I think this photo of Sheila, me and Mum gives you an idea of how much I like going to church and how I look when the subject comes up, especially if I have just lost the argument. Of course it might have been something else when Dad took the picture. Because church isn't the only thing I argue with my sister about. That happens whenever she wants to have her own way and it's different from mine. I usually lose arguments like that. But the picture looks very much like last Easter and that's another time in the year when they always have a go at me about church. Dad didn't tick me off for trying to spoil a nice picture and so I think he feels that us blokes should stick together at times like these.

One of my friends told me his mum had said that I was almost a heathen. I think it's better if I don't mention that at home.

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Sheila has got to know an American soldier. She probably met him at the Ice Rink in Birmingham. We are not allowed to call him her boyfriend. He's very nice. He has visited us once or twice. He brings some chewing gum for me and a tin of peaches or Spam for Mum and Dad. (He calls them cans, not tins). Mum and Dad go mad over the peaches. He always looks very smart in his uniform which is lovely and smooth, not at all like Dad's Home Guard uniform which he used to wear. That's rough and itchy.

His name is Bob. He is the first American I have ever met and he isn't what I expected at all. Americans usually have a horse and a big cowboy's hat, or they talk loudly and smoke a big cigar and make wisecracks, especially if they are detectives. Or they are soldiers fighting the Japs and then they are smoking a cigarette and wearing a funny shaped helmet with the strap dangling down one side and not done up at the chin. I have seen all these Americans at the Avion in Aldridge or the Empress in Sutton. That's why I know what they are usually like. Bob isn't like this at all. He is quiet and gentle. I don't know how old he is, probably about 19 or 20. Dad likes him but does laugh at him a bit. He said the other day that he couldn't imagine Bob running at the Germans with murder in his eyes. Dad knows a bit about all this because he was in the trenches in 1918, in the last war. Bob was wounded in Normandy during the summer but he certainly looks OK now, to me. He lives at a place called Pheasey with a lot of other Americans. He isn't allowed to write home to tell his own mum and dad about his injury and how he is and what he is doing and where. So Dad has written to them himself. The letter has gone off but will take ages to get there. We don't expect a reply for a long, long time. I don't know if Bob will be sent back to the fighting, eventually.

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My brother Graham who is in Italy has met quite a lot of Americans. He's not at all happy when their planes are dropping their bombs too close to him. He's been stuck in the Italian mountains for weeks. They have tried to move forward, towards a town called Bologna, but the Germans have been too strong and the weather is dreadful. Now he's in a tiny hamlet, with all the guns and lorries and things. It's called Belvedere.

Because there isn't much to do, he's been repairing roads which are in a terrible state. The Yanks have bulldozers but mainly he and his mates just have picks and shovels. He says that they live in a hovel and there is an anti-aircraft gun just outside to protect them all. The blokes who man it tell him that they haven't fired it since Salerno a year ago. They stand around their gun in the evening, singing carols, and when it gets dark they sometimes join Graham and the others in their room, sitting around the stove and helping to drink what little they have is. Everyone feels sorry for them because they have a very boring job. Until recently, there were two American artillery batteries next door as well which the Germans could see and often tried to shell.

Here are some of the Yanks at Belvedere and a couple of their vehicles.



They have now moved out and Graham said in his last letter: