11 Jan 1944 "My Tooth is Keeping Me Awake!" (Post #21)

                                                              Northern Ireland

                                                              Jan 11, 1944

Dear Mom,
     Here it is four o'clock in the morning and I'm going to squeeze in a V-mail letter to you. I wrote a long letter talking about my teeth a couple days ago {7 Jan}. My jaw and my face has been aching ever since, until midnight. I made a tooth pick and with a clean handkerchief cleaned out the hole in my gums, then I jammed up an aspirin and filled up the hole. After taking two myself, I went to sleep for a few hours. Here I am up but it feels pretty good. Gee, it ached so long I feel tired out.  You know how it is to want to sleep and can't. Saw in the newspaper Hamblin's picture and was also surprised to see the Dunlap girl's picture engaged to Phil Bodge. Oh Ma! Oh Ma! what am I going to do? ha, ha. I also read about different boys being home on furlough. I'm all caught up reading that bunch of papers I received, so it's about time for a few more to come. How is the weather back home? It's about time for a few weeks of that way below zero spell isn't it? Is the car still going? How does it start this winter? Seems funny to me not to see more freezing weather with lots of snow. We get a few squalls. Still I say the climate at home is more healthy. You have to be careful of the drinking water here because the ground is so full of water that it runs together. Get what I mean? You may not believe it but I'm almost weaned from drinking water. Maybe I drink half a pint in a week. They chlorinate the water so heavy it tastes like heck. Well, you see I must close. That's the only catch in a V-mail. Give my love to all. A pat on the back for Dad. Love Son Charles.

Charles David Knight

 Northern Ireland ~ 1944

Reminder: V-mail, short for Victory Mail, was a hybrid mail process used by America during the Second World War as the primary and secure method to correspond with soldiers stationed abroad. To reduce the cost of transferring an original letter through the military postal system, a V-mail letter would be censored, copied to film, and printed back to paper upon arrival at its destination.
V-mail correspondence was on small letter sheets, 17.8 cm by 23.2 cm (7 by 9 1/8 in.), that would go through mail censors before being photographed and transported as thumbnail-sized image in negative microfilm. Upon arrival to their destination, the negatives would be printed. The final print was 60% of the original document's size, creating a sheet 10.7 cm by 13.2 cm (4 ¼ in. by 5 3/16 in.).