October 3, 1943
Dear Grandparents:
I suppose you know by this time that I am at Ft. Benning, Georgia. This is a good way from home since it took us 27 hours to come from Ft. Harrison. I suppose with good connections I could make it home in 30 hours. I was surprised when I looked on the map to see where Ft. Benning is. It is almost on the Alabama line. If you want to see where it is, it is close to Columbus Georgia.
This will be my home for 14 weeks. After that if everything goes alright I may be sent to school somewhere.
We started at noon on Thursday from Ft. Harrison and got here at about 3 PM on Friday. We came through the states of Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. It was dark when we came through Kentucky and Tennessee but when I looked out of the windows I could see high hills against the skyline. I don’t know what cities in Ky. and Tenn. we came through but we came through Indianapolis, Franklin, and Batesville in Indiana, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Athen and Columbus, Georgia. We ate supper in Cincinnati and the rest of the time we ate on the train.
The part of Georgia that I saw is very hilly. Most of the homes are only shacks and a great many people are negroes. The land here is all red clay or sand. The land around Ft. Benning is all sand. When you look at the bare ground you think that sand has just been hauled there but even the ground that is covered with grass is only sand.
You don’t have to walk around but about ten minutes and your shoes are so dusty that they look as if they never had been polished. There is a little corn grown here but the main crop is cotton. I only saw one field of tobacco and then I am not real sure that that is really what it was. The cotton is now ready to pick. You could see the white bolls all over the field. In many places you would see negroes and sometimes whole negro families out in the fields picking cotton. Your cotton plants seemed to be a good sample of the size of the cotton plants.
I have not been here long enough to be real sure about the schedule but we don’t have to get up as early as we did at Ft. Harrison. Here we have a mess hall for each company. Since we can all sit down at once we don’t have to wait in line for hours to eat as we did at Ft. Ben.
We started in yesterday to learn principles of marching and by this time next week I expect to know a great deal about it.
I got to go to church again this morning. I have not missed a Sunday yet since I have been in the Army. We have very nice church services even though they only last an hour. They are short so that one chaplain can conduct more than one service during the morning. I am sending you the program of our service this morning but of course the best part of it, the sermon, is not given.
In Indiana we were wearing our winter uniforms but here we are wearing our summer uniforms again. It gets cool at night but is warm during the day. I could notice on the way down that the leaves of the trees changed from their bright fall colors to green. Here you can hardly tell it is fall except for the fact that the crops are getting ripe.
In Fort Harrison we had about 75 men in each barracks, but here the barracks are much smaller and we only have 6 men to each one. I like it better since things are much quieter and you can do more as you like. In each barracks (they call them hutments) there are 2 single beds and 2 double decker beds. I sleep on the top bed of one of the double deckers.
I suppose the carpenter work at school house is about finished now and things look pretty nice. I hope that things are coming along OK. I am always glad to hear from you so write whenever you can.
Love
Donald
My address:
Pvt Donald Tappan 35893186
16th Co. 6th Tng Regt. ASTP
Ft. Benning, Georgia