Military daily life Archives - Page 10 of 12

10 July 1942

Dear Nancy:

Here’s that letter promised yesterday. I prefer to write on the typewriter and it’s free right now so here goes.

Of course it’s plenty hot again today and sky is as clear as a lake, but I’m getting used to it now and don’t tire out nearly as easily as the first few days. I’m getting a pretty good brown and have a little sunburn on my back that is beginning to peel. Last night or afternoon rather, went swimming in the river where we have a typical swimming hole you read about in Mark Twain. It’s a good way to cool off for awhile but in an hour or two you are just as dirty as ever. Well I won’t be going out of camp for a while anyway. This morning I fell in at reveille formation with the improper uniform so I’m confined for a week. I sleep so sound that I don’t hear the bugle and this morning I tore out of bed and put my pants on without lacing them, hoping I could get by, but the CO saw me right away and he got pretty sore; consequently I lost my pass privilege. Oh well I guess a week won’t hurt. Two mornings ago I slept right through until breakfast but because it was my first offense they did nothing about it. This is a fairly common occurrence and orders like this are made often.

Suppose you like the new place just as much as Mom. Wish I could have helped you move. Some experts predict the end of the war this year. Let’s hope they are right and that I can sleep in my bed again. I suppose for a while after I get home I will call you into a formation and call the roll, then have you police the area and line up for chow.

We will be here only for two weeks more then I’m hoping our division will cut loose with some furloughs, that’s what we are all hoping for and making it compensate for this dust bowl. Yesterday our battery fired and the hills sounded like great clacks of thunder. On the cover page of the Saturday Evening Post is a soldier looking in a sight that is the same type as is attached to ours. Our guns throw a one hundred pound shell up to eight miles; they are used to shoot over hills and into enemy formations and only rarely shoot at an object they can see. For purposes of observation and firing data we have very slow flying aircraft that are in communication with the guns by radio. These planes can almost stand still in the air, their stalling speed is 18 miles an hour and they can land and take off almost anywhere. Also they fly low and pick up messages attached to poles. This presupposes that they would be very vulnerable to enemy aircraft but their protection lies in the fact that they fly so low and blend so well with the ground that high flying planes cannot find them, but if they are spotted, an attacking plane will invariably overshoot this target because the observation plane flies so slow. Last night an anti-aircraft battery was firing and they kept up a roar for while. Well so much for shop.

Perhaps I can write you a letter for the Herald sometime when I feel like doing some writing and am more in the mood. Well guess this is about all. Not much but the same old stuff. Thanks for the letter and keep ‘em coming.

Love,

2 July 1942

Dear Folks:

To keep my mind off the heat and look a little more ambitious I’ll write you something of what’s been cooking. Well this is the third day we’ve been here but it seems like thirty days. Day before yesterday it was a hundred and fifteen and yesterday one (hundred) eighteen and it seems even hotter today without any breeze at all. The heat just seems to bounce off the ground into your face. Yesterday I was on KP and just about cooked trying to wash dishes and wipe off the sweat at the same time. We do get a little relief in the evening though. Two miles across the hills is an irrigation canal and a river so we usually hike over there to cool off a bit. Every night the bank looks like a bunch of flies on a piece of bacon. No bathing suits of course.

The latest rumor, seemingly well founded, is that we will get furloughs in August after we get out of this hell hole. I hope this is the straight dope and I’m inclined to think it is. Of course I’ll let you know if we get any definite word. That’s not very far off and will that be a treat. Come to think of it in two months I will have been almost a year without a furlough. We should be here in Yakima for only about four weeks if we pass our test, which this little excursion is intended for. If we don’t pass it and have to go through another month I believe I’ll go completely berserk. It’s almost impossible to stay out in the heat for any length of time. I’ve dispensed with all underwear except when I get a pass and wear my cotton uniform. If I’m not on duty Saturday or Sunday I’m going into Yakima and spend the afternoon of the fourth swimming and cooling off. It doesn’t seem possible that the fourth is so near. We get off from twelve noon Saturday until midnight Sunday nite, if we don’t get a damned alert, as they usually do over a holiday. Every nite the canteen tent looks like a bunch of ants going into their hill as the boys file in for a drink of beer or pop. Last night the battery next to us furnished free beer for the boys after they got in from the field. We get it for a dime a bottle, but it’s pretty weak.

One thing I sleep like a baby at nights, and this morning I didn’t even hear first call, as I usually do a half before time. The sun rises about five and most are dressed before reveille ever blows. I slept on the top of my bag in the raw till about one when it began to get chilly. It starts to get hot about six thirty and stays like that until nine or after.

We have good mail service here, as good as the Fort, so don’t worry about mail getting to me. I guess this is about all. We have good eats and a lot of fruit that appeals to me; cantaloupe, tomatoes, bananas, strawberries and a lot of salads.

Well so long for another time.

