Tuesday Noon. – July 11, 1944
Hello Folks,
I hope you will excuse this scrappy paper but it is about the best I could find to put in my pocket this morning. Also if it is a little damp it is because it really poured rain this morning and also because we spent about half the morning walking almost to our knees in swamps while on squad problems. All in all I’m wet from head to foot and it looks like it might rain more before the afternoon is over. We had our raincoats with us but I guess they thought that we needed practice in being wet. I forgot to tell you but I suppose you have gathered that we are spending the day out in the field and I am spending part of my noon hour trying to get a little start on tonight’s writing.
Well I drilled with the company yesterday instead of going on the detail I mentioned Sunday. One of the fellows had to be in camp anyway to take some kind of physical examination so they gave the job to him.
I was sure glad to hear from you yesterday evening. I’ll have to wait till this evening to reach it over and see if there were questions you wanted answered. I also got another letter which surprised me a little. It had Charles Johnson’s name on it but of course Janetter had done the writing. She didn’t have much to say but I was very glad to hear from them.
It sure is a wonder we don’t feel more results than we do from these days in the woods. I was just noticing this morning how much time we spent walking in and crawling through poison ivy and poison oak. But so far the worst effects I have felt are chiggers and boy I sure had a case of them the other day. I used some of my athletes’ foot stuff on them and it must have killed the varmints because the bites are almost dried up now.
EveningBoy if I had known how busy I would have been tonight I sure would have written. Luckily I did. We are going on a march tomorrow afternoon and a bivouac tomorrow night. We’ve got to get everything ready now for that.
I had to wash all the clothes I had on today. They were covered all over with the slimy swamp mud. Then I cleaned my rifle and have got to roll my pack yet.
Well I see I’ve got a lot of new chigger bites tonight so I’ve got to get busy on them too.
I wish you could be getting some of the rain that we are. It would help us both out. Hope everything is as well as usual. Got to shut off because of lack of time.
Lots & lots of Love,
Donald