Dear Dad Moss Archives - Moss Letters

26 April 1945

Dear Dad:

It seemed such a treat to get your letter today that I thought I would address this one to you, even though you know it is for you both. Well a few minutes ago I finished typing the daily newssheet and have my lead arranged ready for the evening. Also for tonight we had a can of bacon leftover from our rations and I see my buddy has the stove out so we’ll probably have quite a treat tonight. That bacon in cans is very good stuff. This guy I bunk with I’ve known for a long time, and we have become close friends, although at times we use words on each other. He is from Kansas where his father has a large wheat and cattle ranch. He is very likeable and always cheerful, as a matter of fact he keeps my spirits up. He is married and I think I know about everything about his wife. His name is Cliff Blount just in case sometimes you may want to know.

On the island here there’s quite a number of horses and lately it has become the fad to get one of your own and ride him after supper. The battery looks more like a calvary outfit and often we have a short rodeo for a laugh. I did a little riding but I don’t go for it like some of these guys.

Your letter today was interesting and full of good comment. You are doing a good job and I know our absence has made both of us wiser and more appreciative although it worked more on me. I was glad you got my letter about being in Okinawa but know it will make you more anxious. It won’t last too long and then I’m sure we will have it easy for a while including shows and a little beer. Talking about horses and everything you probably can’t reconcile it with combat but there is the other side alright. About every evening the Japs start shelling and a shelling is nerve wracking but aside from the time one landed about 35 yards away, they haven’t been too close. Several men were only five or ten feet from the shell and came out unscratched so you can see the good of a foxhole. It doesn’t take you long to dig in. Haven’t seen Dick for a few days but hope he can stop by soon. He told me Diz Carroll had already had enough war. The reason the bonds sometimes arrive late is because they are sent only when we are paid and occasionally we can’t be paid every month.

I know you would like to see your business continued and especially to have one of us take. I know what it means to you regardless of what you say in your letters. I think we will keep it going and if Minatare can weather any decline after the war, I agree with you that it has many possibilities.

I think I wrote about Ernie Pyle’s death and it was a blow to everyone. Just when he was about to tell homefolks about the Pacific war. I’m sure the men in Europe will find the war here much different. No prisoners here, it’s dig them out and exterminate like cockroaches. I don’t mind if Mom puts my letter in the paper that I first wrote but I don’t think it is much of a letter. I was really not in a literary mood and could have made it much better.

Well it’s getting pretty dark and we are to do the bacon frying before dark so I better ring off for another time.

Love,

2 February 1945

Dear Dad:

Let’s make this a man-to-man talk only put it on paper. Now that I have a little free time thought I better attempt to catch up a little and maybe write you a letter. Just opened a nice beer and earlier had a swim, and a shower so I feel good. And later will go to the show. Pretty good movies have been coming in lately.

Well my law books have caught up with me and the last two nights have looked into them some, however I believe I better send them home – you can never tell what may happen – and then of course I’m going to be home in 1945 – hm. I hate to send them back but I think it’s the best.

Well no packages have arrived so now I think the Christmas mail must have been sunk – I can’t understand where they can be. I wish more positive action would be taken by the proper authorities. And I surely would like to have some of that popcorn – with our small stove we can always pop it.

The last few days have been rainy ones and on a few occasions a blinding driving rain. I hope it never blows the tents away. It’s a job to keep dry.

For the first time in many months I put on a pair of suntans and I feel like a Sunday School boy. Before it has been fatigues.

Before I started writing you I was talking to a Sgt. in the guerillas and he was telling me of his experiences in fighting the Japs. He seemed fairly intelligent as Filipinos go. Said his brother was shot and hung by the Japs in October 1943. Some interesting tales.

Had a letter from Dick a few days ago and he seems in good spirits. I hope he continues to take it easy.

Well better quit I guess but I’ll write more tomorrow when I will have a little more time. Sent you $50.00 today. Have you received the $40.00 I sent? Are the bonds coming? You’re doing a good job of writing and they mean a lot.

Love,

23 December 1944

Dear Dad:

I thought I’d write you a letter tonight because you’ve been doing such a good job writing me. For the second time since I’ve been in the Philippines, received mail from you – one from Mom and one from Kate. Not too recent but that doesn’t make much difference. I don’t know how good the airmail service is yet so I’m sticking by V-mail which I know will get there fast. Well this afternoon about three, I took a cooling dip in the ocean – a swell place to swim – it’s better than Waikiki Beach. Reread your letters then went to supper. Probably will see a show tonight. Air raids sometimes force the movie to stop but so far we’ve been able to see every one through. Opposite from where I’m sitting, two Filipino women are pounding rice in holes cut into coconut logs. After pounding it they hold the rice in the breeze and let it blow away the chaff. I certainly wish you could spend a day here and see how they live. About all they eat is fish, rice and coconuts. One girl is 21 and has had five children – nothing slow about them. Of course the money here is pesos and centouos which we are paid in. Haven’t been paid yet but I have some pesos. Two pesos equal one buck.