Love,

30 June 1942

Dear Mother and Dad:

I better be writing soon or you will be thinking all sorts of things again. Monday we left Fort Lewis and came here to Yakima. This is the worst deal I’ve had yet. Our camp is stuck on a rolling prairie like in Wyoming and as hot as a Nebraska rye field. Man is it hot and dusty and then we live in pup tents. By four men joining their shelter halves we sleep four to a tent. Our sleeping bags are right on the ground where the dirt shifts into everything. This morning I put some boards under my bag in hopes it would keep it a little cleaner. Boy this is really rugged. Every time you take a step you raise a cloud of dust. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re getting training for Africa. But one good thing is, it’s nice sleeping at nites, that is what there is of it—the sun does down about 9:40 and raises at 5:00. There are a couple thousand guys here all in pup tents. The canteen and theatre look like miniature circus tents. Guess that is the final conditioning. I think we will be allowed to grow beards too so we’ll probably be a hot looking bunch. If we get paid Friday I’m going into town and shower and slap on an ice cake. Anyway we all think it’s a mell of hess but it will probably be good for us.

Well I’ll write more later when I get better arranged and have some more news.

Love,

13 June 1942

Dear Folks:

An odd time to be writing a letter—Saturday morning—but I’m dodging inspection because I’m on guard, so I chose a sunny spot by the side of the barracks and decided to bask and write at the same time.

Last nite at the post gym just across the street Lana Turner made an appearance at a fortieth division variety show. Boy what she couldn’t do to my knees. Our division presented her with an insignia on a little banner and while the flash cameras were clicking she shook hands with our general. Then she gave a sentimental little thank-you talk that really sounded genuine and sincere. She had on a purple dress that made her look like a blonde Cleopatra and this was aided and abetted by a cute red hat, set dangerously on her pretty hair. You could have heard a pin drop when she started to talk. During the program she sat in the front row flanked by sober faced, austere generals. During the program at intervals a fellow would come in the back of the hall holding a couple of despairing rabbits and paging Pvt. Peter Potter. The first trip he had two, the next time a half dozen, the next a whole hutch and finally he was dressed as a cook selling them as roast rabbit. One trip he had some fun with Lana Turner but he got a slew of his pictures taken. After the program I got a good view of her passing down the aisle and when she was right in front of me, not more than a yard away, the cameras flashed.

Tomorrow a cook and I are going out for a few rounds of golf if it doesn’t rain and perhaps swimming too if it is warm enough.

Mount Rainier sure looks big and beautiful today as I’m sitting here I’m looking right at it.

Got the letter and the dollar bill yesterday. A dollar goes a long way for recreation if you spend it in camp. Under the new pay schedule and when the cadre leaves I will be getting sixty-four a month. This is for a corporal. I want to save thirty of it. If we don’t get our raise this month I’ll have pretty slim pickings next month because $12.50 besides cleaning, pressing and laundry will be taken out for bonds. As the money accumulates the government converts them into $25.00 bonds. They will be mailed to Dad and made to Mother as a co-owner.

Down the drive a few blocks is Gray Field. Here are observation places that observe the fire of an artillery and communicate by radio with the ground forces. I can see a lot of planes sitting around, wish I was in one of them.

That’s about all there is. Want to see “Gone With the Wind” again. And get that book you mentioned.

See you in the next letter.

Love,

31 May 1942

Dear folks:

I’m supposed to be a fire warden today but looks more like a small town philosopher, leaning back in my chair and taking it easy. This has been a sad weekend. Saturday being Memorial Day we were promised two days off with passes, but as you probably read in the paper, Stimson says the coast is in danger so our leave was cancelled and guards doubled and new ones added. Saturday I was on KP and what was left of the battery went on a 20 mile hike in the woods. Sunday (today) a hike of 25 miles was scheduled but because about everyone is on guard somewhere it was called off. We have guards in the halls, on the balconies and everywhere. This morning (Sunday) we had to fall out for reveille, something we don’t usually do. All of us were in bed when the fall-in whistle blew so plenty were AWOL for not hitting in the line in time. I was afraid my puttees would fall off any minute and my pants weren’t even buttoned. But I got by, I went on guard at ten this morning and will be on until six this afternoon. What a weekend! And then we didn’t get paid on time for some reason and haven’t got it yet. No money, no pass, no liberty I’m disgruntled. Oh well it can’t last forever.

I guess our outfit is being split up to take men for cadre positions. I’ve heard something is in store for me but I’ll write when it’s definite.

All this wonderful chow you read about in the papers is a lot of phooey as far as I’m concerned. Our rations get slimmer all the time. Once in a while we get good stuff but some meals are really terrible. Don’t think I’m not getting enough to eat or the right kind but the way it tastes sometimes is bad. Don’t think the army only uses grade A stuff either. Most of it is second quality.

(author switches from pen to pencil)

Well a couple of days have passed since I wrote. Guess you think I’m getting to be an agitator or something or maybe a guy isn’t a good soldier unless he’s crabbing.

Threw together the above so maybe I can add a little more to my army career.

Our outfit was reorganized lately and I was given a rating of corporal on the cadre. The cadre is a group of sixteen men chosen to form the nucleus as framework of a new battery. The rating will not go into effect until we are moved. I may go anywhere and the latest is to Michigan or the east where several new divisions are being organized. I’m hoping so. Or I may go back to California. Don’t know of course when the cadre will move but I believe it will be soon. My position is battery clerk.

