(23) At sea again,
15-3-42.
Dear Mum and Dad,
At long last I can settle down again to tell you all about the fun and games of the last fortnight. I suppose that first I should mention this little matter of a commission, which I picked up on graduating at Saskatoon; apparently I was a little previous in getting my photo taken as a sergeant-pilot, but since I haven’t an officer’s uniform until we get to England that’s a minor detail. I think about 30% of our course were commissioned.
Now for the trip. We left Saskatoon on the Friday night after our wings parade, and went as far as Winnipeg where we had a day before I continued on to Ottawa. Officers travel first-class, so I had a dinky little air-conditioned sleeping compartment across Canada. I had from early in the morning until three in the afternoon with Mr and Mrs Ford, who wanted me to stay longer. However, I had to keep on the move and ended up next morning in Chicago, where I looked up Jill Ford, who is at the Moody Bible Institute training as a missionary. Had a great time there, and by an effort managed to pay for myself for one meal out of the four I had during the day. At breakfast in the station as soon as I arrived one chap who hadn’t even spoken to me collared the check off the waitress as soon as he saw the uniform; and in the afternoon and at night just before I caught the train two other chaps hustled me into restaurants and fed me on the fat of the land. One of them found I had another train trip ahead of me and bought a bag of buns before you could say “wink”.
Next stop was Detroit, where I rejoined with Peter Day and Ray Mellsop, who had crossed the border earlier. We spent a day and a night there, and made records at the home of a friend of Jim Whyte’s, so I hope you’ll hear the result some day. We re-crossed the border into Canada, and had a whole lot of fun hitch-hiking from Windsor to Niagara Falls. That’s a swell place, and we spent a whole morning photographing the falls from every angle. We were lucky, as the whole place was still covered in snow and slush after a heavy fall just a couple of days earlier. The falls were a great sight, partially frozen up as they are at this time of the year.
We crossed into America again at Niagara, and hitchhiked about 150 miles that afternoon, ending up after quite a lot of fun in the city of Syracuse, where we spent an evening and eventually caught a train for New York which got us there next morning. We put up at the Piccadilly Hotel, where the British-American Ambulance Corps has an office which handles the Air Force visitors wonderfully well. That very afternoon we went on a 3 ½ hour free bus-tour of the city; at night we saw the stage and screen show in the Radio City Music Hall, where they feature the Rockettes, world’s greatest precision dancers. It’s the world’s largest theatre, by the way, and seats 6,200.
(If there are too many “world’s greatest” things in this, pardon me; but that’s the way New York affects you).
After that we went on to a testimonial dinner in the big Hotel Roosevelt, where the seats were $10 each to everyone except us. It was in honour of the famous war correspondent, Quentin Reynolds, and I met a whole lot of famous people there – Wendell Wilkie, Myrna Loy, My Reynolds sen., Deems Taylor the radio commentator, Jimmie Walker, ex-mayor of New York, and a bunch of others I can’t remember off-hand. Alan Corelli, secretary of the National Theatre Authority, a bouncing, good-natured chap who knows everybody on Broadway, eventually took me in tow and rushed me off to Arnold Reubens’ place, a famous restaurant where I met Ted Husing, the Grantland Rice Sportlight screen commentator; Bert Lahr, the comedian who played the Cowardly Lion in “The Wizard of Oz”; Larry Adler, the mouthorganist and Frank Fay, radio comedian.
There was a swell ice-show on in the afternoon at the Center Theatre, world’s largest stage theatre, which seats over 3,000, and we got best seats at 1/3 price, if you please. It was a great show, and at the end of it the three of us, at Alan Corelli’s suggestion, met Mary Jane Yeo, a sixteen-year-old star in the presentation. Both this and the Music Hall are wonderful theatres with stage and scenery facilities they don’t even dream about in New Zealand; as for the lighting effects, they are nothing short of miraculous.
At night we saw a Jewish concert in Carnegie Hall; there were some very attractive items on the programme and many which just didn’t click, but on the whole I was not sorry that I went, for Carnegie Hall is the ultimate ambition of most of the world’s great singers and players.
I should mention that the United Services Organisation, which looks after the men of the American forces, also looked after us with theatre tickets and so on, just as I have come to learn is the case with Americans everywhere. They can’t seem to do enough for a guest.
After that there was time for a late showing of “Captains of the Clouds”, then we three, still on the move, caught an early train to Washington. Nola Luxford, the New Zealander, who helps a lot in looking after the boys who visit New York, suggested that we should visit the New Zealand Legation there, so we did; we met old acquaintances in the persons of the Hon. Walter Nash and the Hon. Frank Langstone, as well as the N.Z. liaison officer, Group-Captain Isitt. Mr Langstone did his best to outdo the Americans in hospitality; he really gave us a royal time. He took us through the great Mellon Art Gallery, took us out to lunch, and in the afternoon he hired a taxi, took us for a two-hour or more drive to Arlington Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol, and every other place he could think of. At the end of all that he wouldn’t listen to a word of thanks, but believe me he couldn’t have done more in any way. There was with him during the first part of the tour a Mr Johnson who was also attached to the Legation and who expected to be leaving for home shortly; he made a note of our home addresses and promised to drop a line to let our folks know how we were, so perhaps you’ve heard from him by now.
