Category: Date wrong?

 [hot  – sometime after Basic at Fort Jackson, South Carolina – written on “United States Army” stationary – mentions “news” – perhaps after D-Day?]

Thursday Noon
Dear Folks,

I’ll start this now and I’ll be just a little ahead of myself tonight. This is a pretty sweltering day and I hope it is a little more pleasant back there. We had a pretty hard day so far and I think  we are going to do a couple hours of hiking this afternoon. So far the really hard part of our work was a period of physical training and an hour of bayonet drill and believe me this i swork.

To top it all off I don’t feel like work today. I haven’t had to take any shots for a while but yesterday afternoon it had to be done again. I got a smallpox vaccination, a tetanus and a typhoid shot. I don’t suppose the other two will bother me but the typhoid is sure sore today. The arm is about hail(?) and I just ache all over. It really made me grit my teeth to take those arm exercises this morning.

Yesterday all day except for about an hour in the afternoon when we were the shots was spent doing basic subjects like we did this morning.

What do you think of the news by this time? I sure hope things go well as they have in the last few days. I just wonder how these developments will effect me.

Thurs Night
I sit down now to write and I find myself wondering what I am going to say. I just about hit the nail on the head when I guessed about this afternoon’s work. We spent over half the afternoon hiking out and back from a training area so we didn’t have a whole lot of time to spend out there. But I guess they consider the hiking part of the training too.

I sure have been a drag to myself today. I just seemed that part of the time I wouldn’t be able to put one foot ahead of the other.

I got a letter from Aunt Mary this evening and from what I can gather she isn’t feeling very well yet. It’s been three months now and so surely her tonsils weren’t the only trouble.

Aunt Nora also sent me a very nice box of cookies that I received tonight. They were really good and we all got a very big kick out of them. And I forgot to say anything about them but those cookies int the last box from you really were something. You can send that kind to me any time you want.

Well I want to take a shower and hit the hay. We got in late tonight and I didn’t get to take a shower before retreat as I’ve been in the habit of doing. So I’ve still got it to do.

Hope everything is well with you. I’ll not put an airmail stamp on this but save it for some other time.

Lots of love,
Donald

Written over a Saturday and Sunday, but there is no postmark on the envelope. Envelope was in box letters postmarked May 1 (written April 30) and

April/May 1944 (date unclear)
Saturday Night
Dear Family,

I’ve been busy tonight but even at that I haven’t accomplished everything I’d like to. We went out yesterday at about noon on a problem that I said might be called off and got back from it this morning sometime around 10:00 I believe. We didn’t get much sleep but we didn’t have to do any extensive hiking and it wasn’t too hard on us.

The rest of the day has been spent doing details around the company, cleaning up our equipment, and trying to get a little rest between times. I have had fatigue clothes, sox, etc to wash from two problems this week so I have done quite a bit of laundry altogether.

I have spent most of my evening getting my stuff ready for an inspection  tomorrow morning. This is the inspection of all our equipment that was supposed to come off today if we hadn’t gone on the problem. It is the first of our inspections to get us ready for some movement. I can’t feature this outfit going over as a unit instead of as replacements as they have been doing but that’s what they are talking now.

We’ve got to get up at the regular time tomorrow and it will be a regular work day till the inspection is over. But by the time everyone is inspected I expect most of the day will be gone. I’ll close now and just hope for some time to finish tomorrow. D.T.

Sunday Evening
This hasn’t been much like Sunday and consequently I won’t be able to write such a long letter as usual. We got up at 6;00 and cleaned up the barracks as we do on any working day. Then we spent all morning waiting with our equipment and clothes displayed out in the sun. By the time they got around to inspecting us it was about noon.

So consequently I didn’t get to go to church this morning. Then this afternoon although I wasn’t in the mood for going to the movies there was a show on I didn’t want to miss so I went. It was Pearl S. Buck’s “Dragon Seed” about which I had studied in literature classes. It was a modern Chinese story about the war and it turned out to be a very good movie. After I got back I intended to write but I fell asleep instead and almost missed supper by not waking up. I have managed to do a little reading in between times but outside of that this has been almost a wasted day.

I was very glad to get your letter today but the package hasn’t arrived yet. I don’t know what we’ll be doing tomorrow but I haven’t heard any rumors so I expect we’ll be here tomorrow noon. A box will come in just as enjoyable then as it would have today.

From the looks of things now we will be pulling out but it won’t be for a few weeks yet. Anything is guess though and we’ll just have to wait to see what develops. I have several things I’ll have to send home and I thinkI’ll fix a box in the near future. I have several pairs of cotton sox that I don’t use now since we have to wear heavy sox to work in. I also have a pair of wool pants that I got while in the supply room at Benning. I was going to use them to wear under my fatigues if we went on winter maneuvers but it looks as if I won’t need them for that. They might come in handy for some similar use around home. If I get started I may find a good bit to send and what I don’t send now will have to be got rid of before we move as we can take only issue clothing and equipment. You are allowed 5 lbs of excess equipment though and I think I’ll keep my civilian shoes. I get a great kick out of wearing them.

A little incident happened last Monday that shows how much kids even a bunch of soldiers can be. We were out on a problem and we were attacked by a bunch of tanks. After the “battle” the tanks stopped and several of the fellows were climbing around over them getting a good look inside. They talked one of the drivers into taking them on a ride and they were hanging all over the thing. Well I was in that bunch and I rode astraddle of the cannon. We got as big a thrill out of that as if we had done something big.

Well I hope everything is going OK with you.

Love,
Donald