Donald V. Tappan

Not in an envelope, so possibly wrong date , but not too long after being assigned to 16th Company, and mentions his black eye so probably either the Sunday after his fall, or the following Sunday

November 7, 1943
Fort Benning, Georgia
Sunday Evening
Dear Folks,

I am getting low on paper but have several envelopes left so I will use a mixture. It has been a rainy day and I have been lucky enough not to have any extra duty so you can guess how I have been spending the day. I went to church this morning and have spent the day sleeping, reading and eating popcorn. I got your package yesterday evening, I believe. The popcorn tastes like a Sunday afternoon at home but of course it is not quite as crisp and tasty as it is when fresh.  In the future when you send packages could you wrap them a little more securely. One corner of each of the last two boxes have been bursted and leaking. They take an awful beating so the paste-board boxes are mashed and  the paper bursts. Either put them in more secure boxes, or what would be easier and maybe better, wrap them in good tough paper.

It has been raining all day down here. This is the second time it has rained since we have been here and we certainly needed one. You can imagine how dry and dusty roads and fields of plain sand can be. They say it rains almost continually down here in the winter and scarcely ever snows, so by the way it looks today winter may be starting.

Daddy asked several questions, which I am very glad for you to do, so I will try to answer them. (1) I will be very glad for you to subscribe for the Reader’s Digest for me. (2) As for my hut mates: Some of them are nice and some not so nice. There is a lot of rough language thrown around and a few of them like to drink, but these kinds of things do not appeal to me and I hate them more than ever. Several of them come from different parts of New York, two from Kansas, one from Chicago, and where all else I don’t know. There are fellows from all corners of the country in our company. Since our company is made mostly of the last of the alphabet of the other 3 companies it seems that half of the fellows have those long foreign names, many of them ending in “i”. All in all I think they are pretty normal fellows except one which is 6’5” tall.

As to how I like the 16th Co., I have got used to it and I imagine that after all I like it as well as I would have liked the 13th. It is impossible to have any real close buddies but I have found a couple I like and can trust. In the 13th Co. there was one that went to church with me and I liked and really hated to leave him. But since I have been in the 16th I have got acquainted with a boy from Kansa that has come to be my chum. He goes to church with me (he is a Methodist himself), does not have any real bad habits, is a good worker and works with me whenever possible. However I more often have to work with another fellow who is next to me in the squad. I like him well enough and can get along with him alright. My best pal’s name is Taylor.

You wanted a list of things I need and I will start on this tonight but may not finish it in time to enclose it in this letter.

Jim asked me how we eat in the field and this brings me very nicely to my next point. Usually when we eat out a truck brings a meal that was cooked in the kitchen and we have as good or better meals than when we eat in the mess hall. But yesterday we ate Type C combat rations. Of course the object of this was to give us experience. Here is what these meals consisted of. They were put up in 2 little tin cans a little bigger around than the no. 2 cans but not quite so tall. They must hold about the same space as a no. 2 can. One can was clear full of either vegetable stew, beans and meat or some similar kind of main dish.  You know that a no. 2 can of eats is almost a meal in itself. The other can contained 5 biscuits to use for bread. They were as big around as the can and about ⅜ of an inch thick. They were about like thick graham crackers in looks and taste. Besides this the can held 3 pisces of hard candy, three lumps of sugar and powder that dissolve in water that makes either coffee, cocoa or lemon aid. Mine was for coffee so I only made a small amount. You have to furnish the water from your canteen so you might as well drink water anyway except that it is flavored. You are satisfied after eating one of these meals and our whole platoon of almost 50 men fed from 2 little boxes about the size of no. 2 cartons.

Yesterday we spent about 3 hours marching and the rest of the time we spent practicing map reading in the field that we have been learning.

They gave us week-end passes to go to Columbus. Columbus has a poor reputation and is always filled with thousands of soldiers so I stayed here.

I don’t know what all we will do next week but I do know that we start working on machine guns and mortars.

I wrote Mrs. Morris about 2 weeks ago and this week I got a package from her. She sent me cupcakes and popcorn balls. In my letter to her I didn’t know for sure whether Duane was in this camp or not so I imagine it sounded crazy when I mentioned him. By the way I lost his address and would like for you to send it to me again.

I suppose you saw the write up in the paper about me. Several of the other boys got similar clippings so I suppose they must have sent the information from here. One of the forms that we filled out asked for our hometown newspapers. It said that a lot of instructors have had actual battle experience but I  only know of one corporal and one sergeant that have. The truth of the matter is that we have good non-commissioned officers but not for this reason. All but very few of them attended officers candidate school but failed to get their commissions.

