I rather imagine the German plane which dropped it was at the moment interested mainly in lightening up to get clear of the AA fire pursuing him, and that it cared little where it fell so long as it got rid of the weight. That happened to be the only bomb which did any damage at all in that raid; it was unfortunate the non-combatants caught it.
 
I received today your letter #144 of Nov. 20, forwarded here from Middle East, and also a letter from “Tootie” Gifford in Boston, written the same day, also forwarded. I have, of course, already acknowledged some eight letters received since that one was written; the others arrived two weeks ago. This is the first letter received since Christmas Day; with the exception now of #144, the missing list stands as I then (and since) have reported it.
 
My shoulder marks haven’t shown up; neither has the second slide rule; and everything else sent and not previously acknowledged is missing also – probably on its way to East Africa. I think you might as well forego any packages at all in the future. If something can’t go in what can be made to simulate a first class letter, it had best not be sent at all. Even a package with first class postage is in my opinion unlikely to be delivered here; there is some question yet as to whether letters addressed APO 302 ever get here either. I can’t find anyone who has as yet received any.
 
As a sample of how the mail works here, I enclose part of the official envelope in which I received the two letters mentioned above. They were forwarded from Middle East to the headquarters city where I might be, but am not. There the naval headquarters put them in an official envelope (partly enclosed) and sent them to me here. Notice the Army postmark, Dec. 28. It arrived today, nine days to cover the 300 miles from there to here. And that on official mail!
 
I made my first dive here in North Africa, today, to inspect a sunken drydock we’re working on. I hope we’ll have this one up in a week or so now; it’s a very large one and very important. Part of the work was done by French divers, and unfortunately none too well. We have to do it over again with the few men who are here now from my old station (eight altogether). I regret to say I could get things done very much faster in East Africa where I had everything in my own hands, naval base and all, and could force matters, than I can here where I have to work with the French who are our friends (but control the shops) and must be treated with courtesy (there’s too damned much around here) rather than with the Italians who were our enemies but were glad to do what they were told and did it pronto. I’m inclined to think there is something in that old adage, “God save me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies myself.”
 
I have come to the conclusion (I think I’ve said so once before) that I’ll wait to pay my own income tax till six months after the war. However, I’ll figure it out as soon as I get the forms, and the money for it had better be set aside. Talking of forms, get some and send them to me here; those sent (if sent) to Massawa may or may not ever arrive.
 
As regards your own tax, you are to take the full family deduction for both of us on your return, that is, $1200. And since it is going to be a matter of considerable moment, you had better carefully figure out all charitable deductions, taxes (the house is yours in Westfield, 50% yours in Maine), gasoline, amusement, auto, sales taxes, telephone taxes, and there are probably plenty of other taxes now. Remember that no money or allotments received by you either from me directly or via the government is income so far as you  are concerned; that’s all part of my income even when received by you from the government without passing through my hands.
 
Make no return at all for me; I’ll take care of my own. You may have to note on yours in the space (it’s small) about husband making a separate return, that it’ll be made after the war.
 
I judge from your dividend sheet, which shows a total of $10,439.81 thru November, that your total for the year will run around $11,500 gross. Your deductions may run around $2000 total (including that $1200 family). This will include at least a $300 earned income credit deduction, which I’m afraid is a credit only against normal tax, not surtax. (All this will be clearer with an actual income tax form before you).
 
Assuming a surtax net income of about $9500, your tax will be about $2450. For your information (but not for anyone else’s, including the collector’s) I estimate that my own income tax (on both salary, dividends and royalties) will be about $2300. That’s a total tax liability for both of us of about $4800 to be incurred in 1943, of which you will actually have to pay quarterly starting next March 15, about $600 a quarter on your return, and stow away in the bank or in bonds (as may be determined later) about the same sum quarterly as a reserve to pay my taxes when, if, and as due six months after the war ends. I’ll say by the time we’ve taken care of covering $5000 this year for Federal taxes, we will have done our share both in winning and paying for the war (but we won’t be thru paying for it).
 
You have, I think, a tax reserve of $1500, which I once (foolish lad) thought would be enough to cover half of 1943 taxes for both of us. Well, anyway, it’ll cover $375 per quarter out of the $1200 per quarter you must pay or reserve. How are you going to get the other $825 per quarter, I am afraid is going to be your part of the strategy necessary to outwit the enemy and win the war.
 
Not to lead you astray in your preparations for the campaign, I regret to have to tell you that I cannot send you any more money directly from here any more (as I have in the past from Middle East) because I no longer draw the special allowance given the officers attached to the original North African Mission. So my compensation for being yanked out of East Africa and being tossed into this more active war area is a reduction in pay of about $2000 a year. (I sent you about $1900 during 1942, including the last check for $186 in letter #83 of Nov. 11, which has never been acknowledged, though it may have been in a missing letter. What’s the status of that $186 as regards receipt?) So you cannot count in the future on receiving any more checks at all from me here to help out.
 
Next I further regret to say that I received notice a couple of weeks ago from the Navy Mutual Aid that because of unexpectedly high casualty rate among naval officers, they were compelled to double their insurance rates, starting Jan 1, and would I please double my allotment for that purpose. I decided I had better comply, since this was no time to drop an insurance, and I had to register an additional allotment for them of $16 per month. Inasmuch as I had left anyway only $31 a month out of my Navy pay before that (and had just lost my extra Army pay) and my mess bill comes to about $30 a month, that left me $15 short of cash to keep on paying my mess bill if I wanted to continue to eat. (I have cash enough to carry me on this for a couple of months more yet, but about March I’m afraid I’m going to be compelled to reduce my allotment to you from $590 to $570 per month to keep myself solvent from then on in darkest Africa).
 
Next I further regret to say that most of my insurance policies will probably cost somewhat more in 1943, which will come about by a probable reduction in the dividend return the companies will allow on the premiums. Whether that change will be appreciable or not, Mr. Fried can advise you. It may amount to an increased cost of several hundred dollars total on all the policies.
 
Aside from all the above, of course Dodd Mead royalties will be smaller than last year, and I have no doubt most dividend payments will be also.
 
My suggestions as to meeting all this must of course be general. First I guess you'll have to quit buying any war bonds for any purpose at all, except perhaps to form the reserve fund for my income tax payments in the future. Second you will probably have to discontinue the savings bank monthly deposit which you have been making. You will, of course, have to discontinue any attempt to build up a tax reserve for 1944 similar to the $1500 you accumulated for 1943. (How the 1944 taxes will ever be paid, God only knows.) With these changes, you may be able to gather up the $1200 quarterly required this year.
 
I’ll suggest a few places where you should not try to economize. First, your own heat, your own food, your own clothes, and your own medical attendance. Second, the necessary expenses for the completion of Mary’s college year.
 
I would suggest (though I suppose the suggestion is hardly necessary) that based on your experience of 1942, you make up a budget for 1943 on the following basis: You can expect from my allotments about $6800 and from my dividends and royalties $2000, a total of $8800. You may expect from your dividends $4000, and from royalties, $1000, giving you a total gross of $13,800. You can expect to pay in income taxes $4800, insurance, $2000, and all your other expenses, including allowances to my mother and your family, based on your 1942 costs. Where does that leave you? I am very anxious to learn.
 
I hate like the devil to burden you with all these figures, but I’m afraid it’s inescapable. I would recommend you get yourself an income tax form and set to work immediately figuring it out, sending me the rough form for comment. I may say the advice you’ll get from any other source on this subject will be just about worthless for this purpose. And send me a form or two for myself immediately (never mind what others have been sent elsewhere before). Send one via APO 625 and another via APO 302. I may get one of them in time to do me and you some good. As regards your own return, while you want to figure it out right away and also send me immediately all the data so I can do the same, don’t send in your form till the last day or so before Mar. 15 unless you’ve received my comments before that.
 
It gripes me excessively to have to take up letters I’d rather fill with more personal matters, with these financial problems, but I guess it’s just another of the things that make war hell. And so I quit here,
 
With sincere commiseration,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #112
Jan. 7, 1943
Somewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
Today we had our first salvage success on sunken ships in North Africa and I feel better. The vessel was one sabotaged by the French before the place was taken, and with which we have been struggling for five weeks. It wasn’t a big ship, nor was it of any value as a ship when recovered, but the French had sunk it where it would do the most harm, and getting it out of there was of the highest importance and of grave concern to all the brassiest hats in several land and sea services.
 
