18 Jan 1942 - USA has entered the war

18 Jan 1942

Dear Angela
Your letter arrived on Jan 1st and as you can see I have been a good while in answering it. You must excuse me as I have had very little time. I started college on Jan 5th and since then I have been up to the eyes in work, before Jan 5th I was regaining lost sleep from the holidays. I was out “first footing” on New Years Eve and mam expected me back about 12.30 a.m. alone, instead I came in about 2.30 with about nine friends - we had a sing song and dance around the piano until 4.00 and then went to another friends house to be first foot - the result was that it was after 5 a.m. when I got to bed. On New Years day I went to a party and did not get to bed until 1.30 a.m. well after all that it took me a week or two to recover lost sleep. However in all I had a quiet time compared with last year as Xmas was spent reading at home. Interwoven with the holidays was a week of intensive training with the Training Corps - we had a grand time, climbing up cliffs, crawling along hedges, “fighting” in villages etc. but I must say that I was fairly tired at the end of it. I only hope that you have had as good a Xmas and New Year as I have.
At present I am back at college with plenty of work to do, we only had one exam at Xmas and I managed to get 2nd place. My next exam is in March in all subjects. I have just started Calculus in Mathematics and I find it very interesting compared with other Maths. Have you to study it at all? We are going to have another Rag day at college in aid of the town’s warship week and I am looking forward to some more fun.
As for the war - I don’t really know what to say. There is one point that has struck me since the U.S.A. declared war and that is we feel as if the people in U.S.A. will really begin to work harder now than they were before - however that is just my own idea and I don’t know whether they really understood the situation before or not. We have had four raids in the last three days; one day last week the sirens went and about a minute afterwards some bombs were dropped in a park and near the Art School, a few seconds after that dad and I ran out of the house and saw the German twin-engined bomber flying very low over the house, tracer bullets were flying from all directions and I felt as if I could have hit it with a rifle - well he was brought down and all the crew were killed. Excuse such along sentence - I think I would have got a “sentence” for such a thing in an English class.
I must close now as I seem to have run out of material, before I close I must thank you very much for the Card, and I hope you are getting used to blackouts and the other restrictions which accompany war. I close (as I began on the top of a sheet) wishing you “all the best” and hoping that we are not much older when the last all clear sounds.
Yours sincerely
Harold