My eye is a little blue today but I am not having any trouble with it.

It seems that I am not going to get to do much Christmas shopping so I wish Richard would start thinking about this. I am going to send home some money before long.

Instead of getting used to being away from home it seems that I am getting more home-sick as time goes along.

Love,
Donald
I keep my eyes open for stamps on letters and packages that the other fellows and I get  and I think that I am making more progress on my collection than I did at home.

Thursday Nite
Dear Grandparents,

I will start a letter tonight but I am pretty tired and I don’t suppose I will get a half dozen lines written. I wrote a letter to the folks tonight so I am getting tired.

Well we have been working hard and learning much during the last week. You would be surprised how many different phases of fighting are taken up in army training. We are learning to
(Friday)
Fight with all kinds of weapons and even without weapons. We also spend a lot of time drilling, taking exercises, learning camouflage, etc, etc, etc

Yesterday I had a little accident on the obstacle course. I slipped on one of the hurdles and hit my head. It raised a nice little bump and burst open a place a little over half an inch long by my right eye. The doctor put two stitches in my head but the whole thing couldn’t stop me. I only lost a little over an hour’s work altogether. It didn’t hurt much and I can hardly tell it today so I dn’t want you to worry a bit about it.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go on a ten mile march and spend the whole day in the field. While we are out like this we spend our time learning tactics, camouflage, scouting, etc. For our dinner on days like this a truck comes out from the kitchen here and brings it to us. Sometimes we even have better meals when we eat in the field than we do in the mess hall.

The folks tell me that you have been having old Topsy as a regular visitor lately. I guess the first time she did this was when Richard and I stayed there just before I left. I was glad to hear in your last letter that you are getting some of the things accomplished at the school that you wanted to get done, such as waxing the hall floor and getting the flag pole up.  I would like to see how the floor of the hall looks with seal-o-san on it. I suppose that it is cold enough that Grandpa must be getting acquainted with the furnaces by now.

I wonder if you had any trouble in Orestes with the Halloween boys this year. Halloween was like any other and you hardly realized what day it was. In civilian life, even if you don’t have a celebration, you at least talk about what day it was and the little things like this are what make military life a little hard to endure.

(Friday night)
Well I will try to finish this letter tonight. This is the third hitch at it but surely I can finish it as I have about an hour before “lights-out”. I will tell you what we did today since I can hardly remember what we do from one day to the next. This morning we practiced with bayonets and dummy hand grenades and this PM we had a lecture on field fortifications and dug one man trenches. The trenches we dug today were 2 ft. wide by 2 ft. deep by long enough to lay down in.

I got your letter today at noon. It sounds like you are getting some things done at the school house. I know just about how big a job it is to clean those down-stairs rooms and to wash the windows. 

Well I want to get a good-night’s sleep for the march tomorrow. So, 

Love,
Donald

Thursday Nite
Dear Folks,

I want to get a long night’s sleep tomorrow night since we are going on a 10 mile march Saturday so I will write tonight. Last night’s guard duty convinced me that this idea of extra duty is a matter to be expected from now until my basic is over. I walked 3 to 5 this morning. They gave us flashlights to miss all the ditches and gullies around here and it reminded me of carrying morning papers. This is the hilliest region around this area that you ever saw and you should see all the gullies that you can run into at night.

I had my first real accident today. Don’t worry about this since it is all over but I will tell you about it. On the obstacle course I was jumping over a hurdle over which you are supposed to jump using one hand. Well, my hand slipped and I hit on the side of my face. I burst open a place by my right eye and raised a nice bump. The corporal took me to the dispensary and they took 2 stitches in my head to close up the burst. It didn’t hurt much and I don’t think it is going to give me much trouble so don’t worry.

There is a couple of things I want you to send me as soon as possible. They want us to have a set of new toilet articles to use for inspection only and save them so we will always pass inspection. I can round up everything except underwear, towel and shaving brush. You can send me my shaving brush that I asked for before. For underwear I need ordinary white summer underwear. The regular army shorts are like the muselin striped shorts that are common only they are white. Get the nearest thing to this you can but regular white shorts will do. The towel should be white and the size of a face towel. If you can find another kind it would be better if it wasn’t made of that tufted cannon material. They try to call every towel made up of this material bath towels.

I would like for you to send me these as soon as possible but I can get by without them for a week or more. A couple more pairs of any kind of white underwear would be appreciated but they don’t have to be sent now.

I hope everything is coming along alright back there. I will answer your questions later but will quit tonight so I can start a letter to Grandma Carver.