Well, today when the heavens literally opened and poured oceans of rain down on us, interspersed with heavy hailstones, we lifted her clear, quite a ticklish proceeding, and deposited her where she can rest as a heap of innocuous junk. We all got thoroughly soaked in the proceeding, but nobody minded for getting that 1500 tons of ancient steamer up and out was of more moment to the war effort in 1943 than everything that’s being done on the Normandie.
 
Now we have left here as a major task only the big sister of my first salvage success in Africa. When that’s up, I think I shall have done my duty to this port and will move further east. Every wreck up now brings me appreciably closer to coming home.
 
No mail yet. Today my associates here received some, however, dated last October, forwarded them finally from England, which they left about then to come south for the winter season. They’ll know better next time, and probably pick Murmansk as offering a more satisfactory all around climate.
 
I mentioned last week I’d seen a vessel evaporate, quite an unusual sight. Today I learned that 1100 sacks of mail from home evaporated with it, some perhaps for me. You might enquire at the post office concerning what was on a ship bearing the name of the town where Ted Sosman went to college, provided you omit from the name of that town the initial letter of the town you come from.
 
With love,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #113
Jan. 8, 1943
Somewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy dearest:
 
I received some mail today, four letters from you, one from Mary, and one from the Collector of the Internal Revenue – but all forwarded here from East Africa, which I’m beginning to think may still be the best way to address me here. Very evidently it takes less time for a letter to go to the Red Sea and get sent all the way back across Africa and then north up here (that’s the route) than it does for it to come directly here from U.S. This conclusion may be wrong, but at any rate no letters addressed here directly have yet arrived, and only two sent via APO 625, which is the first arrival point in Africa on the route to my old station.
 
At any rate, your letters # 153, 155, 156, and 158 arrived today. It is of interest that 154 which you say went V-mail, and 157 which you say you sent air-mail, haven’t come yet. Air mail, as I’ve often said before, is a delusion, if not worse, and V-mail is the slowest possible means of sending messages as well as being only an aggravation instead of a real letter when it does arrive.
 
The present missing list is now 119, 120, 129, 130, 139, 140, 141, 143, 145, 149, 154, 157, 159, 160, and 161.
 
It would help me in figuring out which of my letters have reached you (which I can’t very well by your usually very guarded comments on their contents) if you were to send me a complete list of the missing numbers in several different letters, with perhaps a weekly recapitulation (complete).
 
I sent you a check for $186 in letter #83 of Nov. 11. It has never been acknowledged, though you have mentioned the receipt of some letters with as high a number as #95. Possibly one of your missing letters contains a notice of its receipt; none of those I have refers to it either by number or otherwise, either as received or missing.
 
I am told today that the APO number of this station has been set as APO 700. The old number, 302, covered a much wider area. Please use 700 here-after and advise Mary also. I may find the mail for me under the 302 number awaiting me in Bizerta when I get there; none of it has come here yet.
 
Thanks for all the newspaper clippings you’ve sent me in those four letters, and particularly the Cosmopolitan page which I hadn’t seen before. The U.P. correspondent got a very accurate account of our interview. It is funny though how all these correspondents get the idea that I’m modest. I wonder whom they are accustomed to interviewing. You know well enough how modest I am.
 
Regarding the clippings, I think you can omit sending me any more on the plans of various politicians or others on how to remake the world after the war. My only interest is in what’s happening on the various fronts and what’s going on that may help win the war. If we don’t win, we needn’t bother about dreams for a better world, and I think the thinkers about plans for remaking our social economy had better devote their thoughts (if they have any constructive ones) to how to kill a few more millions of Nazis and Japs, and leave their social planning till enough of these have been wiped out to insure victory. This social planning detracts attention and energy from the main business at hand. When I see the bombs falling or to go out to struggle with a torpedoed troopship (with the risk of getting torpedoed myself in the process) I am damned little interested in so-and-so’s beautiful designs for the utopia to come.
 
Along with your letters arrived today from Eritrea one Christmas package mailed October 20 (insured) containing three cans of nuts, mints, and coffee candy, and two games, one from you and one from Mary. Thanks a lot, the eatables will come in handy, though I’m a little dubious that I’ll ever have time to try the games. It might have astonished Mary, however, had she ever looked at the back of the instruction card enclosed in the game box sent. For your information, I enclose it. You need not bother to return it to me. (Ed: the card reads: Made in Japan).
 
I appreciate your father’s dilemma over his house – to sell or not to sell. This may be the only opportunity he’ll ever have to recover any part of his investment in it, but where to go that won’t cost him more? If it were only your father and mother, you might ask them, at least for the war, to stay with us, but that takes no account of Betty (Ed: Lucy’s maiden sister) or John (Ed: Lucy’s brother) or John, Jr., for whom we have no room at all. Besides all of which, to move your parents at their age from the community in which they have spent their lives would hardly be a favor to them. I’m afraid I don’t see the answer at this distance, except that it looks best to me to hold on, and to rent as much of the house as is possible to others.
 
About the American Geographical Society, you might ask Howard Lewis (Ed: from Dodd, Mead) if it amounts to anything and if membership is any honor. If it is, send them $10 and accept for me. If it’s just another organization, pass it up.
 
I enclose the notice from the Collector in Boston, which I suppose has long since been taken care of. It’s the only one I’ve ever received in Africa. He enclosed with it a “Save for taxes plan” describing series A-1945 tax notes, a copy of which you can no doubt obtain from our bank (if you haven’t one) so I’m keeping this one. It may be the best answer to the reserve fund for my (not your) income tax for 1943, which I do not intend to pay till after the war. This would require, as I wrote you in letter #111, buying $600 worth of those tax notes on March 15, 1943 and for each of the three following quarters of 1943, while you pay your own taxes of about $600 per quarter in cash.
 
Mary’s tax return should be simple. Her income is about $500 more or less, which requires a return regardless, I believe, since it’s from dividends, even though her exemption is $500 and no tax may be due. You can figure hers out yourself without any reference to me.
 
Tell Mary I received her letter of Nov. 27 (?) as well as the one of Dec. 4 which came today.
 
I trust your Christmas Day went off well, with the guests you hoped for. The less said about my Christmas Day, the better.
 
The oldest French inhabitants here say the weather here this winter is quite unusual – they can’t remember another as bad. Sounds like old stuff to me – I’ve heard that before about climates which the visitors found below par. Any way the rain and the hail certainly poured down on us yesterday and nearly washed this place into the Mediterranean.
 
By the way, if Monie knows where Mal is, let me know. But be specific, and if the censor wants to cut it out, let him. None of your letters have been so molested for months.
 
It’s nearly midnight now, so I’ll cease.
 
Goodnight, darling.
 
Ned.
 
Letter #114
Jan. 10, 1943
Still Somewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy dearest:
 
This is Sunday, our day of rest, but as usual it turned out to be about a twelve hour working day with the divers. However, the weather was good, and we got along fairly well.
 
We are still engaged with the big sister of the subject of that article you just sent me by courtesy of Pat Downey. This one is a whopper, nearly three times as big, and will be the biggest thing I’ve ever raised. Not the most difficult (I still think the S-51 was that and that derrick in Massawa next) but by far the biggest, and size is always a problem even without complications.
 
Tomorrow or next day we shall start blowing. (Compressed air is the agent here; I usually find it best in these odd cases). With a little luck, there will be a remarkable change in the marine scenery here by the end of the week. If we have trouble instead of luck, it will take longer, but we’ll get it.
 
There is no kind of relaxation I’ve found here: no social life, Service or otherwise; no movie worth going to; frequent blackouts; and simply a hotel room to retire to when it’s too dark to continue work in the harbor. I don’t mind the lack of any of those things particularly since I’m quite willing to go to bed early anyway after a day in the refreshing salt air right off the sea. I have, however, found one distraction. Roaming through all the bookshops in this town in search of a French-English dictionary (which I never found) I ran across in one of them, exhibited under cellophane quite an old book, which I was surprised to see was James Thomson’s “The Seasons.” For once I was bitten by the bibliophile’s urge to invest in an ancient volume, which I succumbed to to the tune of 125 francs, and became the proud owner of the book once owned (in succession) by James, Aitken, Henry Aitken, J. M. Eryenth, and G. Ceret – two Scotchmen, a Swede, and a Frenchman apparently.
 
