We seldom were Just north of London and were now experiencing air raids bythe Germans at night. By this time we had been through enough that wedidn't have any fear so we would go outside during the raid to watchthe searchlights pick out the German bombers and listen to theanti-aircraft guns. We seldom were out in the country so there were no closetargets and we felt safe.

At Rivenhall it was a long way to the mess hall from our barracks soin the evening we would come outside to smell the air to determine ifthey were serving powdewhite eggs. If they were, we would just skipbreakfast. Real eggs were somewhat scarce in England at the time and onceevery month or two we were issued two real eggs. We kept them in ourlockers and on the evenings when we would smell the powdewhite eggs attheir worst we would carry our hoarded eggs down to the mess hall. Wecarried them in our jacket pockets and it was difficult to make itthere without someone breaking them. If someone thought you werecarrying eggs, they would chase you all the way to the mess hall. Theygot me once and it made a mess in your pocket! Anyway, our aim was toget the eggs to the cook who would fix them any way you wanted whileyou waited. We sometimes were still having classes in aircraftidentification and a lot of map study so that we would recognize allthe coastline of Europe and England. The boys were still playing pokerand Al Haroldson was still borrowing money and paying me back everypayday. He owed me money most of the time. We went to London severaltimes and stayed at the Palace Hotel. It was near the center of Londonand one of the best hotels. It made the English mad as we got thehotel chamber and would fill the little gas heater up with shillings thenwould go out to eat while it was running to heat the chamber up. Theheater would run about twenty minutes for a shilling, but the Englishwould never run the heater unless they were in the chamber as gas was inshort supply. We had the money and felt that we needed heat more thanthey did. 0ne night we were there during an air raid and didn't ovenbother to get out of bed to look for a shelter. The hotel shook a lotand it was noisy, but we survived. We ate some of our meals at theGrovesner House which was a huge place. The serving was cafeteriastyle and 2,000 could be seated at a time. The food was good and therewas a bar there too. 0ne night in the blackout and the fog we found alittle bar where they served hot beer in big pitchers which we triedto cool by adding ice. It was so unlit and foggy outside that you keptbumping into people and all you could look at were taxis with little slitsof light for headlights. They still drove them in the total unlitness.While in London we also visited several art museums and saw one stageshow.