You've got mail!

Yesterday a letter arrived. It was a letter that I had been waiting for but it wasn’t addressed to me. The letter was one of Arnold’s. The one that my friend from choir had alerted me to. It was being auctioned on eBay from a seller in the USA. I was able to purchase it for a reasonable price and I was so happy when it arrived safely yesterday. I am not sure why I am so keen to get all of the letters back together. I feel like that they belong together. That together we are not only commemorating Arnold and the men he was interned with but we are also getting the complete story, albeit from one man’s point of view. The letter in question speaks of Arnold’s discovery that someone had written to the Admiralty about finding him work. Arnold is under no misapprehensions about why he is not working – “the person in question (Arnold) has not mingled at all with the Norwegians & has taken no trouble to learn the language; that probably during the ensuing summer months will be working on railway job up at Hjerkinn; any other job would involve protracted negotiations with trade unions etc (this caused the delay last year); moreover the living is extraordinarily high, more so now that America has come into the war.” The contents of this letter were familiar to me as they formed part of the research completed by Roger Partridge. I can only assume that the letter had been a part of his collection. It is nice to have it back with all of the other letters.
There is only one other letter being sold on the open market at the moment but it is, unfortunately, too expensive for me to contemplate buying at the moment. There is, however, a postcard that I am currently bidding on which features a sailor and two women. The sailor is wearing an HMS India ribbon around his sailor’s hat. I do not know who the sailor is or who the women are with him. I know not whether he survived the torpedo attack but I am hoping that I succeed in winning the auction and I will add this postcard to my collection. Wish me luck!

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