It’s a book of poetry, and I suppose you wonder why I wanted it. Well, it happens to be the book Paul Jones doted on, and which he quoted from in his famous letter to the Countess of Selkirk, when he said that not war nor glory was his dream, but only to retire to
            “Calm contemplation and poetic ease.
            Let others brave the flood in the quest of gain,
            And beat for joyless months, the gloomy wave.
            Let such as deem it glory to destroy,
            Rush into blood, the sack of cities seek;
            Unpierced, exulting in the widow’s wail,
            The virgin’s shriek, and infant’s trembling cry.
            Let some, far distant from their native soil,
            Urged on by want, or hardened avarice,
            Find other lands beneath another sun.”
 
And that from John Paul Jones!
 
So he told Lady Selkirk that he was made for love, not war, and wanted only to enjoy rustic seclusion in calm contemplation and poetic ease.
 
I had never seen the book before and was quite curious to see what manner of poetry it was Paul Jones was so enamored of he made a practice of presenting copies of it where he thought it might do some good. I’ve spent various evenings since reading it. It’s a long book on the four seasons, smacking of two centuries ago, which I suppose no one would read today. Still I agree with Paul Jones it’s worth reading. James Thomson aside from his glowing pages on the beauties of the rural scene amidst the changing seasons, seems to have sensed that love also was a force, and here and there comes a passage like this one retelling I think an ancient legend of young Damon, seated on a river bank bemoaning the apparent lack of interest in him by Musidora, when
 
            “Lo, conducted by the laughing Loves,
            This cool retreat his Musidora sought:
            Warm in her cheek the sultry season glowed;
            And robed in loose array, she came to bathe
            Her fervent limbs in the refreshing stream.
            What shall he do? In sweet confusion lost,
            And dubious flutterings, he a while remained:
            A pure ingenious elegance of soul,
            A delicate refinement known to few,
            Perplexed his breast, and urged him to retire;
            But love forbade. Ye prudes in virtue, say,
            Say, ye severest, what would you have done?”
 
Now if you have 125 francs, I suggest you hie yourself to the nearest ancient bookshop, get James Thomson’s “The Seasons” and discover (along with Paul Jones and myself) whether your solution to this dilemma is the same that young Damon worked out and Musidora whole-heartedly approved.
 
There are but two cases in history I think, where a military man in the midst of a desperate campaign, has paused to praise a poet. Oddly enough, they both chose poets eulogizing the rustic scene. The other case (aside from Paul Jones’ letter to Lady Selkirk) was when Wolfe, the night before the battle on the Plains of Abraham before Quebec, quoted approvingly Gray’s “Elegy.”
 
            “The paths of glory lead but to the grave,” with the comment that he would rather have written that poem than win the coming battle, and then went on to prove Gray’s thesis with his death.
 
So now my sole distraction from salvage work and worries is to read “The Seasons,” wading through page after page of poetic effusion on nearly everything under the sun bearing on the weather to exult occasionally in an understanding passage on the solitary subject which interests me, the love of man for woman. (I judge John Paul Jones knew also what was important in those pages).
 
I have no Lady Selkirk, from whom my men have just filched all the family silver, to pour out to the longings of my heart. But darling, regardless of what I was made for, what I want is love, not war, and how I long, amidst the rustic scenes of our own acres at “The Anchorage,” (Ed: their home in Southwest Harbor, Maine) for “calm contemplation and poetic ease” – with you!
 
Ned.
 
Letter #115
Jan. 13, 1943
Somewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
Le gran dock is up. The biggest salvage job I’ve ever done in my life. Today she floats over what three days ago was just another wave-swept portion of the sea, and the scenery in this harbor is very considerably altered.
 
But like many another task, it was a heart-breaker. Last night I came in after 48 hours with only two hours sleep snatched the night before on top of a coil of diving hose in the hold of an old scow we were using for a diving boat, completely discouraged, thoroughly worn out, and ready to go to the C-in-C, the Admiral in the next town east, and tell him I was through forever, and he could do what he damned pleased about it. Everything had gone wrong, and the situation looked hopeless.
 
Three days ago (after a month’s work on the bottom) we started blowing compressed air on the dock, and after a few hours, the stern floated up as designed. That took all day. We worked all night then with pumps, getting the stern up further for safety before lifting the bow end, and then a devil of a storm blew up and we were caught with one end on the surface and the other end pounding on the bottom, heavy. The result of that was that yesterday morning when we proceeded to blow the bow end to bring that up, it wouldn’t float, and a diver’s examination showed the bow end had buckled its deck plates, ruining the air tightness of two bow compartments which were my whole reserve for lifting and somewhat damaging two more there.
 
So in that condition of the dock, we struggled all day long yesterday to make the bow float up, with no luck at all. It wouldn’t rise, and meanwhile another storm blew up, and there we were with the already damaged bow pounding on the bottom and getting worse by the minute. Finally, late last night, after we had done everything we could without result, and it looked as if we were faced with a worn out crew with perhaps several more weeks diving work making tight the damages, I gave it up, and ordered the whole crew (all eight of them) to go ashore for a rest while I did the same, in the frame of mind I’ve mentioned above. I would have sold the whole job and our chances of success for two cents.
 
But again I had it demonstrated that it never pays to quit until you’re dead, and got another demonstration of my belief that the other man or the task in hand, would crack before I did if I stuck it out. After a good night’s rest, I went back to that dock full of fight and determined to make the damned thing float no matter how long it took, Strange to say, from then on though I’d done nothing to alter things since the night before (except to keep all the air compressors going) about nine this morning the bow began to float slowly up in spite of its leaking compartments, and tonight we have the whole dock fully afloat, and the task to put it slangily, “on ice.”
 
This dock, I think, will remain my major contribution to the war effort. Its value is inestimable, on account of its large size, and already we have several customers waiting for it with torpedo damage, huge ships that were probably out of the war for good otherwise, since they can go nowhere to be repaired if they couldn’t be docked here. And until today there was no dock large enough in this area, though I had once some weeks ago assured the admiral there would be, and he had already taken the dock for granted anyway when first he asked to have me ordered here. Just what would have happened if I’d gone to him, as I felt last night, and told him I couldn’t raise it, I can’t imagine. Well, anyway it’s done, and tonight I feel infinitely better. So also does my little salvage crew of eight, that I had flown here by air from Massawa for this job. This makes the third drydock we raised, being more than twice as big as the other two together.
 
I received today your V-mail letter #160, (with your Christmas wishes); and a Christmas card sent Dec. 14 and your letter #173 (with one of Mary’s) mailed Dec. 17, including in the last the income tax pamphlet. The last two items were the first ever addressed via APO 302 to be received here. Apparently it takes about a month that way. It is reassuring to know, however, that mail does ultimately get here, though the gaps are quite inexplicable, since there are 10 letters missing between one last received (#163) and the one which came today (#173).
 
The missing list now is 119, 120, 129, 130, 139, 140, 141, 143, 145, 149, 154, 157, 159, 161, and everything from 164 to 172, both inclusive.
 
It’s practically tomorrow now, so I’ll stop, though now I hardly feel sleepy at all. There is but one thing lacking for me now to make today a real day of triumph, and that would be to be caressed to sleep in your arms.
 
With much longing,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #116
Jan. 15, 1943
Somewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
Today your letter #164 arrived with the pins for my wrist watch. Many thanks. The letter itself (registered) took 10 days to get from N. Y. to Miami, as shown by the time stamps on the back of the envelope, which I’m returning for your inspection. You might show it to the Westfield postmaster. Anyway, no more registered letters – it merely slows them up and gives absolutely nothing in the way of additional protection once the letter leaves U.S.
 
As regards the slide rule, quit bothering to get the one on Admiral Broshek’s order, so far as I am concerned. I now have two already – the first one of George French’s, a second I picked up from the Army here, and there is yet a third probably still coming (George French’s second in letter #146). So I am amply supplied, for which also my thanks.
 
Where Current Biography got their information is beyond me – not from me. Possibly from Dodd, Mead.
 
As I mentioned before, I intend to hold off on my own income tax payments and reports until after the war. As regards yours, I wrote you at some length in letter #111 of Jan. 6. I’ll merely repeat here that you are to take the full family allowance on your return ($1200).
 
I’m sorry I could do nothing personally about your parents’ golden wedding anniversary. I’m very glad you made them for both of us the gift you did.
 
