Sunday morning, August 27, 1944
Hello Family,
It is almost chow time but I’ll get this letter started in the time I have. After I got back from church, I wrote that letter to Clyde Montgomery’s that you suggested. Thank you for suggesting it. I know that I should have written them but it just never entered my mind.
It’s almost cool enough here to wear a jacket this morning and believe me it sure feels good. It made sleeping late this morning seem good enough to be home. I got up for breakfast and then crawled back in bed and slept till church time.
Last night I got a letter written to Grandpa and Grandma Carver and then did a good bit of reading in the Sunday School papers and the Reader’s Digest. I also hit the hay pretty early and consequently I didn’t get a letter started to you as I usually do. Friday we did about the same old type of work and then yesterday morning we had a very interesting problem. It would get old just as everything else does but it was something new and might sometimes come in handy. It was a tank problem and was almost like the tactics that are being used in the war at present.
Time out for chow
Now to go on with the story. Here is the way the problem worked. We rode on the tanks up to a position a few hundred yards away from the enemy position. Of course, they could be firing and thus protect us all the time. Then we got off and followed behind them under their protection right up to the enemy position. They would protect us all the time and then we could finish off the stunned enemy and hold the position. This may sound like a wild tale and there was a good bit of make believe as far as firing goes but that is how it works. It’s not play by any means because you really have to hang on to those bumpy old tanks. And when you go though woods the trees all try to knock you off as you go under them – one of them did succeed in busting me in the face, puffing a lip a little. But it is a whole lot faster and safer than walking into an enemy stronghold. So much for that.
Yesterday afternoon we weren’t off duty but we didn’t go out to drill. That gave us a chance to wash up our dirty clothes, clean up our equipment and in general get straightened up fo r the week.
I don’t know what we’ll be doing next week but there’ll be plenty to do. There’s no use thinking about that anyway. Just be thankful for today. I sure wonder what you are doing today. I wouldn’t have to think about home very hard to get homesick today. In fact I find myself spending a good bit of my time wondering about my future. I sure hope I’ll still be able to go to college. I’m not worrying about still wanting to go but besides the financial end of it, I’ll have a lot of reviewing to do. I feel as if I had lost half of my high school already. A lot of this is just imagination but you just can’t help from worrying or at least thinking about it. Another hard thing to swallow is just thinking how far I would have been now if this hadn’t happened. If I have to spend another year or maybe more at this it’ll be pretty hard to live as I had planned.
Say that was quite a write-up in the paper the other day. I can’t imagine who would have put it in but it must have been Mr. May. The trustee wouldn’t likely know all those statistics unless of course he’d looked on his records and I wouldn’t expect that of him. Ha Ha.
I got your Friday’s letter yesterday so I wasn’t expecting anything today. That letter really got here in a hurry. I wonder who Nina Perdue’s husband to-be is. It seems that maybe I’ve heard the name but I can’t place it.
I’ll sign off for a while now and maybe I’ll have a little more to say tonight.
Evening
I was looking over some of your past letters and in the one you mentioned about seeingOWL magazine you asked if I remembered where I sat at my commencement. Well if you ever have a chance to look at it again – I remember I sat on the right side of the stage (the audience’s left), the second one from the end of the row. I don’t remember for sure but I think it was in the second row.
About the only other news I can think of is an illustration of the fact that it is sure surprising who you are apt to meet here. There is a fellow here, a little older than most of us (32 or 33 yrs old) who sleeps across the aisle from me. He is from Arkansas and is a very nice old guy (old to us). He was asking me about Indiana the other day and I found out that in 1928 he had come to Indiana as a transient worker in the tomato crop. He worked at what is now the Frazier canning factory west of Alexandria. I don’t know whether Frazier owned it then or not. In lots of ways he reminds me of Freddie and Old John whom Richard will remember working with up at Brunson’s.
I’ve sure done a lot of reading in the S.S. papers this afternoon and want to do just a little more beforeI turn.
Good luck and God bless you.
Love, Donald