Mom was inquiring about reassignment. Under the rotation plan you are returned and reassigned but on a furlough you return overseas. Both prospects are getting dimmer as I see it and I don’t look forward to either one although I expect to see something happen after Germany is whipped.

Well, I’ll stop here and get ready for the show. Don’t worry for I’m fine.

Love,

10 October 1944

Dear Dad:

I was all set to go to bed and call it another day but just received a letter from you so thought I’d answer it while there is still a little time before bed.

It’s about time you received the package I sent you. I mailed it about a month ago and I’m anxious to hear what you have to say about them, the souvenirs I mean. Dick is anxious to know about them. I imagine they will make quite a stir.

As usual it rained plenty again today. A guy from Nebraska would go nuts with all the rainfall here. Everything is green now and the island looks very fertile. Radio Tokyo a few nights ago answered that all civilians and soldiers had died on the island and raved about their glorious stand. But all of them couldn’t see the ‘suicide’ stand and there’s still plenty of civilians around trying to get another start with what there is left. Of course they can only move around in certain areas and of course don’t get around the military areas. I don’t trust any of them.

I’m glad to hear, in a way, that you’re not moving to Bridgeport however whatever you would have done would have been okeh with me. I’m very anxious to see the house for it must be a beauty with all the work you have been doing, and how super lovely it will be to enjoy it. You don’t know how much I think about all the little things that you probably never think about. How I’d like to pull a bottle of ice cold beer from the refrigerator and drink it with you.

I’m feeling pretty good after the dengue fever but I’m not overly fat, if you know what I mean. Boy how I could sit down to a home cooked meal with all my favorites and eat forever.

Saw an Abbot and Costello show tonight that was a stinker. You should see us at a show. We sit in the worst rain and never notice it or wait a half an hour while they change a reel or get a bug off the lens. The Aladdin at its worst was a palatial ‘Hippodrome’ beside ours. In a few days Betty Hutton will appear with a troupe. The guys will probably go nuts over her not having seen a white woman since last May. And although we haven’t seen a white woman in a long time still we have our sex morality lectures and are told the customary things. A little ironical.

Well I wasn’t lucky enough to draw a furlough but maybe my luck will change someday. The quotas seem to be getting bigger and I’m hoping I’ll soon be lucky, however don’t be expecting to see me because anything can happen and then it’s better to be a little pessimistic. But after three years it seems something ought to happen.

Mom intimated I might have somebody in mind back there – feminine I mean but that’s not the case. I haven’t written to a girl in a long time but I’m thinking I ought to do something about it. I’ll have to start from scratch when I get back.

Been playing a little bridge lately but it’s hard to find players in this outfit – they all play pinochle.

Well I’m about finished for tonight. Just wrote Gram a letter – should write them more often. You’ve been doing a good job of writing – it’s depressing to not get a letter at mail call and you’ve been seeing to it that that doesn’t happen often, so I got to keep up my end too.

Well better stop and do some more dreaming.

Love,

19 April 1944

Dear Dad:

Probably you have noticed a little increase in my letters lately. I have more time in the evenings and not able to study as much as I used to, so to kill time, will write a few lines. Received your letter today and always enjoy them and appreciate and understand all you write and know how you feel about many things. I noticed the greeting from Farley on the back. Dick called me this evening to see if I could go out with him tomorrow but couldn’t arrange it, but he’ll probably stop around tomorrow sometime. About ten o’clock last night when I was, (and usually am), thinking about you, lying in bed, the news mentioned the shows and it sounded pretty good to hear him mention Sidney and Lexington. And I think it would be (a) treat to slag around in some snow too. I certainly agree with you on your sentiments about home and think you are exactly right and I’m kind of anxious to get one started myself. If money has only value after the war and the government pays all these bonuses and nothing exceptional happens perhaps I will have something to start that home on. Well here’s the end so good night for this time.

Love,

10 February 1944

Dear Dad:

I just received another of your inimitable letters and it came at a most welcome time. My head is still going round like a merry go round. I have been very busy the last few days and just now has the volume of work begun to slacken off a little. But working like this makes the time slip by almost unnoticed. When I realize how long it has been since I’ve eaten a Moss meal, I appreciate that fact, more than ever. But maybe that’s because I’m older. I can remember when I couldn’t wait another day until I was old enough to have a bike and then later on to drive an automobile. But now here I am having gone through both and wondering what I’ll be doing when I’m forty or fifty.