I mentioned in a letter a couple of weeks or so ago, about your possibly going to Washington to see Irene Donahue concerning the report she had from Wendell Willkie’s sister and some possible action that might be taken on Wendell Willkie’s opinion of my work. On second thought, I believe you had better let that attempt alone. If anything can be done at all, it had best come from the C in C out here, and I think something is possible there. At any rate, if nothing is done that way here soon, I’ll tell the C in C  exactly what I think about it.
 
Judging by the terrific amount of gasoline required for the mechanized warfare equipment I see out here, I’m surprised you still get even 3 gallons of gas a week. So never mind my late lamented tires.
 
Yesterday I received your letter #168 with the socks from my mother. It was sent APO 302, being the third such now received. It came by freight, I think, along with 5000 other bags of mail (no fooling) which all arrived at once and are still being sorted. I may have more in the same lot, if the army privates working on that mountain ever manage to get it sorted. That’s one disadvantage of being with a large army. I’m afraid the days of actual air mail delivery (regardless of stamps) as we had in Massawa, are all over. (Don’t try to beat the game by putting on air mail stamps. It will still come by freight regardless.)
 
To repeat, my address (no change in city) has been changed from 302 to 700. Tomorrow, however, I’m going east to see the C in C, and the rest of my assorted collection of wrecks still further east (not that I include the C in C in that category) and I’ll be gone from here a week or so. I should have gone over a week ago, but I didn’t dare face him again till I had that drydock afloat. But now I can.
 
The APO number of the city I’m going to is 512, as Admiral Broshek told you. However, it’s not worth using, as I’ll be back here no doubt shortly.
 
The missing letter list now is 119, 120, 129, 130, 139, 140, 141, 143, 145, 149, 154, 157, 159, 161, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, and 172. The last letter received was #173 which came three days ago.
 
As before mentioned, last week I received the Christmas package sent Oct. 20. Everything else not in letters received or specifically acknowledged is still missing.
 
I’m still a little weary after our last salvage episode. This is a hectic life. You work for weeks on the bottom and nothing seems to happen in the way of progress. Then the ship or dock starts up and plenty usually happens till she has safely emerged completely – always a nerve-wracking experience, though I’ll admit there’s a tremendous surge of satisfaction when they first break water that almost pays for all the strain. And then comes the let-down (which ought to last about ten years before another such trial) but we can’t stay let down for over about a day when we’re off on the next task (in this case a torpedoed troopship, which I intend to make the first customer for our newly salvaged drydock.)
 
By the way, I have received your letter #146 which I mentioned above as containing George French’s second slide rule (still missing). In #146 you say you sent the slide rule separately that morning (probably in #145 which is missing). However, in your #164, you say that in #145 you enclosed some mechanical pencils erasers and leads. I do have them, all of which came in a small box, but I believe not in any letter at all. Anyway, I have them, but no letter #145, nor George French’s second slide rule. Come to think of it, the mechanical pencil & leads I have (just mentioned) were sent me by you while I was still in Massawa, being what you purchased at Rosen’s. Those from George French must still be missing along with letter #145. Don’t get a headache trying to puzzle the above all out.
 
I’ll now start packing my things for my flight east tomorrow. My next letter will be from that city where the soldier of the legion lay dying amidst a dearth of woman’s tears, lamenting the fact that nevermore would he see Bingen, dear Bingen on the Rhine. (For myself, I trust Bingen has been blown into the Rhine by bombs by now).
 
I suppose Mary’s Christmas vacation is over by now. I’m glad she could be with you so long.
 
With much love,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #117
Jan. 17, 1943
Elsewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
I had a relatively pleasant ride by air (so because it was warmer and sunny) from my more or less usual station eastward a few hundred miles to here.
 
At headquarters, the C in C was bubbling over with enthusiasm because we had raised the large dock. And one of his captains introduced me to another staff officer (a rear admiral, British, of course) as the man who waved a wand and the ships came up. What a reputation!
 
My main task here is to try to set up a proper organization for my work from the pillars of Hercules to the front lines, but I wonder, with what? And aside from that, to inspect all the ports from here east about the jobs awaiting action.
 
I’ve learned that my former playthings are on the way and should be here about the end of February. I’ll be somewhat better off then for workmen on the top and on the bottom (here comes an air raid alarm and in a few seconds the lights will go off. We had two alerts last night here but no bombs. It is reported that six Nazi bombers out of ten on their way here were shot into the sea by our night fighters and the others fled back to Bizerte.) There go the lights – this by flashlight, but I’ll wait now till they’re on again, and I must preserve my batteries.
 
Somewhat later
 
There being no lights, I donned my tin hat, took my flashlight, and climbed up on the roof of this hotel under a bright moon to see the show when the enemy bombers tried to come over the harbor. Nobody else up there but me, so I had a gorgeous view of Algiers all blacked out, rising tier on tier of white buildings against a steep hillside, and standing out beautifully in the moonlight so that the blackout was quite ridiculous so far as any practical effect was concerned at concealment.
 
Some fifteen minutes went by while I admired the moon, the stars, the harbor, and the town, and still no bombers. I was about to give up in disgust and come down, when who should come through the penthouse door onto the roof but Frank Kluckhorn, H. R.(?) Knickerbocker, and a navy lieutenant, Ray Kellogg, doing publicity work.
 
Kluckhorn recognized me first, after which we all forgot about the raid (the all clear sounded while we were still up there). They invited me to dinner with them; we all adjourned to a little restaurant run by a couple of rather aged Belgian refugees (sisters, 71 and 62) who did their own cooking and had quite a meal, at which the conversation went on in German, French, Spanish, and a little English. Knickerbocker conversed with our cooks in German, and I used Spanish.
 
It now being after midnight, I’ll cut this short, but you might advise Lute (Ed: Luther Huston) that Frank Kluckhorn wanted to be remembered to him. And Lieutenant Kellogg (whose photography work seems to be done here) who is going home in a few days, promised to call you up on his way back to California.
 
With love,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #118
Jan. 19, 1943
Somewhere else in North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
Just a few words this morning. I am heading east in a few minutes for an inspection of all the rest of my area up to the front line.
 
Yesterday I received here, via APO 625, your letters #161, 170, and a Christmas card of Dec. 8.
 
I have an idea that my best all around address for the future will be APO 512, which is this central city, which will be mostly my headquarters, and from which I shall radiate both east and west. This place is in a way tied up with “Bingen on the Rhine,” (poetically speaking, that is).
 
With love,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #119
Jan. 23, 1943
Elsewhere in North Africa
 
Lucy darling:
 
I’ve just got back from a 1000 mile tour by automobile (jeep) of my eastern area. Right now I’m not back in the city where I’ve so far done most of my work, but I am in the city which will be my main headquarters, which is at G. H. Q. Ask John Hale what that is, if you don’t know, but I thought it had been given sufficient prominence to identify it in all the news reports which have emanated from North Africa. All the generals and admirals hang out here.
 
Some weeks ago I asked you to make a visit to the friend of Wendell Willkie’s sister, on a certain mission. A few days ago, I wrote you not to do it; in case the recent letter goes astray, I repeat that now. Do nothing in connection with that visit I once asked you to make. It is possible something may eventuate at this end, and it’s better to let that happen and not start anything at your end.
 
Today, on my return to the same city from which I started on my inspection trip, I received three letters from you, one from Mary, and one from Luther Huston (containing an income tax form which I’ll study later). All were via APO 625. Your letters were #181 of Dec. 27, 183 of Dec. 29, and 186 of Jan. 2. With respect to your mention of what you received from Kandel, the date of receipt governs, not the date of mailing, which latter affects the sender only but not the recipient. (Ed: Kandel was owner of Craftsweld, the company that manufactured Ellsberg’s underwater cutting torch. Due to the war, it sold very well, and the Ellsbergs received royalties). You enter the item for 1943, not 1942. Change your records (and mine if they are involved) to show the item as a receipt for Jan. 2, 1943, and do not include in the 1942 accounts.
 
There is no victory tax deduction on the salaries of members of the armed forces.
 
I’m glad to note my $6.50 cable from West Africa was delivered in Westfield in three days, although the telegraph company then proceeded to lose it and make it worthless. I don’t suppose you’ll ever get the canned cable of Dec. 14. I think they’re a delusion, but you might try one from your end to see if it works any better the other way. It probably doesn’t.
 
