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January 31, 1952Mr. George McFadden Curium Excavations Episkopi, Limassol Cyprus
Dear George:
Percy Madeira is very carefully arranging our whole excursion in the Near and Middle East. I had another powwow with him yesterday and he tells me that we should be taking the plane from Rome to Cyprus on March 7th. He then would like to get a night boat to Beirut on the night of the 12th or 13th if possible, preferably the 12th. He would also like to arrange to get a car in Beirut to drive via Baalbek to Damascus and arrange to leave Damascus on the night bus Nairn Transport the night of the 13th or 14th depending upon the boat to Beirut. We then would like to spend the 15th, 16th and 17th driving down to Aleppo. He then expects to drive to Mosul on the 18th and go from there via Aleppo to Ankara.
I wonder if you could get that Cook's man at Limassol to arrange the Limassol, Beirut, Baalbek, Damascus trip? If that agent will handle it then he should get reservations and hotel accomodations all the way through to Baghdad. Also, I wonder if he has any information on methods of travel from Mosul via Aleppo to Ankara? We should make this trip sometime between the 19th to 22nd and I know there is a train but I don't know anything about the roads or time of trains. Any information we can get on that part of the trip and any scheduling of trains, cars or planes would be very helpful.
This is all a damned nuisance for you I know but I hope you can just turn over our problems to a capable agent in Limassol and not bother yourself about it. I would just like to know fairly soon whether people at Limassol know anything about the Mosul Ankara stretch.
We have decided to skip Egypt and come directly from Cyprus to Rome on the 7th. We would like to get there a day or two earlier but our schedules show no plane between the 2nd and 7th.
All this may seem an imposition on you but I am sure it is good for the future of work in the Near East.
Best wishes,
Froelich Rainey
FR:GS
Handwritten: signature at top left, illegible
Handwritten: initials at top left, illegible
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