We had to catch a train from Washington at about 5 p.m. for New York and through to Montreal; how we managed to make it I really couldn’t say, but make it we did, and arrived at Montreal next morning. We had a full day there, but I’m afraid I was not very much impressed; Ottawa seems a far prettier town, beside which Montreal is drab and colourless. Of course, the tail-end of Winter is a bad time for sight-seeing in any town, but Washington – the most beautiful city for parks and buildings I’ve yet seen or hope to see – came through with flying colours. Even New York, for all its size, is clean and almost quiet compared with what you might expect from traffic noises, while Chicago on the other hand is dominated by the roar and rattle of the “L”, or elevated railway, which throws its shadow all around the “Loop” – bet the Loop is no new place to you, father. Detroit, of course, is unique in that it is the centre of so huge an industrial area; you should just see those vast new factories – and the old ones, too – which will very soon now be ready for flat-out production, but otherwise it is a normal enough big city. But you should see the cars! They are everywhere, in their thousands, and 99% of them are new. Manufacture of cars has practically stopped now, though, and the factories are making tanks, ‘planes and so on.
Well, I think I started rambling round about Montreal – to continue from there, we caught a train at night and ended up at a “Y” Depot, as they call them here, on the east coast; just two nights and 1 ½ days there saw us on board, and now 24 hours later we are quite a distance out at sea. Our quarters are far from being as palatial as those we had on the trip to Canada, but they will be O.K.; though even an officer can’t sit up in bed in a hurry without coming into sharp contact with the bottom of the bunk above.
Next day a new camera sort of came my way (yes – another one, and this time one I’m going to hold on to) and in the morning I went on a tour of Rockefeller Center, truly another wonderful place. It’s a huge block, or really two blocks, of modern buildings which combine business with art in such a way that you’ll find roof gardens ‘way up in the clouds. Underground passages connect all the buildings and the world’s fastest elevator whisks you up and down in a 70-storey building at 1400 feet a minute. Some travelling.
At night there was a cosmopolitan party in a posh home in Seventieth Street; Ruth Draper, the monologist and entertainer, was there – remember her New Zealand tour? A couple of hours there and I moved on to a tour of the National Broadcasting studios, where I was televised – just into another studio, of course – and saw my first television camera and receiving set. It is terrifically hot under the battery of lights you have to face in front of the “camera”, but it was a lot of fun. On our tour we struck it doubly lucky, as Madeleine Carroll was to broadcast on the “Cavalcade of America” programme, and we saw the show from end to end. It spoilt the illusion considerably to observe that the hero looked about fifty, while the tough father was more like thirty; Madeleine Carroll, however, looks very much as she does on the screen, and the whole thing was very interesting. Both of you, I think, would have enjoyed yourselves finding out how things are done “on the air”.
We were very amused at the Americans because while we were in the States the universal opening for a conversation of any kind was, “You boys are kindofa long ways from home, aren’t you,” as against the Canadian equivalent, “How do you like our winter?” Honestly, not a great many of the people we met could tell us much about New Zealand, and very few really knew exactly where it was. However, their own country is such a big and busy one that perhaps they can’t be blamed. News of the Pacific side of the war is making some of them look at the maps a little more, but usually the only chance we had of identifying New Zealand in their minds was to mention Australia.
If you see the Galliens, tell Rose that Kitchener, Ontario, where her pen-pal lives, was off the main line and I couldn’t get around to see her. However, a friend of Jill’s in Chicago came from Kitchener and knew the Fountain Flower Shop there, so she’ll take a message next time she goes home.
To think I told you about New York without even mentioning that I’d been to the top of the Empire State, the World’s Tallest Building (in capital letters). It is 102 stories high, and is a great structure. It’s a grand view, but sad to say cameras were not allowed up there. However, I took about 100 photos on the trip, with some very satisfactory results, too; but unless I can find some sure way of getting them home I think I had better hang on to them rather than risk their going down, as I’m afraid some of the previous lots must have done.
In that very hurried note before we sailed I told you that three letters of yours had turned up, I think; well, the next day there was one from Joan – no. 15, meaning that at least three of hers, and perhaps four, are delayed or missing altogether, and there’s a gap of two in your letters as well. I guess it can’t be helped, but it’s a bad business since we probably won’t get mail until we have been over the other side quite a while.
Well, that’s really a very brief survey of a jolly good trip, but it is the best one can do in a letter. I know Dad is going to ask me if I have seen this and that and the other thing, and probably the answer will have to be “no”, because we covered such a vast amount of territory that we couldn’t do it all thoroughly in about twelve days. Take a look at one of those National Geographic maps, and if you trace out the route I have described you will see what I mean. It was lots of fun, though, and an education in itself. I can only say again, as I have done before, that the real Americans are wonderfully hospitable – and that doesn’t disparage in any way the Canadians, who also gave us a good time during our four months there.
I was thinking over the record of the twelve of us who left Taieri the other day; one was held up at Auckland with foot trouble, one broke his wrist at Saskatoon and went back a course, one smashed up while flying, one came bottom in ground school and three came 1st, 2nd and 5th; one got a bad dose of ‘flu and three got commissions. So there’s a record for you.
That’s plenty for this time, I guess, so this is Pilot-Officer Christensen signing off.
Love from
Arnold G.