In case the other letter (#115) mentioning it goes astray, I’ll repeat here we raised the gran(d) dock we were working on, about 10 days ago. In the middle of the raising of that dock, everything went wrong, and for once I thought I was beaten, and was ready to throw the job into the admiral’s face and tell him I was through with salvage forever. But I didn’t and stuck it out instead. And next day, while the case still seemed hopeless, the end of the dock which was still on the bottom and which I couldn’t get up, floated up on its own for no apparent reason that I could discover and saved my reputation (as well as the dock). I was never so thankful in my life.
 
I’ve been spreading around my salvage parties over this coast, right up to the guns almost. Our easternmost port is only a few minutes flying time from the Nazi positions, and it gets lots of attention from them, though no bombs fell while I was there. However, enough have already to give us plenty of work, not only there but in the other ports not so close.
 
Last night on my way back, I spent the night at an Army A. A. battery about half way between here and the front lines, and saw something of a fierce battle out at sea under a full moon between one of our convoys and a Nazi bombing squadron. It was too far out to see either ships or planes, but the sky was full of lurid tracers, bursting shells and gun flashes, lasting about an hour. One Nazi plane came down in flames into the sea. Whatever else happened, we couldn’t tell, and I’ve heard no reports.
 
The jeep I had for the trip didn’t even have a top, so it was a damned cold ride most of the time, especially early morning and evening. Fortunately the weather was good all the time (four days) with no rain. I had an Army sergeant (colored) for a driver who did a very good job.
 
I may say that the ride along the coast from here up to Tunisia is marvelous. It has the famous Riviera on the opposite Mediterranean shore completely outclassed for beauty, with Grand Corniche drives fronting the sea, cut high on cliffs overlooking real sand beaches (not gravel ones); it’s worth coming a long way to see. I felt it quite a pleasant interlude to drink in the rocks, the sand, the surf and the mountain scenery along the coast in between puzzling over the best ways to salvage the bombed and torpedoed wrecks I had to study in each port I stopped at. Coming back yesterday and today, I took an inland route (quicker) but it was not so quick, as I had to pass endless streams of motorized equipment (you can guess what kind) moving eastward. If you want to know where your gasoline is going, you should have seen those columns.
 
You can tell anyone you please of my task here and my title (including the fact that I am now PSVO). I’m Principal Salvage Officer, Western Mediterranean, but the British put everything in initials, so I had to be given a set by Admiral Cunningham personally. The V in the title was thrown in for good measure, so far as I can figure out. There’s no secret about my activities so far as I can see.
 
I suppose there are letters waiting me (sent via APO 302) at my more westerly city than this. I think I may be there during next week to collect them. However, I think all things considered, you’d better send all future mail here, which is 502 (Ed: I believe this should be 512), as I believe I’ve said before. This is most central for the area, and I think I’ll be here more than anywhere else. Take a good look at the map and you’ll locate it, if you haven’t already.
 
It being now somewhat late, with my frame somewhat weary after four days in a jeep, I’ll roll into my bed in solitude and loneliness and dream and dream and dream – you’d be surprised how vividly you visit me in my dreams. If only I could exchange the dream for the reality!
 
Ned.
 
P.S. Word has just come through that Tripoli has fallen. Thank God!
 
Letter #120
Jan. 25, 1943
APO 512
 
Lucy darling:
 
I was invited last night here to a small dinner party and had quite a pleasant time. One meets such odd groups nowadays. For instance, the major reason for my going was to meet again the chap who wrote the material quoted on the back jacket of my initial literary venture (Ed: Adm Ernest J. King), an old literary pal of mine who abandoned literature after that one effort. Then another there was the fellow who is married to the alumna of Mary’s college, who I think you wrote me as attending with his wife, the last commencement when you met them. A third was a limey I’d heard a little of quite recently, whose name struck me as being reminiscent of cousin Matt’s (Ed: Axelrood) domicile. Our host – well, he was the kind of bird who would be host to such a heterogeneous group; I’m supposed to be working for him, though my work is slightly out of his normal line.
 
I was a little flabbergasted at finding myself in such queer company, but my associate of long ago assured me it was all right – in my field I was doing quite as well as any other of the struggling artists present, so we were all more or less on a par. Well, maybe – anyway they all talked shop. Why is it people always do? That is, everybody but actors, who instead discuss solely the stage? But you couldn’t steer them off it, and the whole evening was spent in shop talk and I learned why little of anything really interesting, like the drama, for instance. (Of course, there are other kinds of drama than what appears on the stage.)
 
About 10:30 the party broke up, to go back each one to his job here or there, while I hied myself back to my bed to ponder my own problems.
 
Tomorrow morning I’m flying back myself from here to APO 700 (formerly 302). I’ll be there only a couple of days, inspecting what progress has been made there in refitting my major success and taking a look at how things are going in making its little sister rise up to a higher life.
 
And then back here again, probably by next Thursday (Jan. 28). By the way, I believe I made a mistake in some recent letters on the APO number of this town. It is 512 (as I think I originally told you) and not 502 as I wrote you a few days ago. As it now appears certain that my main base will be here, better use APO 512 in all future correspondence, and so advise Mary.
 
I believe I probably have some letters waiting for me at APO 302, which I’ll collect tomorrow. After that, I’ll have to have them forwarded to 512 from there (more delay). The mail situation, I regret to say, is going to be very confused for a while yet, between East Africa, West Africa, and a lot of places in North Africa.
 
In case recent letters mentioning it go astray, I repeat here that a request I made a month or so ago that you get in touch with Wendell Willkie’s sister on a favor for me, is not to be heeded. Something may eventuate along those lines from this end, and nothing should be attempted from your end in that connection.
 
I’ll also repeat here that I’m making no income tax return or payment on my own income till after the war, nor should you make any return or payment for me. I think in letter #111 I went into the subject in some detail. You are to take the full family allowance ($1200) on your return. On questions following Schedule E on page 2 of form 1040, fill out question 2 as follows:
            2 (a). Captain Edward Ellsberg, USNR.
               (b). None.
               (c). Return will be filed after return from overseas duty.
            For you on question 5, the answer is No. You are not to answer “yes,” nor file any schedule because you are receiving part of my pay as an allotment. That is not income for you in any sense whatever, any more than if I were home and gave you a monthly check myself to cover expenses.
 
As I do not believe there have been any sales of securities involving either losses or gains (no sales at all) pages 3 and 4 of the form should be detached by you and not used.
 
You will note it is no longer required to have the form notarized. Simply sign and send in, but I advise you not to mail it until March 13, in case there is any further correspondence from me reaching you late on this matter. But work it up as soon as possible (I’ve asked this before) and send me a copy of your figures. I’ll try to check and return them to you by Mar. 13; of course, if by then you get nothing, send in your return. I’ll also work out part of it for you and send it to you immediately I receive your income figures for all of 1942 (these may now be on the way).
 
Your earned income credit, Schedule E (2) should be filled out as follows:
            Earned net income (not more than $4000)…. $______
            Net income (item 119, page 1)……………... Whatever item 19 is
            Earned income credit (etc, ad infinitum)…… $300
And this figure of $300 should be entered as item 25, page 1.
 
Next morning: must leave to catch my plane.
 
Ned.
 
Letter #121
Jan. 26, 1943
APO 625
 
Lucy darling:
 
I got back to this city today to see how my gang were getting along with the small drydock and a few miscellaneous wrecks, but mainly to find what I had in the way of mail. I was overjoyed to receive quite a stack, as follows:
 
            #145 (from Massawa), a Xmas card of Nov. 27, 169, 171, 172, 176, 177, 180, 185, 187, a valentine (with a long letter, unnumbered) of Jan. 6, and 188. In addition three letters from Mary of Nov. 20, Jan. 5, and Jan. 6. Also a package from So. Hadley of Sept. 30 containing Van Loon’s Lives (which while the war lasts, I regret to say I’ll never have a chance to look at) (unless I take what little evening time I have for that and quit writing to you).
 
            I won’t try to give you a corrected missing list now, since many of your letters are at APO 512 to the eastward, and until I get back there (in a few days) I can’t check it accurately.
 
To cover some questions:
 
The mechanical pencils, erasers, & leads in #145 have now arrived.
 
The prickly heat ointment did one of my salvage masters some good. I never used it myself.
 
