1943 Arizona Highway Map

THE BRAVE SHALL LIVE FOREVER:

In 1941 a party of airmen of the Royal Air Force, from this country, were located at Thunderbird Airfield, for training; moving later to a new Airfield.

Amongst the many aspects of hospitality shown to them by the citizens of Phoenix and its neighborhood, you very kindly gave to each of them a year's subscription of "ARIZONA HIGHWAYS," the splendid publication of your Highway Department.

My younger son, Gilbert Tannahill Dawson, was one of the party, and he arranged that your magazine should be sent to my wife and myself. I have often desired to thank you for your gift and the kindness shown to my son and his companions, but pressure of work, accentuated by the war, has led me to postpone doing so until now. I should like you to know that we have greatly enjoyed your magazine; it is a beautiful publication, and makes us wish that it were possible for us to visit your great State and see something of its beauty and its wonders. I have been in the U.S.A. myself several times but never managed to get as far west as Arizona.

My son continued his training in England until June of last year, as a bomber pilot, and was sent to the Middle East, to join the Air Force in North Africa. I am sorry to say that just before Christmas we received the sad news that he had died from injuries received on November 22nd, at Bone, Algeria. It was a great blow to us as somehow we had always expected him to come home again, despite the danger of his calling. Our loving Heavenly Father has seen fit to take him Home instead. He would have been twenty-one in a few weeks. had he lived. His older brother. a lieutenant in the army, is at present engaged in the fighting in Tripolitania.

You can understand that, as the memories of the past come before us, we have a warm feeling towards all the friends who, in so many ways, showed kindness to our son and his companions while they were in your great country, and we should like to thank you with all our hearts.

Gilbert Dawson, 20 Church Road, Hertford, Herts, England.

SAND IN YOUR SHOES:

Doubtless you never heard of me, and in all probability will never see me, yet you are a creditor of mine and I would discharge at least a part of the debt.

Few men not born nor reared in it can have loved the west more than I For years I have run to it on every occasion to find the health and peace and expansion of mind and soul to be had nowhere else. I know something (not enough!) of your beautiful state; Tucson and Prescott and Williams and the Grand Canyon, both rims; I know the beginning the the Grand Canyon in Utah (Moab) and the ending (Boulder Dam) and I have had three marvelous days in Monument Valley and worshipped the

Sincerely Yours

Yahbishi (if that is the way to spell it!) with Navajo friends.

I do not know Arizona as well as I do Utah and Wyoming and Montana; but someday, if God is good and trains run and autos can again find rubber and gas, I intend to.

You doubtless wonder what all this is about! Trader Harry Goulding of Goulding's Trading Station in Monument Valley (postoffice Kayenta, Arizona) sent me your Christmas issue with the Monument Valley page signed by himself and "Mike" "Mike" being the brave and good and pretty lady who bears his name and who cooked for me when I paid my neverto-be-forgotten visit to that incredible land.

From your pages I get such joy as puts me forever in your debt. Not only the lovely...

AUTHOR UNKNOWN:

Bert Clark, Dallas, Texas.

God, keep some silent places for us still, Apart from those where man forever goes; Some altars lit by sunset on the hill, Or alcoves in the canyon wall where glows The crystal drop of moisture on the fern, While ancient firs bend tenderly above, For souls of men must sometimes deeply yearn For silence such as this, to sense Thy love.

lovely pictures in color, which fairly made me drool to come back, but, believe it or not-and I a maniac on the subject of the west! I meet for the first time your great poet Badger Clark.

I know the outdoors. I know the pack trip in the mountains, with a chosen companion, a pan and pot and bacon and rifle and fishing gear and what a camp fire means at the end of a day of beauty, and how soft the ground can be if there be boughs to make a bed. I know mountains and canyons and gulches and buttes and the little high streams and the great clear rivers. I know the low hanging stars and a moon resting for an instant on a mountain peak. I cannot say whether the west is in my heart for knowing that my heart is in the west, and in keeping of some western friends who have year after year given me all this and let me make it my very own.

That is why I am in your debt. Perhaps because all my life I have been a writer of yarns, a maker of books, an editor of sorts, a printer's trained seal and so know a grand job of magazine making when I see it... perhaps because your glorious pages hit me so veryhard where I live, inside me. you can pick the reason to suit your mood and likely be right. But I had to write to you, and try to say "thank you."

Carl H. Claudy, The Masonic Service Association of the U. S., Washington, D. C.

YES, THESE ARE THE DAYS OF SPRING":

We, of whom you speak, are fully aware that these are days of spring. Shall we visit Supai again and camp along the "River of Sky Blue Water" or shall we just prowl the desert roads and trails seeking nothing, seeing much and reveling in the charm and sunshine that is the desert?

We have left dead ashes along the Mogollon, the Betatakin, Silver Creek, Dry Creek and at Gun Sight. Those ashes have blown with the winds. The winds have circled the earth and now scent the air with an intangible sweetness that conjures memories wherever we are. Memories of the Navajo, of Oak Creek, Walpi and Patagonia. Memories of just a wash, a giant saguaro, barrancas and badlands. Yes, they're calling, so is the crunch of desert sand under foot, the ping of a prospect hammer and the click of a camera shutter when the clouds have moved into a "just right" position.Do our hearts ache? Yes they do! They hurt with sad sweet sorrow. Sweet, only because the desert resides in our hearts and is encased there forever. It now responds to your words to our memories like the wild flowers follow the rains.

Then, you might ask, what now? Are you souls who are lost going to loll in misery until your return to these familiar scenes? No, we are not. We are grateful to the desert for many things and as we voice our appreciation, we move the ache to sleep. We are grateful that we have been able to see this World Picture clearly enough with the aid of a campfire, a distant horizon and God, that we are in it body and soul to a righteous end.We are grateful for lesser things, too, things like the toughening of our muscles on steep mountain sides and the alertness the desert breeds. Being able to march without water may help and likewise the ability to build a smokeless campfire and to cook satisfactorily with little or no flame. We can relax, a fact for which we are thankful, and rest our weary bodies on hard ground rolled in a blanket.Beyond all that, we are inspired. We have exposed the very fibers of our beings to the virility of the desert and have responded in harmony to its vibrations. We know how we want to live and for as long as it is necessary, have assumed the battle cry of our friend rattlesnake: "Don't Tread On Me!"

We'll be back. Thanks for thinking of us.

Sgt. W. O. Fraesdorf, Jr., U. S. M. C., New York, N. Y.