Letter from Harry Massey to Barbara Massey

16. But to return to realism, we were riding at anchor just outside the harbour at about 11-30. The town & the country & the mountains looked fantastically lovely in the morning sun, & everybody was itching to get on land again - it was just three weeks since leaving England. But it was very annoying, because we had led the way in, & we then had to watch the other ships go into harbour before us, & we were the last to tie up, at about 2-30. And then, it was not until 6 o' clock that we could get off this ship & all afternoon we had watched people passing off the other ones. and it was during the afternoon that we learned that our stay was going to be a short one, & not the four days we had expected.

Rex, Mac, Eric, Terrence & myself went off together - we had to dodge the two bad type majors, who were rampant for women & to come with us. We told them that we were not rampant, nor even faintly desirous for women & that we just wanted to have a look round,have dinenr, & drink - but they didn't seem to be able to understand this at all, & said we were sly old dogs. Very obtuse every bad type - so we just had to lose them, which we did very

17. quickly, & we all leapt into a taxi & made straight for the cable office. I felt very relived when my cable to you had been sent off, that the call in port had been worth while & now it didn't matter what happened. Our taxi was a magnificent six seater Packard, with a large Union Jack waving on the bonnet, a radio, & on the dashboard a photograph of a beautiful lady with nothing on but a scanty pair of pants. We felt that the driver was ready for anything. We kept him on after cabling, & went for ^^a drive round & then up the mountain behind the town - thereby reversing the view of that morning. It was also very lovely, but I preferred the one from the sea. By this time, it was nearly dark, & we set off to a place the taxi man had told us about, for dinner. This was a very lovely restaurant, & by good luck or my good management, we got a table straight away: the place was absolutely packed. We had a marvellous dinner, two large sherries each, hors d'oevres, sole colbert, 4 bottles of white wine of the

18. country, a mass of mushrooms & bean & marrowfat, 3 bottles of red wine of the country, coffee, liqueurs of the country, & large cigars - & the bill, including tips, was $3-15 -0 for the five of us. We got very happy, & very miserable, & very sentimental. I really felt very much better than we had done since leaving England. By this time it was fairly late, & we wanted to go on somewhere & drink, but this was not too easy, & eventually the only places were one or two night clubs in the town & a club about eight miles away. None of these seemd to appeal to us - the main reason for this being that Rex & I who were in charge of the party, felt too homesick to dance. Eventually, we were told of a hotel where we might be lucky, so we took a taxi & drove about two miles to this place. We were not able to fix up any drinks, so we walked into the lounge & found a few people still up & gradually engaged them in conversation.

14. It was not very long before they were all talking to us, & soon after that they said would we like a party, because if so they could get a crate of beer & some whiskey, & we could all go in one of their bedrooms. It was a pleasant hotel & they were very pleasant peple, & so we hastily agreed we had lost Terence by this time - he didn't think this hotel was quite smart enough for him & the four of us decided we would stay the night at this hotel. We had decided earlier to sleep on board, as it seemed a waste of money to do otherwise but by this time it seemed a good idea to sleep again in a real bed on dry land & wake up in the morning & have a bath & so on. So we went back to the ship for our night things & washing things & when we arrived back at the hotel, the party was all lined up in a man called Snowy's bedroom & waiting for us. We had a grand time, drank an awful amount of stuff & talked about their country & the war & our families & so on, & finally went to bed about 4.0am. Rex & I were sharing a room with twin beds - we had insisted on this, so as in the morning we could talk to each other, & I could pretend he

20. was Barbara & he could pretend I was Marjorie. I think the manager thought at first there was something a shade funny about us. Mac & Eric had a room each in the morning one of the men woke us up with cups of tea & aspirins, had baths run for us & then produced bottles of iced lager. These people were relly amazingly kind to us. We then had a very hearty breakfast & went down into the town. First of all we went to the Bank to get some money. They had refused to take my travellers' cheques, on the ship, which I thought was pretty ridiculous, but did not matter because I had lasted out for three weeks on £6-10-0 - so thats not too bad, is it? After that we walked slowly round the town, had a good look at it & its shops & places. Then we went back to the ship to find out if anything had happened that we should know about. The orders were that we had to be back on board at 11.0 pm that night, & that we must stay in the town in case we moved earlier, when the sirens would go off. This was another disappointment, because we had intended to take