Some time ago, three cans of coffee from Altman’s arrived. None yet from Windfeldt’s. I don’t need it anymore, since I neither get my own breakfast nor have any facilities or need any more for so doing.
 
I’m sure I have your #146. No slide rule in it. Merely a mention that in another letter that day you were sending it. Never received any such other letter. I don’t need any more slide rules now.
 
I have several times mentioned #119 with an undershirt is still missing. (118 was long ago received, though erroneously once reported missing. No need for any further references to confusion over 119 or 118).
 
My own check sheet is dubious about letters #96, 97, and 98. Maybe there never was a #96. I have #97 marked as of Dec. 3, sent from Algiers. (The city to the eastward). My own sheet shows 98 sent from Oran, probably. No use bothering about the confused numbering of those three letters (if there were three).
 
So far as my hands are concerned, they are much steadier than formerly, if that means anything. (Ed: Ellsberg smoked 8 packs of Camels a day in Massawa and I remember about 1955 his hands shook so much that he could have no more than ½ a cup of coffee or it would spill. After he quit smoking about that time, his shaking got much improved, and almost ceased altogether.)
 
I am very glad to hear of the Craftsweld bonus.
 
I don’t need any cigarettes. I can get what I want here, ex-tax, six cents a package.
 
With regard to Mal’s whereabouts. If Monie knows it, be specific. I can’t locate him by any APO numbers.
 
You mention you sent me a canned cable on Dec. 21. It’s never arrived, and probably never will, being now over five weeks en route. I think they are a complete delusion, both ways.
 
Your letter 188 contained the French-English dictionary. Thank Mabel Sturgis for me.
 
I’ll try to do some work on the dividend statements and send you my suggestions tomorrow.
 
I have received both of Lute’s letters with the income forms, one here (302) today and the other the other day at 512.
 
I’ll reiterate that all future mail should go to APO 512, which is the city to the eastward. I’ll be there more than anywhere else in the future. (I’ve erroneously mentioned it in some recent letters as 502. Disregard that.) Add Naval Headquarters to the address.
 
The letters received today, marked 302, range in date all the way from Dec. 15 to Jan. 6. Since I’ve been away from here 10 days, the case may not be as bad as it appears. All the 625 letters go direct to me at 512 (forwarded, of course) without coming here to 302. However, I think 625 is a dangerous address as time goes on, for they may lose my forwarding address there, especially if the officers who promised to do the forwarding are detached from 625. It is however, the quickest probable transmission, being actually all the way here (that is, to 512) by air, regardless of stamps. In case speed is essential, it might still be used.
 
All the mail to 302 or 512 comes by ship (also regardless of how many air mail stamps on it). However, the ship service is only about three weeks in transit. The big trouble seems to be here, when about 5000 bags of mail all comes in at once and swamps our amateur army postal service in sorting it out.
 
Having got all over the above statistics, I’ll now get down to more personal matters.
 
Your mention of the strong box gives me quite as sharp a pang as it does you. How I ache to have the opportunity to open it again! A prosaic and unromantic object indeed, but God knows with how much sentiment and emotion that box is entwined!
 
It’s odd how like your dreams are to mine. Vividly, tenderly, realistically, you have caressed me in my sleeping hours up to the instant when our lips and bodies were about to meet – and then invariably a cold awakening to loneliness and frustration. When next in reality my arms close about you, I doubt that I can ever bring myself to let you go! Back of everything I’m fighting for is only the wild desire to preserve the kind of world in which I can have you and hold you to my heart’s content, and nothing will content my heart except to have you again as many times I have, fiercely, passionately, our bodies and souls all one, and my eyes drinking in once more the glowing light of love in your brown eyes as they look up on me.
 
I’ve looked on many lovely things around this earth – gorgeous seas, the blazing stars in the desert night, sunrises and sunsets painting the skies in indescribable symphonies of colors, but never have I looked on anything that so bathed my heart in ecstasy as the heavenly glow of your loving smile enveloping me, the while with lips and arms and breasts and body in passionate abandon you fairly matched the promise of your eyes.
 
I can exist here and do my part in this war while I must, but I’ll not live again in truth till I can crush you to my heart and feel you melting once again into the whole-souled unity with me.
 
Ned.
 
Letter #122
Jan. 27, 1943
APO 700 (formerly 302)
 
Lucy darling:
 
Your financial statements came yesterday in letter #187. I have worked out an approximate income tax form for you based on your figures, which will serve you as a guide in your actual return, and for most things (your dividends and royalties) is quite exact, except you should check the arithmetic. The form is enclosed.
 
In going over it, please note the following:
 
(a)    Your figures have been separated into dividends, bond interest, and royalties
(b)   I have omitted from everything the Prudential Ins. dividend return, which is not income and should not be included. It is however, trifling anyway.
(c)    I have eliminate from your December figures the Craftsweld payment of $242.33 received by you Jan. 2, 1943. That is for you a 1943 tax item, regardless of when Craftsweld mailed it or how it figures for them. Eliminate it from your 1942 accounts.
(d)   As item 12, I have used your contribution figures, and on schedule C have indicated only a general statement. I think anything more in explanation is unnecessary on your return.
(dd) Schedule A, line I, insert figure for amount of bonds you own on which interest is being paid. I don’t know how much that is. This may not be total amount of your bonds; only those paying interest.
(e)    Item 14, taxes, is on the figures I have inserted only as a rough guess. You must insert the exact figures for your Westfield house (all of it), ½ the taxes paid in Southwest harbor, and a more exact figure for miscellaneous taxes, for which I have guessed $80. On these other taxes, include automobile, gasoline, sales taxes, telephone bill taxes, theater or symphony & amusement taxes, club taxes, safe deposit taxes, transportation taxes, and God knows plenty of others which no doubt you can estimate. See any income tax booklet such as Ed sent me, on this. An exact figure is not necessary.
(f)     You are to take the whole family exemption, item 21, which is $1200.
(g)    On item 25, earned income credit, follow exactly what I have indicated, also on Schedule E (except there use your figures from item 19, and not the $11, 126.38 I have put down as a guide). I haven’t time to go into the explanations on this earned income credit; what is outlined is correct and identical to practice used in all your former returns. Don’t let anyone try to persuade you otherwise.
(h)    With regard to the questions, the answer to question 5 is No, as indicated. Your allotment checks are not in any sense whatever your income; they are mine. Attach no schedule whatever in this connection.
(i)      You have no need for the detachable pages 3 & 4, since I believe there have been no sales and no capital gains or losses. I am not including that sheet on the form enclosed.
(j)     I would suggest you prepare your own return yourself, on the basis of the above, without asking help from either amateur or professional advisers. Amateur advisers are dangerous; they think they know a lot, but most of it isn’t so. And I feel sure you don’t  require a professional adviser, such as offered by Dodd, Mead. All you need, with the above forms, is some arithmetic and a better knowledge of some of your tax costs than I have. The tax rate being high, a little research on what you have paid out in various deductible taxes is warranted.
 
I think with the above, you can quickly work out your exact return and send it in now when it suits you, though I think that although you should work it out finally as soon as possible, it is not advisable to make payment until about March 12 or 13.
 
There recurs the perennial problem of whether to make return to Boston or to Newark. I recommend you continue your return to Boston as I think that will cause you less difficulty than an attempt to change to Newark. However, on this one matter, you might advise the Newark collector that as in former years, you are sending your return to Boston to avoid having the Boston office on your neck for failing to make a return as formerly. You’ll have to make your own decision on this, but I think this a poor year to change, as it effects me also.
 
I enclose also a form for Mary’s income tax, based on the figures for her income which you sent. Mary will have to make her own return, of course, paying presumedly (sic) by money order since I doubt she has a checking account with $24 in it.
 
Make sure in filling out the form that Mary does not overlook putting a check mark on the back side of the form in the solitary place indicated.
 
And with all the above, I think I have finished with the income tax matter for the present. I do not intend to make any return for my own income, nor to make any payment (nor should you on my account). However, I estimate my own income tax liability will be about the same as yours, and to take care of it, you are to place $600 in the bank every quarter ($2400 a year) or buy Treasury Tax Savings Notes, Series A, 1945, for that sum in my name.
 
