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arrived about 3 PM. So I went up and found I knew considerably more about the limitation than St.L. and he wanted me to lean on. The Colonel and I got St.L. straightened out.

Had a nice dinner at Johnny Knoll's for Col. Blackmore - Fred Gantt, Bill Leggett, Don Smith, St. Lawrence, Ernie Shank, Walt Harris, Dave Blair, and I. St.L got off his stories of Jean's selling a shroud to a lady at the [[Boston?]] store for an evening gown, and the mortician's son calling on her with a corpse in the shiny new hearse parked outside - they were good. Fred Gantt introduced the Col. to the Griswold Club assembled at Sunset Inn and [[strikethrough]]g[[/strikethrough]] then Col. Blackmore gave a good talk followed by an excellent movie of the Army's mechanized equipment - an eyeopener on what a beating it has to take. It was a corking good, smoke infested meeting and the Colonel really let his hair down - told just about all with much emphasis on our woeful state of unpreparedness right now and the tremendous program under way to rectify the situation. 

War news of the day and by far the most thrilling for some time: The Admiral Graf Spee, one of the three German pocket battleships which have been on the loose raising hell with Allied shipping, encountered three British cruisers off Uraguay and was engaged in a great 14 hours running fight which ended with the Spee speeding crippled into Montevideo, one Britisher put out of action and the other two establishing a "death watch" for the Spee; the moment she tries to come out again, the battle will be resumed, and from the British and French reinforcements coming up,