Love, 
Donald
I forgot to tell you that I didn’t break my glasses when I fell and that GI underwear shirts are like the ones we always wore.

Note: As far as I could tell, this envelope had never been opened

Wednesday
Dear Folks,

I wanted to write last night but couldn’t get time. I had to attend a night class to make up for K.P., clean my rifle and polish my mess kit so it was bed time before I could write. 

I brought this paper with me to the field this morning and am going to try to write in the rest period between periods. You will excuse the writing as I am working on my lap.

We worked hard yesterday and are starting off hard again today. Besides our usual work we are now specializing in hand grenades and bayonets. Yesterday we threw dummy grenades and today we are supposed to have 2  hours of practice with them.

Yesterday and today both we are having 2 hours of bayonet practice. Last week in bayonet practice we just learned the different strokes, thrusts, etc. by striking at the air. But today we worked on dummies to make it more realistic.

Well it is noon and I found out that I have guard duty tonight. I will have only 2 hours of it so maybe it won’t kill me. I want to mail this letter before I go back to work. So,

Love,
Donald

Oct. 31, 1942
Dear Folks,

Well tomorrow I  will have been at Fort Benning a month. During that month I have had to settle down three times. Yesterday afternoon we moved to the Harmony Church area. Since we were still straightening up this morning, we could not leave the company area and thus could not go to church. I might have known that I would have to miss sooner or later but I am still going to go as often as I can. 

We live in barracks that hold 15 men out here. We are set in a woods and are located with the rest of the ASTP units. Since our whole battalion moved together my address does not change a bit.

I got my package yesterday evening. It came just a day later than your letter. I liked the article in the Scholastic about the ASTP. In fact I read all the stories in the Scholastic and in the S.S.paper instead of writing letters as I should. Speaking of letters I hope you are still writing to Ben. Uncle Everett’s write to me about once a week and these letters certainly do help.

Just think if I had gone to the navy I would be getting a furlough already. I don’t know for sure when I will be getting one. I may get one when my basic training is over, but I may not come until I have had a term of college. This would make it about April before I see you.

You asked if I still get the tribunes. I get them regularly 2 or 3 days after they are published and read them all through. I kind of lost out on my Reader’s Digest for November. I thought I could get one at the PX when I got here. They are all gone now and if I am lucky I may be able to get one next month. I think that if it is still possible I would like for you to send these to me. At least you can send me the one for Nov. when you are through with it and can let me know about the future.

I am glad that you didn’t buy that $22.50 watch that you saw if there was a chance that it wasn’t any good. I want you to use your head when and if you buy one. At least I can use my Gruen while I am in school.

I had K.P. again yesterday morn; they seem to come about once a week. Since they were getting ready to move, I don’t think I missed much so maybe I won’t have to work very hard to make it up.

Well so long for now and keep writing.
Donald

Friday Morn
Dear Folks,
It seems that I never have time to write a long letter any more but maybe I can squeeze this one in between times. I have 4 or 5 minutes now and maybe I can start.

Well I have really been working the last few days. My muscles are getting sore now for the first time since I was in Ft. Harrison. Maybe the tetanus shot I got Wed. helped. I have got 5 shots| so far and at least 2 more to come.

We have been having a good bit of bayonet practice and even though this may not look hard it gets very tiresome.| We have also been taking several marches and on Wednesday night we went on a night march and study of night tactics. Tonight we are going on another night march.
They must figure that in real battle a good bit of work would have to be done at night.

We had a little excitement in our company last night. Our company commander was raised from the rank of first lieutenant to captain. You should have heard the undertone when he came out for the formations last night wearing his captain’s bars.

There is not much doubt now about whether or not our battalion will move. We are supposed to have all our belongings and bedding packed by tomorrow morning. I suppose that sometime before Sunday we will have a new location.

The weather down here has gone crazy again. It is almost cold enough to freeze at night and then warms up to hot enough in the afternoon that we can go in our shirt sleeves. Everyone complains of the cold because it is such a damp cold. It doesn’t seem to me that it is difference from that in Indiana. The cold isn’t hurting me a bit so far.

Well I will  write you a long letter when I have time. For your information I was stopped in my writing at every palace where I have put a mark (|). I wrote off and on from morning till noon on it.

Love,
Donald 

October 28, 1943
Dear Folks,
I have a very few minutes this morning so I will start a letter now as I won’t have so much time to write tonight. Well almost 3 weeks of my basic training are over. They are going faster than I expected they would but 10 more weeks seems liike a long time.