About where you are to get the money for all this? First, draw quarterly a fourth of the $1500 built up as a tax reserve. Then discontinue further bond purchases for savings (except for the tax notes mentioned just above.) Then discontinue any further savings bank savings. After that, do the best you can, and pray God for help. However, do not sell anything whatever to obtain tax payment funds, except you may sell bonds already in our possession , if that is necessary. With my sincere sympathy,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #123
Jan. 28, 1943
In the air, from APO 700 to APO 512
 
Lucy darling:
 
I’m moving my headquarters this morning to APO 512, from which more central city my activities can be better directed. Please send all mail in the future to 512, and advise Mary the same. I’ve left word at 700 (formerly 302) to forward everything.
 
Last night, in letter #122, I sent you a filled out form to act as a guide in making out your tax report. The form was based on your complete figures for 1942, just received by me when I arrived at 700 a couple of days ago. (I also enclosed one for Mary.) As for myself, I’m not making out any return, being overseas, nor are you to make any for me.
 
Should letter #122 be delayed, I repeat here what I said. The last Craftsweld payment, received by you Jan. 2, is to go in your 1943 account, not n 1942, regardless of what Craftsweld said about how it figures for them. You are to take the full family credit, $1200, on your return. You are to put down a $300 earned income credit for yourself, exactly as in former years. And in connection with the deduction for taxes paid, take note that since there are taxes now on a wide variety of articles and services (telephone, R.R. tickets, sales, etc.) it will pay you to take a little time in checking them up as a deduction. Include also all the taxes on your Westfield house, and half the taxes on S. W. Harbor. As I figured it, your tax liability is about $2570; mine will be about the same, and monthly or quarterly a reserve of that amount should be set aside (preferably by purchase of Treasury Tax notes, Series A, 1945) against my payment later when I make my return. As regards the funds for payment or reserve against a total tax liability in 1943 of about $5100 for both of us, I suggest you proceed as follows: use the $1500 built up in 1942 plus the discontinuance of further bond purchases (which in 1942 amounted to $1200), and use that $100 monthly for tax payments. These two together will cover your own actual tax requirements. As against the reserve of $2500 required for me, I suggest you discontinue further savings bank savings (which I think in 1942 amounted to $1200), and earmark all my royalty payments (which may make another $1000) for the same use, putting the money in the Treasury Tax notes I’ve mentioned about.
 
I note that between us, our gross income for 1942 was about normal, about $23,000. About $4000 or $5000 of that (this is only a guess, I haven’t the figures before me in this plane) were royalties on Captain Paul, senior & junior, which won’t be repeated in 1943. We also purchased early in 1942 probably that same amount in new securities, which purchase also will not be repeated in 1943.
 
As an estimate of what you will have available in 1943 to work with, you should receive about $7000 in monthly allotment checks. I judge your dividends and mine, will amount to another $7000 (including Craftsweld). With some luck, including the royalties from D. M. in January, you should receive about $2000 in royalties. That is a total about $16,000.
 
As I estimate your fixed charges, you have to meet $5100 for taxes, $2000 for insurance, $500 for my mother, $1000 for Mary’s college expenses, and probably $5000 for everything else in your normal (or abnormal) budget. This totals $13,600. That leaves $2400. If I am not too much in error in my assumptions, you may be able to save that much which could be set up as a reserve for part of our tax payments due to 1944 on our 1943 income. Our 1943 income will probably be less by about $7000 than it was in 1942; whether our tax liability will be less or not depends on whether a new tax bill jumps the rates still higher.
 
I will appreciate receiving a rough statement of how we made out in 1942 – that is, in general what we had in bonds, savings accounts, bank balances, on Jan. 1, 1943 and about what under present conditions our monthly expenditures run.
 
I would suggest that Mary transfer back to you the 80 shares of C & S pfd. As it is no longer paying dividends, it is of no further value to her in paying her college expenses, and you can explain to her the original conditions under which she received the stock. Everything else she has is now hers outright.
 
I believe there is some value in having Mary, now that she is 21, set up her securities in a trust for herself. Mr. Rost in the Peoples Bank, can possibly advise on it. I think it highly desirable it be secured, both as to principal and income, for her, as too many husbands are apt to regard their wive’s capital as something they can use in the most promising ventures, only to find out that even more experienced and older men have been wrong. (Don’t I know it!) I think this should shortly be attended to, for if she were suddenly to get married, there might be legal complications which do not now exist.
 
We are now approaching the airport at 512, so for the moment, I shall have to call this a day.
 
APO 512
 
Later, on the ground (next morning). Starting to set up my office. We got bombed here night (sic). Fair show. Not much damage.
 
With love,
 
Ned
 
Letter #124
Jan. 29, 1943
APO 512
 
Lucy darling:
 
Yesterday on the plane en route here from APO 700 (formerly 302) I wrote you, intending to finish the letter in the evening. But in the evening all the hotel room lights were out (temporary accident to the electrical circuits) and I couldn’t do any writing, so I turned in early.
 
This morning at 5 AM, the air raid sirens started to wail, so I got up to dress to see what happened.  While dressing in the dark, there was the drone of air plane engines and then the very distinctive whistle of a bomb on its way. It landed a few hundred yards away, smashed some windows in our hotel (fortunately or otherwise, all my room windows are smashed already and sealed with cardboard so it made no difference to me) and made a hell of a racket. I finished dressing, put on my tin hat, and went up on the roof. The raid lasted until 6:30 AM. There was a lovely half moon to light up the targets, but smoke pots were going all over the place and very soon the whole harbor (I’m practically on the edge of it) was hidden under a smoke blanket.
 
I think there were about six or eight planes at work, but the A. A. fire was so hot not over half a dozen bombs were ever dropped. One bomber, caught in the searchlights off one end of the harbor, had a busy time with shells and tracers from the Oerlikons following it across the sky and that one may have been shot down into the sea. I understand two were destroyed.
 
Only two bombs landed in the harbor, neither a direct hit on anything, but oddly enough each one landed close aboard two ships that had previously been torpedoed and were already salvage jobs. In one case, the bomb burst close under our ship’s stern, and peppered it with bomb fragments, so that the stern looks as if a huge shotgun had been fired through it. The damage was negligible; $100 will weld up all the holes.
 
But in the other case, the bomb exploded close aboard alongside amidships to lift the ship bodily some feet, so she came back with a smack that wrinkled her plating completely around her shell. That ship was still being pumped from her former damage, and now the leak is worse, but not unduly serious.
 
A couple of nights ago, in another raid here, a bomb landed squarely on the forecastle of a third ship we had in hand as a salvage job, with a torpedo hole already in her bow, and raised hell with the forecastle deck, killing one of the ship’s officers. We still have that ship afloat though.
 
It’s damned annoying that the only things the Germans seem to be able to hit around here in their night raids are our salvage jobs, to make them more complicated for us. However, if any damage must be done, I suppose it’s better to hit three already damaged ships than to disable three unhurt ones.
 
It’s amazing, however, how little damage the Nazis have been able to inflict in their attempts to bomb the port. The A. A. guns may not knock down many planes, but they certainly make them so nervous the bombers do a rotten job of hitting anything.
 
Whether they hit anything or not, there is however a considerable breathless interval after you first hear the shriek of a bomb hurtling down until it finally bursts, while you wonder where that one is going to land. Still, after the guns and searchlights get going, it is fairly possible to estimate where the planes are. The most amazing part of the performance is to see the guns concentrating their shells and tracer bullets on an unilluminated spot where nothing is visible, guided solely by the radio control gear which will quite accurately spot a plane invisible to the eye in the darkness or the clouds.
 
Fortunately for us, we have a decided air superiority around here, and the Nazis must be hard up for planes, for they never seem able to get more than a few out for a raid, and our night fighter planes usually knock a fair number of those down on their way back to Tunisia.
 
Considering the number of ships working out of these ports, if the Nazis only knew how slightly they are interfering with the flow by their bombs, they’d be even more discouraged than they must be already over the outlook.
 
I received your letter #149, written Thanksgiving Day, yesterday on my arrival here. Your mention of the dessert, apple pie and squash pie, made my mouth water. I was in the air from Khartoum to Accra all that Thanksgiving Day, and had only a few iron ration biscuits from about 7 AM to 8 PM to be thankful on.
 
I note that in the letter, which has pretty well chased me all over Africa, the receipt is acknowledged of the check for $186 sent you in my #83 of Nov. 11. You can disregard now my many inquiries since about this.
 
