04 Nov 1944, John Charter's wartime journal

We have just been to visit Maudie in the hospital. Vera, Phil, Y and I took her there yesterday evening.  Dr Deane-Smith has advised her to go there for a few weeks in order to have a complete rest. She has had pains in her chest in the region of her heart and being a person who finds it hard to sit still in her own room, Deane-Smith and most of her friends advised her to go to hospital where she will have to rest. Poor Maudie, she simply hates being laid up, but she sees the wisdom of this course. She was quite cheerfully resigned to it when we saw her today.

Bunny, bless him, has sent us another Y5. It is difficult to write to him these days! We used to be allowed to send one card per month to Japanese occupied territory and another one to places outside  Jap control. Married couples have always counted as one (Japanese ruling) which has seemed a peculiar and unfair ruling for, as in our case, our families are widely scattered, while there are as many cases in camp of a mother with two or three children over 18, each of whom gets a card. Nowadays, owing to censorship difficulties, we are restricted to one card per month of 25 words and can send it locally or abroad. We have an idea that precious few of our cards ever get through.

I cannot remember whether I have mentioned it or not, but at about the beginning of Oct., Y received a 25 word letter from her father, dated Feb. 15th 1944 from Plymouth, England! It caused quite a flutter in the dovecot. We knew both from a letter from Mother – and another from Pop that the Crowley’s were trying to return to England, but this was the first intimation of the fact that they had accomplished this desire. He said, “David just started school,” from which we deduced that they had not been in England long. Pop had evidently written before, for he gave no other news except that they were all well. We wonder if they have met Betty yet. It is really a rather curious state of affairs.