Dear Folks:
First off I am in receipt of the letter about Stephen and besides being a big relief I’m sort of proud of my new title of uncle. I hope Katie gets along alright and the baby gets fatter and louder. Well, being away at a time like this is another good reason for my hating the Japs. I can’t very well imagine Katie with a baby in her arms and now I’m the more curious to see Tom.
And secondly (I have to enumerate the things I’m going to say in my mind) our battery stepped out to a dance last night. It was the second such battery dance since I’ve been here and this one was a big success. The boys spent a lot of time getting the hall ready and taking care of miscellaneous ends and they did a great job. And the biggest problem, the matter of getting enough girls, was even solved successfully. I ran into three Chinese girls whose names were Miss Chan, Chang and Ching (to give you an idea of the company I was in). I had a swell time besides eating cake and drinking coke all night.
Now that I have covered these few points I was going to write about I don’t (know) where I’ll go from here. Tonight was the weekly concert attended by a few civilians including a couple of stuffed dowagers who did more talking than listening. Listening to the concert we usually sit under a big avocado tree and the falling avocadoes are sometimes dangerous, and ripe mangoes literally cover the ground.
Of course every morning we like millions of others listen to the World Series game that begin over here at seven forty-five. And by the way, I’m still a Yankee man.
My job seems to keep me very busy and sometimes it gets a little monotonous but as I said before, it’s a good job and attended with a few advantages. One of the battery clerks was formerly from Omaha and occasionally we can recall something that was familiar to us both. And another of the clerks is a colored boy from Harlem. But the evenings are never long enough and it seems that something comes along about every night to keep me from studying as much as I would like to. Lights are out at nine-thirty which makes time pretty short. I think the boys are about as news minded as any in the outfit and we have our billet wall papered with battle maps to follow the communiqués closely. Of course we do a lot of talking about the progress of the war and not infrequently about the aftermath and what to expect when we come home. Sometimes I get a little depressed about it and wonder if I will ever attain what I started in school. But I cannot put (it) effectively on paper as I think about it so that’s enough of that.
Before I close I want to repeat about how happy I am for Kate and Tom and how much I wish I could see all three of them.
Well let’s call this quits—
Love,
