Friday Evening, September 22, 1944
Hello Mother and all,
This will be a short letter just to let you in on the news. I wonder if anyone noticed the outside of the envelope before it was opened. In case you didn’t just to save you the trouble of looking – I have finally got one stripe. This isn’t much, of course, and it certainly took me long enough to get it but I like to think that maybe it wasn’t all my fault. In the first place promotions weren’t being handed out here except in very rare cases only to those who were with the outfit originally. Those who came in when and after I did have mostly been regarded as trainees. Then if I had spent all my time in one outfit it might have made some difference. Like everything else you have to spend some time at a job before you are considered part of it. No one who ca in very much later than I did got Pdc. in this bunch. Lots of them who have only been here a month or so will get it though before we leave. As we have said in time past its sort of a part of being shipped overseas.
About all it will mean is four dollars more a month. I had to sew stripes on one shirt tonight for inspection tomorrow and it sure is a job. It’s as bad as sewing patches on. By the way we’ve had to take all of our patches off and we’ll have to sew either them or different ones on whenever we reach our destination. I sure wish I had mother to help me do some of this sewing. It’s a big job for me to do it then it isn’t too fancy a job.
Today we ran another problem with live ammunition. They told us that it would be the last live ammunition problem we’ll have to do before we leave.
I got a letter froom you at noon today. You asked about Dollie Good. That is – as near as I can gather – her realmaiden name. She just continued using that name instead of changing to her husband’s. His name is Mohler. By the way he made Pfc today too.
About our moving. We will leave here as a division and I suppose that we’ll go over together. Anything can happen, of course, but that’s what they have told us.
Hope everything is OK back there. God bless you all.
Love, Donald