NTR: British Air Graph
To: MRS ARNOLD TAYLOR CRAPAUD PEI CANADA
Senders Address: Lt. AD Taylor, WNSR, Cdn Army, CMF, Hospital
Jan 26. 1944
My Sweetheart:
Another day dawning, cold & clear & just a month since I left the Regiment, but it will be a month before I get back (Expect to leave here inside of 10 days). Feeling great, but it will be a few days yet before I will be moving around freely. Until I am I shall continue to play bridge all day & good bridge it is. I hope, my darling, by the time I get back you’ll know the cards backwards. When I look around here, it makes me wonder at times just what the people back in Canada are doing & their thoughts. You & Barbara, sweet, are so much in front of me. God Bless & keep you both safe,
Love Forever,
Arnold
March 1 1944
Address: CBRD, Cdn Army,
WNSR, CMF
My Sweetheart:
Lonesome, very lonesome, but with that beautiful thought always of my two beloved darlings across the seas, ever there to cheer me up & make me realize that life really is worthwhile after all. It’s all so like a dream, a fairy story of you wish, where the gallant prince rides away to far lands to fight for his loved ones, & then to return again to the beautiful princess he left behind. All story books end with “and they lived happily ever after,” & that’s just the way our story is going to end. To-day, you are surrounded by high banks of snow, white & glistening like sparkling diamonds & I stand upon the shore’s of sands & shores of a distant land, foreign in language, looks & action. You have about you friends everywhere only to glad to welcome you in at any time; while I stand amongst the few friends I bring with me, an antihostile people, badly misunderstood & who speak not of our tongue.
About you are clean & neat wooden buildings, the inhabitants themselves being clean in their everyday habits, while here are ghastly pink & gray homes of stone & brick, dirty beyond description inside as the inhabitants themselves seem to care little how they dress or look themselves. It is all so simple & so understanding.
It was a country built for the State & Nobility alone. Everybody is under full sway of the Church & so everything is for the church. People work hard, but own nothing. Beautiful buildings costing millions of dollars & yet the major portion of the people go about in rags & just exist. High walls surrounding a beautiful home & gardens & against its very walls are built houses where perhaps 4&5 sleep in one room on a mattress on a cement floor. Dust & filth everywhere. Do you wonder at typhus & other common diseases prevalent in this country. I wanta go home.
Enclosed find $10.oo. If not in time for Easter get flowers anyway for yourself & both mothers. Also: I am sending you a wee cameo. Have it made into a tie pin for dad, please. (picture of a tie pin with cameo atop. It’s a carving made from a shell or small stone.)
And so Sweetheart, its another day passing & may the moments pass very quickly for both, to the days when once again I will be holding you close in my arms & whispering those things I so want you to know of.
Most Desirable & Everlasting Love,
Arnold