Today also I finally received a canteen goodies package mailed Oct. 20, containing an assortment of small cheeses, etc. Much obliged. Only don’t send any more; package deliveries are too uncertain to make it worthwhile for anything except essentials.
 
The present status of missing letters is: 119, 120, 129, 130, 139, 140, 141, 143,154, 157, 159, 165, 166, 167, 174, 178, 179, 182, 184. The latest letter received is #188.
 
Everything received in the way of books or packages has already been acknowledged. Whatever was in any letter not missing has been received, whether acknowledged or not, except the new slide rule bought from George French often stated by you to have been in letter #146.
 
I have your letter #146 before me, and in that you make no specific statement the slide rule was in  that letter (146); you state in 146 “Dorothy brought it over yesterday (Sunday) and I mailed it first class mail this morning.” Apparently then it was never in 146 nor in any numbered letter (there are none missing from 143 to 154) but in a separate unnumbered letter or package (first class) which has never arrived. Of course, it may yet. Meanwhile I have two slide rules (George French’s old one, and one obtained from the Army) so nothing need be done about getting me any more even if George French’s new one never arrives. (P. S. I just noted that further along in #146 you state “That (the slide rule) mailed this morning was in a box, so I wrapped it in brown paper and mailed it first class, but no letter accompanied it, just a brief note.”) So that explains how it was mailed. It indicates also, however, what I’ve always felt – that packages get rotten handling no matter whether they are stamped first class or not. Anything which can possibly be mailed in an envelope so it looks like a letter or can be made to simulate one is more likely to get through. Use no boxes, if avoidable.
 
I’m glad to note correspondence from here gets through unedited. The same is the fact from your end. Not a letter from you has been opened for months. There is some satisfaction in that privacy, and the feeling I can tell you how I love you without advising third parties, though like you, if there were no alternative, I’d be willing to tell the world also if I had to in order to let you know how much I need you and how insufferable is our separation. It’s that alone – not the climate anywhere nor the strain of my work, that wears on me. My health is all right – this outdoor work agrees with me much more than either a desk job or writing half the day and loafing the rest of it. And aside from the professional pride each time a ship or dock comes up or we drag in a torpedoed ship instead of having it sink, there is a certain savage satisfaction in being able to say,
            “Well, Herr Hitler (or Signor Mussolini), how in hell do you like that?’
 
I would be completely happy on this task if each time I came in from the sea, having put another one over on those two clowns, I could find the other half of my double bed occupied by – you.
 
With love and longing,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #125
Feb. 2, 1943
APO 512
 
Lucy darling:
 
I’ve been on the jump the last few days and have hardly time to sleep, let alone write. We had several air raids here, as I’ve already written you. While ordinarily when the sirens blow, I roll over on the other side and go to sleep again, still under the heavy gunfire close by one can’t get much sleep anyway so I was somewhat behind that way when last Saturday (Jan. 30?) we got a call here that two ships had been torpedoed off a port about 100 miles east of here, where unfortunately as yet I had no salvage ship.
 
There was nothing for it except for myself and one of my salvage lieutenants to hike over the road by jeep there, to arrive in the evening to find one of the ships with her bow completely blown off but safely afloat, but the other with her stern shot away in sinking condition with her after half already completely under water and her bow pointing skyward at a considerable angle.
 
To make matters worse, her crew had already given her up for lost and had abandoned her, so out of some three hundred men belonging to her, only six were left aboard. Water was leaking forward fast and she was listing steadily to port so that very apparently she was shortly going to capsize if nothing were done.
 
The worst feature of all was that her captain (ashore) felt she was gone anyway and wouldn’t send any more of his men back aboard to help. I soon found there wasn’t even a pump aboard we could use to make a fight for her, but we managed to get a fire pump and six soldiers from the British army, took the only little pump there was off the other torpedoed ship (which didn’t need it) and turned to.
 
I won’t say any more here except that we had a wild an heart-breaking night aboard that British cruiser getting those pumps down slippery ladders into her engine room, and getting them going. We saved the ship, to the intense astonishment (and, I think, chagrin) of the captain who had abandoned her, and next day after further work got her stern up enough to tow her inside the harbor where she floats now. Meanwhile I got a salvage ship into that harbor next morning to take on the job, and came back here, tired and disgusted.
 
I have always had a high regard for my salvage men. I’ve seen them get down on the insides of sinking ships and fight like demons in dangerous situations to keep a ship afloat. I used to think all sailors were like that, but I’m learning better (or, rather worse). This is the second case I’ve seen now where officers and crew have abandoned a vessel perfectly capable of being saved if only someone would fight to do it. In the first case (a month and a half ago) of a ship which burned and sank (of which I wrote you), if the crew had made any sort of fight against the fire instead of abandoning her like rats, she would have been saved. And in this case the same, except that here Lt. Ankers and I got aboard before it was too late and with an impromptu salvage party, mainly of soldiers, (to the shame of the navy) we saved her.
 
I’m back now in my new headquarters, 512. Luckily, we weren’t bombed either night I spent with this last wreck, though as we didn’t do any sleeping to speak of, it would not have made much difference.
 
Well, the war news continues to look hopeful. I get mine mostly by reading the French newspaper here, but as my French is not one whit better than it ever was, you can imagine how clearly I get it. The Russians seem to be taking Hitler for a real ride. And Field Marshall Rommel can hardly laugh off the complete loss of Tripoli and most of his army.
 
Otherwise matters go along as usual. My old collection of ships is about half way on its hegira from there to here. And I certainly hope I am far more than half way on my way from here to there – westward.
 
With love,
 
Ned.
 
Letter #126
Feb. 7, 1943
APO 512
 
Lucy darling:
 
The early part of this week I was quite busy with my list of wrecks already on hand, but the last couple of days I’ve had something of a rest.
 
Today is Sunday. It is a gorgeous sunshiny day, with the light reflecting from all the white buildings covering the slope of the crescent descending to the bay, and out from there it sparkles on the blue sea over which at this moment steam the ships ending their voyage – the endless stream of ships that form the lifeline of this expedition.
 
There being little to do today except admire the scenery, I’ve been looking over my old letters (or rather, yours) since #106, last October. They aren’t so old really. Much of what they refer to as being sent then, hasn’t come yet – for instance, the Rogers Peet shoulder marks, Altman’s coffee, or their fruitcake package nor the # rayon underdrawers, which I note you hope in your letter #112 of Oct. 14, will reach me by Easter, but which in all probability will not.
 
I did finally last week or so get the Altman’s box of crackers, cheeses, etc. sent last September, and Van Loon’s book sent about the same time, both about four and a half month’s on the way, and have already acknowledged them. But all the other things still unacknowledged are still unreceived.
 
Here in this city, I am once again at a mail disadvantage, since for a while all the mail for me will go to 302 (or 700, same place) involving, strange as it may seem, another week or two delay in delivery plus what is worse, additional chance of being mislaid or lost. I haven’t received any mail here for 10 days, and though I know there is some for me at 700, I haven’t been able to get it delivered here yet.
 
{Left unfinished, but #127 written instead}
 
 
Letter #127
February 8, 1943
APO 512
 
Lucy darling:
 
As you may judge by this stationary (Ed: fancy watermarked stationary, with Navy emblem and United States Navy written underneath), Santa Claus has finally arrived, depositing with me the following, which for long months have been chasing me over Africa:
            The box of stationary, Mary’s gift
            The box containing the white silk scarf from your family, and all the remaining rayon underwear
            A box of assorted canteen goodies, dated Sept. 25, from Altman’s
            Another box from Altman’s, containing a fruit cake and some cans of nuts & candies
            The box from Rogers Peet containing my new pair of shoulder marks
            A package from Dodd, Mead containing four books – two On the Bottoms, two Hell on Ice
            And – don’t peek – don’t shove
Close your eyes and then turn over the page, the grandest Xmas gift of all------------------
A copy of my orders detaching me from all further duty in Africa and ordering me back to the United States for duty!!!!!!!
 
I am so dazed and light-headed I can hardly keep my feet on the ground. And now we’ll see which gets home first – this letter or I (Ed: He MUST have been excited with this error!).
 
Ned.
 
Letter #128
Feb. 11, 1943
Oran
 
Lucy dear:
 
Just a line to say that in a few minutes, I leave here to take off by air on the first (and longest leg) of my flight.
 
Ned.
 
The End