We have been working pretty hard this week. We are taking a good bit of physical hardening exercises and we are starting to study military tactics. We took a three hour march some time at the first of the week and we were out about 3 hours after dark last night. We spent about an hour and a half of that time marching and the rest of the time studying night tactics. We are also supposed to have a night class tomorrow (Friday night). I guess in real combat a lot of work would have to be done at night so they want to prepare us for it.

We are preparing to move again. This time we are going to a place in this camp about 8 miles from here. Our new place is known as “Harmony Church Area” and we are leaving Saturday. We are spending all of our spare time getting out things packed for the move.

We had a little extra excitement in our company tonight. Our company commander was raised from the rank of first lieutenant to a captain. You should have heard the undertone when he came out for formations tonight wearing his captain’s bars.

Well I hope everything is coming along alright in Orestes. I have about run out of news. So.

Love,
Donald
As you might have guessed at the place in the letter where I sharpened my pencil I started writing tonight.

Oh yes. You wondered if I could turn over in bed without falling out. I don’t have to worry about this because I sleep in a regular bed not a hammock. And about my laundry. I don’t have to do all of it by myself. What I can do without for a week while it is being cleaned I can send to a laundry here on the post. I can send all I need for only $1.30 a month. Of course what I can’t do without I have to wash myself.

Write when you can,
Donald

October 26, 1943
Tuesday Evening

Dear Folks,
It is almost time for lights out so I will have to write fast. I had to go to a training movie after supper and when I got back my rifle had to be cleaned so not much time is left..

We have been working pretty hard this week.  We have been learning hand to hand fighting (judo) and have started bayonet practice. Today we took about a 3 hour march. Tomorrow we start running the obstacle course so you can see I will still be busy then.

I got your present this evening. It is going to make things quite a bit more handy. The little toilet article case that Mrs. Norris gave me is convenient in size but that is all. Little remembrance like this are what keep us going.

I hope everything is OK at home.
Love,
Donald
This is an awful short letter but it will let you hear from me and let you know I am alright. I would rather get short letters oftener than long ones less often anyway.

October 24, 1943
Sunday Afternoon
Dear Folks,

It may not interest you but I have just finished a nap. So far today, besides eating today, I have gone to church, caught up on my reading and at 3:00 am ready to start writing.

I suppose you have read of  soldiers digging fox holes. Well that is exactly what we did yesterday afternoon. These holes are about 2 ft wide by 31/2 ft long by 6’ deep.  Doing things like this is what makes me want to take Sunday afternoon easy. Besides this I don’t know of anything out of the ordinary that we have been doing. I might say (Richard will like to know it) that we have started taking an hour of calisthenics almost every day.

Once at the end of the every week we have a battalion parade. There are 4 companies of about 200 each in the battalion. We put on our dress uniforms and perform for the colonel. Last week we did it on Saturday afternoon and this time we had it on Friday evening.

I got your package yesterday evening and was it welcome! It was in good shape except for the cake being mashed a little.But that didn’t hurt the taste in the least. Between me and the rest of the fellows it is gone now except for a little which I hid away.

I don’t believe I have ever told you about how we keep our clothes clean. Well up until the last 2 weeks we had to use a scrub brush on them. But now we have a system that by paying $1.30 a month we can send a certain number of articles (6 sox, 2 towels, etc.) each week to a laundry here on the post. Of course such things as leggings and fatigue uniforms that have one pair of and can’t do without for a week we still have to do ourselves.

In that picture of the nurses that you sent me, I only recognize one nurse. She is the one in the lower right hand corner. She waited on me a good bit and I suppose you remember seeing her.

I have been watching the dates on your letters. I get them usually 2 days after they leave Alex. They are usually postmarked in the morning so I get them 3 days after you sent them out.

I wonder how Jimmie liked to work at Brunson’s. How many quarters did Richard play altogether in football. I wonder what will be going on back home during the 3 day vacation this week.

That cake was the first real cake I have had since I have been in the army. G.I. cake is more like corn bread made with flour instead of corn meal. I might explain that gi. Is the army name for everything that the army issues (gi shoes, go underwear, etc). The initials themselves stand for “government issue.”

It is pretty certain now that we will move during next weekend. We are now on the “Main Post” area and we moving about 8 miles to the “Harmony Church” area. I hope we have better post exchange accommodations there than we do here. We aren’t exactly on the main post so a truck comes here each evening and serves as our px. In a real px. The prices are very reasonable (lower than in civilian life), but on this truck the prices are high. 

Well I hope everything is OK back there.

Love,
Donald