I think if I take another look at your letter I can stretch this one out a little longer. Every time you say something about the cold weather and the snow, I have to pause and remember that in some places there actually is weather like that. Every afternoon around three the office knocks off for a little volleyball game on the big rambling lawns that are near our area. We’re getting pretty brown from it and we feel pretty good after sitting down all day. Last night we gathered together our best forces and had a game with some Hawaiian civilian boys and took a good beating. We played after supper with the little gathering there. It reminded me of a twilight softball game like we used to have. There was a few good-sized ‘wahines’ there together with some men playing poker on a little grass mat. They sure take life easy and are so darned good natured and hospitable. They’re pretty fat and look sloppy but you overlook that. The boys beat our pants off – they can hit a ball from any angle.

Dick and I went out together on pass last Wednesday and looked around for the shells but couldn’t find any this trip. But we’ll get them. I bought Mom and Nancy each one of those handkerchief affairs they wear over their heads and better get them mailed tonight. Dick and I are very lucky to be so near to each other but I think your summarizations are pretty correct. What did you think of the Marshalls episode? Boosts your morale up for a while and makes you a little more optimistic. There is a lot of talk around in the papers of troop rotation and furloughs but I don’t put much faith in any of it. All of it is so contingent upon other things that is seems pretty remote. Guess I’m getting used to waiting. I know what the deal on the bond allotment is. I had an allotment for that amount and it was automatically stopped in favor of a new plan so that represents the money not applied on a new bond. Hope you received the sixty bucks instead of the usual thirty-five.

Most of the civilians at home get a pretty good tongue lashing from the fellows – and especially the strikers. Boy what they wouldn’t do for them. I guess that shows that they didn’t realize what a swell place the ‘old country’ was until they had to leave it. Any little old corner of the states would satisfy most of us. But this business of laying off work sure raises the hair on us when we hear of another fifty thousand or so because they can’t get enough to have all they want. I think the situation is pretty lopsided too. Everyone whether he’s over here or back there is in the same kind of job and if he has to take bad breaks that’s just tough.

Well I’m going to do some studying for a while and the evenings are very short so I’m going to throw in the towel about here. The friend in Washington sent me another book a few weeks back and it’s full of interest so got to get busy on it. I have a little room by myself now and can setup books and spend a profitable evening with them. I think your sentiments are the best in the world although they aren’t expressed in the language of Longfellow, which is the least important part.

Love,

31 December 1943

Dear Dad:

I guess if I owe anybody a letter it is certainly you. You write often but I never answer them as I should. It’s pretty quiet tonight and everything else is done. We’re sitting around listening to the radio this New Year’s Eve, not doing much. We won’t do any celebrating with blackout and taps at ten. I was just looking at the pictures Kate sent me and then thought how swell it would be to see Steve and all of us enjoying him together. It seems I’ve been gone so long I have to pinch myself to make sure things like that are still back there. Some of the things I look back on seem like a dream the morning after. You can’t imagine how much I think about the first few minutes when we will see each other again. Bet I’d have to have a towel for my eyes. Maybe I better get around to the brighter and newsier side of things. This afternoon went into town to do a little shopping. Tried to find some picture frames but no luck. I must have looked like mom nosing around the Kress Store.

Some of the fellows have gone to the New Year’s Dance but the competition is to stiff for me. Probably won’t be many white ones there anyway. Seeing so many ‘tanned’ ones will make all of them at home, good-looking.

Well dad, it seems there should be much to write about and make a man-to-man talk out of this but it seems the words aren’t here although the thoughts would fill many pages. I hope 1944 brings us very near the end. I don’t feel much anxiety about my own welfare although I admit I sometimes worry about Dick. Certainly I don’t foresee a furlough.

The pictures were taken in the office. Maybe they will give you some idea of the place I work in. It’s usually a pretty busy place and maybe it doesn’t look too tidy.

I’m going to call this ‘pau’ for this time. I really enjoy your letters and you put in the kind of news I like to hear. Hope I do a better job of writing (next year).

Love,

19 October 1943

Dear Dad:

I’ll aim this letter at you this time having received a good full page one today. And what a day this one was. I feel like a kid after a day at the carnival. This morning I went over a Ranger Course that took all my strength to finish. I was never so (tired) since the days (when) we used to climb in the mountains. To describe it most effectively I guess it’s about like some of the training pictures you so often see in newsreels. After I finished I swore I was going to hug my bunk for the rest of the day, but a swimming party was arranged and the first thing I knew I went along. The waves at the beach were big and powerful. Its good fun to get in front of one and let it bowl you in to shore and that was okeh till I came down on my shoulder into a rock. The rock took a couple of big hunks of skin off and bruised my arm a little but it feels fine now. I wish you could have been with me today and seen the beautiful ocean and the beach. Although to most of the guys the ‘Paradise of the Pacific’ has become a prison rock to them. It hasn’t for me. The more I see of this place the more I feel I want to see more of the world. As a matter of fact I guess I daydream of many things after the war, maybe pipe dreams and impossibilities but nevertheless I think of them a lot and hope a few of them come into reality after the end. I never become disgusted at Army routines or other things that are different to civilian life, but I do get impatient over the fact that so much of my time is being wasted when probably at no other time should it be so productive. I guess that shouldn’t be a complaint – so many others are faced with the same thing. Knowing that this is the case I am trying to do the next best thing and even the small advantages compensate for some of the loss.

