March 16, 1945
Dear Mother and all,
Before I forget it, I want to wish mother a happy birthday. This will be late getting there, I know, but I hope you’ll forgive me. I thought about it before I wrote my last letter but forgot it again when I got around to writing. Lots of things slip up on me and I feel sort of good just to remember a date at all. I see by the date also that three days ago I passed my year and a half mark in the army. I guess I’ve got about five months overseas time in, too. If the situation doesn’t change in another month I’ll be entitled to an overseas stripe. Of course, it wouldn’t make me mad, though, to be back in the U.S. even before another month is up.
It’s been about a week now since I’ve had any mail. I’m getting pretty anxious to find out just what Richard is doing. No doubt by the time he is doing something or is about to. It could be (and I sure hope so) that this half of the war might not last too much longer. But things will be far from over even then. We’ll just have to keep our chins up and keep working and praying with our eyes always looking toward the complete finish. One of these days we’ll all be home for good.
I’ve been pretty lucky for the last few days as far as work is concerned. That is far from even implying that I haven’t been busy but I think you’ll understand what I mean when I say it hasn’t been too bad.
Did you get my V-mail a few days ago telling you that I received a raise in pay? Before my insurance is taken out I should be getting around a hundred dollars a month counting everything. Just to fill space I’ll tell you what I should be getting paid. The base pay for a Sgt. is $78, then I get 20% for being overseas, $10 combat pay (I think), $10 for the combat Infantry Badge and I think and $2 for the Silver Star. Say figuring that all up if I haven’t been misled somewhere it’s a good bit more than I thought!
As far as I know I’ll still be doing the same sort of work. Spending most of my time messing with the radio and whatever other communications is necessary to keep things operating. I guess I never really thought when I started to radio school, almost a year ago now, that it would ever really be my job. And not only that it’s turned out to be almost a full time job. All the communications wor I do seems simple and routine but I suppose if I realized just how much knowledge I have picked up altogether since I began I wouldn’t feel too bad about it.
Let’s keep trusting and praying. It really pays. Love,
Your son and brother,
Donald