Month: November 1943

Thursday Nite
Dear Grandparents,

I will start a letter tonight but I am pretty tired and I don’t suppose I will get a half dozen lines written. I wrote a letter to the folks tonight so I am getting tired.

Well we have been working hard and learning much during the last week. You would be surprised how many different phases of fighting are taken up in army training. We are learning to
(Friday)
Fight with all kinds of weapons and even without weapons. We also spend a lot of time drilling, taking exercises, learning camouflage, etc, etc, etc

Yesterday I had a little accident on the obstacle course. I slipped on one of the hurdles and hit my head. It raised a nice little bump and burst open a place a little over half an inch long by my right eye. The doctor put two stitches in my head but the whole thing couldn’t stop me. I only lost a little over an hour’s work altogether. It didn’t hurt much and I can hardly tell it today so I dn’t want you to worry a bit about it.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go on a ten mile march and spend the whole day in the field. While we are out like this we spend our time learning tactics, camouflage, scouting, etc. For our dinner on days like this a truck comes out from the kitchen here and brings it to us. Sometimes we even have better meals when we eat in the field than we do in the mess hall.

The folks tell me that you have been having old Topsy as a regular visitor lately. I guess the first time she did this was when Richard and I stayed there just before I left. I was glad to hear in your last letter that you are getting some of the things accomplished at the school that you wanted to get done, such as waxing the hall floor and getting the flag pole up.  I would like to see how the floor of the hall looks with seal-o-san on it. I suppose that it is cold enough that Grandpa must be getting acquainted with the furnaces by now.

I wonder if you had any trouble in Orestes with the Halloween boys this year. Halloween was like any other and you hardly realized what day it was. In civilian life, even if you don’t have a celebration, you at least talk about what day it was and the little things like this are what make military life a little hard to endure.

(Friday night)
Well I will try to finish this letter tonight. This is the third hitch at it but surely I can finish it as I have about an hour before “lights-out”. I will tell you what we did today since I can hardly remember what we do from one day to the next. This morning we practiced with bayonets and dummy hand grenades and this PM we had a lecture on field fortifications and dug one man trenches. The trenches we dug today were 2 ft. wide by 2 ft. deep by long enough to lay down in.

I got your letter today at noon. It sounds like you are getting some things done at the school house. I know just about how big a job it is to clean those down-stairs rooms and to wash the windows. 

Well I want to get a good-night’s sleep for the march tomorrow. So, 

Love,
Donald

Thursday Nite
Dear Folks,

I want to get a long night’s sleep tomorrow night since we are going on a 10 mile march Saturday so I will write tonight. Last night’s guard duty convinced me that this idea of extra duty is a matter to be expected from now until my basic is over. I walked 3 to 5 this morning. They gave us flashlights to miss all the ditches and gullies around here and it reminded me of carrying morning papers. This is the hilliest region around this area that you ever saw and you should see all the gullies that you can run into at night.

I had my first real accident today. Don’t worry about this since it is all over but I will tell you about it. On the obstacle course I was jumping over a hurdle over which you are supposed to jump using one hand. Well, my hand slipped and I hit on the side of my face. I burst open a place by my right eye and raised a nice bump. The corporal took me to the dispensary and they took 2 stitches in my head to close up the burst. It didn’t hurt much and I don’t think it is going to give me much trouble so don’t worry.

There is a couple of things I want you to send me as soon as possible. They want us to have a set of new toilet articles to use for inspection only and save them so we will always pass inspection. I can round up everything except underwear, towel and shaving brush. You can send me my shaving brush that I asked for before. For underwear I need ordinary white summer underwear. The regular army shorts are like the muselin striped shorts that are common only they are white. Get the nearest thing to this you can but regular white shorts will do. The towel should be white and the size of a face towel. If you can find another kind it would be better if it wasn’t made of that tufted cannon material. They try to call every towel made up of this material bath towels.

I would like for you to send me these as soon as possible but I can get by without them for a week or more. A couple more pairs of any kind of white underwear would be appreciated but they don’t have to be sent now.

I hope everything is coming along alright back there. I will answer your questions later but will quit tonight so I can start a letter to Grandma Carver.

Love, 
Donald
I forgot to tell you that I didn’t break my glasses when I fell and that GI underwear shirts are like the ones we always wore.

Note: As far as I could tell, this envelope had never been opened

Wednesday
Dear Folks,

I wanted to write last night but couldn’t get time. I had to attend a night class to make up for K.P., clean my rifle and polish my mess kit so it was bed time before I could write. 

I brought this paper with me to the field this morning and am going to try to write in the rest period between periods. You will excuse the writing as I am working on my lap.

We worked hard yesterday and are starting off hard again today. Besides our usual work we are now specializing in hand grenades and bayonets. Yesterday we threw dummy grenades and today we are supposed to have 2  hours of practice with them.

Yesterday and today both we are having 2 hours of bayonet practice. Last week in bayonet practice we just learned the different strokes, thrusts, etc. by striking at the air. But today we worked on dummies to make it more realistic.

Well it is noon and I found out that I have guard duty tonight. I will have only 2 hours of it so maybe it won’t kill me. I want to mail this letter before I go back to work. So,

Love,
Donald