Reading in your letter about K Lackey I can’t but help to remark. I can’t figure that guy out, especially sitting himself in a liquor store and probably thinking up more things than ever to elucidate on. I guess it takes all kinds.

Well Dad this is a good night to pull down the book and study till bedtime. By this time I have read the two volumes you sent and of course I intend to (read) over them again. Those books have become more less inanimate objects and more like friends every day, and the object of my complaint is that I can’t study them all the time. So I guess this is all for this time. Thanks for the long letter today.

Love,

24 July 1943

Dear Dad:

I just received your letter a few minutes ago and I want to answer it immediately although I haven’t much time during the noon hour. Why am I so interested in the law books? I haven’t contacted a judge advocate because that isn’t too easy for me to do, but if I recall rightly, those books were used by the law students that I roomed with in Lincoln. Buy (them) as soon as you can and ship them immediately—take the money from my account. I do want them in a hurry and can’t wait for them to arrive. I couldn’t sit here this afternoon and wait to write the letter tonight. Maybe I can add a little to this before time for work. Your letter, although it might lack plenty grammatically, it’s a crackerjack otherwise. It’s a very good one and the kind it’s good to get. Our new home makes me itch for a furlough more than ever but perhaps something will happen that such a thing may be possible, who can tell?

We follow the news carefully day to day and have a large map in the office and the billet to keep up with events all the time. A few days ago we received a permit to buy a radio and you don’t know what it is not to have one until you are without one. Of course there are many radios in the battery but it’s practically impossible to buy one as I suppose it is in the states. Tomorrow is Sunday and that should mean a swim in the surf and day at the beach. I work in an office that doesn’t call for much outdoor exercise and I look forward to the Sundays.

I know this is a short letter and not a good one but I wanted to let you know to go ahead and purchase the books because I don’t think there is any doubt of their worth. Let me know when you send them. Maybe I’ll write you again tonight and get off a better letter.

Love,

10 July 1943

Dear Dad:

You probably have noticed, and maybe with a little concern, the fewer number of letters that I have been writing, but I find it so discouraging to write a good letter that I put it off ‘for just one more nite’. Well my guilt has been gnawing on me pretty strong tonight so this will be ‘that one more nite’. The first thing I should do, and I do feel bad about it, is for neglecting you on Father’s Day. I know it is a little late, but I hope you will not feel it was intentional. As a sort of a ‘peace offering’ I’m sending you an electric razor. I didn’t expressly buy it for you, but after I got it thought I made a mistake and not knowing whether I can always use it just as well send it home. The razor is (a) good one but I know the toughness of your beard and perhaps you can’t use it. Perhaps Phil is getting to where he can get some good of it.

Tomorrow is the Sabbath so possibly I will go to the beach or to a dance. Ordinarily the afternoon is given to recreation although it is never a certainty. In the morning the chaplain has services in the rec hall but he seems to me to be so lacking in what I consider a good ‘sky pilot’ that I can’t feel as I should (think) about going.

Last Wednesday nite the first USO troupe from the states did a show for us and I laughed all the way through it. It was a breezy streamlined affair but just what the guys like. Even a half dozen chorus girls danced in front of all the whistling. The girls were quite a contrast to the willowy hula girls that dance slow and easy and with no shoes. After seeing the local females for so long, these looked pretty good.

I just heard the news that you have probably been following pretty closely and that is the landing on Sicily. It appears that perhaps from now on, we will do the choosing as to where and when the fighting will be done, but despite this I think it will still be a long time before it is all finished. Sometimes I get into some good arguments on this subject. You have often been right on your ‘out of the blue’ hunches and I hope this is one that is no different.

As a supplement to my excuse for not writing I do considerable reading in the evenings and I think this stops the letters a little bit. If you have not gotten a book yet forget about the first order and try to get the one ‘Titles’ that I mentioned. Perhaps I should have asked Katie to do this for she would have much better access to them than you. Maybe I’ll do that.

Tonight we assumed the roles of scrub women and cleaned up the billet with mops, etc. With my household experience in washing dishes, mopping, making beds, etc., I should make somebody a good wife. Maybe if the women keep working after the war, I can put it into practical use.

All of you have been doing a swell job of writing and I do appreciate it, although maybe it isn’t evident from my end. You know there is nothing dearer to me than home, and of late I have realized that more than ever, at least it has been impressed with greater meaning. I guess it’s about time for the final sentence and I never know how to write it to leave you with how much I miss and love you all.

Love,