Got Dan’s letter today. Will answer it tomorrow.

Will write again tomorrow so will cut this off here.

Love,

3 May 1942

Dear Folks:

I’ve wandered over half of the camp since supper and couldn’t find anything I wanted to do so here I am back on my bunk writing to you, which I should have done in the first place.

The box came about three days ago and did I have a good time opening it. The towels were just the thing and when I got around to the food I had about a dozen chow-hounds to get rid of. Everything hit the spot. Also got the Star Heralds and the Free Presses. I heard over the radio that there was plane wreckage with Bob [Redding from Minatare] among the crew. All were believed dead.

Well last Sunday we moved from the newer part of the fort over to the old section with the brick buildings. Our battery is sleeping in the usual wooden barracks but they are swell brick buildings all around. It was a heck of a time moving—the second Sunday in a row we worked and my morale was feeling pretty low. So for about all we have been doing is scrubbing, cleaning windows and the like. Everything has to be so darned perfect whenever we leave a place.

The building we eat in, and where a couple of batteries of our battalion are quartered is about the size of the Scottsbluff high school and fixed up elegantly. Finally after hearing and reading about the army’s modern equipment in the kitchen, I’ve actually seen some. The kitchen is a large room lined with brick tile and accessorized with Monel metal on most appliances. We have electric dishwashers and automatic potato peelers. And there is one machine that stands about four feet high and looks like a large drill, but is isn’t. It has a good size paddle on an off-center shaft that whips potatoes. Really a nice place. Seems too good to be true and I hope to break myself of the habit of grabbing my mess kit when chow sounds. We eat on Monel covered tables and use dishes and cups. All this reminds me of OP tomorrow. Report at 5:30 AM to work until eight in the evening. I’ll be plenty sapped tomorrow evening.

I have found a number of pit passes since coming to Fort Lewis and the first made its appearance last Saturday night. We were given eight hour passes from five until one so me and my pal decided to go to Tacoma. Well we waited from five-fifteen until eight-thirty, almost three hours before we got on a bus. I swear the ticket line was at least two blocks long leading into a postage stamp shack with but a single clerk selling tickets. I, and plenty others were pretty disgusted. An eight hour pass and three were spent getting a ticket and waiting for a bus. Finally about 9 we got into Tacoma and had a whopping supper but had to wait an hour for that. Every little place and large too was packed with soldiers. And repeat the above process on trying to get a bus home then getting up at seven Sunday. Tonite I tried to go to the show but the line there was inexhaustible, and the canteens reminded me of the May Company on Saturdays or trying to play polo in a submarine. I guess that’s about all of my peeves except the rain and KP.

The latest dope is that we will be here for at least eight weeks of intensive training.

This chilly weather here seems to have helped my appetite and am eating more than usual.

Have had a case of infantigo for the past two weeks. It is beginning to subside and is a lot cleared up. I looked like a guy out of a comic magazine with my face spotted up with the violet stuff the doctor puts on it.

Well I guess this finishes another issue. Hope to take advantage of the library if it isn’t like the ticket lines.

Given this letter is about all grip, well I’ll be more cherry in the next one.

Maybe I could elaborate a little more on the corny. In the first place you see fellows from all kinds of outfits. There are plenty of ski troopers here all abundantly equipped for mountain warfare. They train on Mt. Rainier. Then the other day I saw droves of good mules that are used by the pack field artillery. Guns [175’s] are bundled up in 250 pound pieces and packed by these mules. Of course there are tanks, mammoth railroad guns and half tracks. Some of the queerest names are attached to them, I mean the half tracks (lugs on the back and wheels on the front) such as “Cozy Coffin”, “Coughing Coffin”, “La Muerte” and “Chattering Coffin” etc. Then there is the Air Corps.

Well better quit now. 5 is awful early and I’ve got to wake up myself.

Thanks so much for the box. See you in the next letter.

Love,

28 April 1942

Dear Folks:

For some unexplicable reason I’m not much in the mood for writing but I better do it anyway.

Our tour finally terminated at Fort Lewis here in Washington—at least temporarily anyway. A large place accommodating ninety thousand men and set in a bunch of pine trees—very pretty but rainy. In fact it has rained practically all the time we’ve been here. But aside from the rain the sight of the barracks looked like a stream to a desert traveler. It seemed like old home week to sleep on a cot with springs, pull a sheet over you and go to the latrine all in one building. To eat in a mess hall and hang my clothes on a good rack and shave in a large mirror all rewarded the tiring trip. But one bad thing is the soot. The barracks and the mess halls burn a cheap coal and the chimneys lay down a heavy screen of dirt—especially in this damp weather. Gas would be a good thing here. The main part of the fort is pretty swanky with its red brick buildings and green lawns but our section is pretty drab. The rumor is that we will move next week to the new large barrack buildings. Today I was on divisional fatigue and was in the main fort cleaning a house where the general will live. You should have seen me cleaning woodwork and cleaning bathrooms. I never saw so many trucks—acres and acres and warehouses and all the rest connected with the operation of a place this size. Seattle, is about forty miles and Olympia about fifteen. Will have to see Seattle soon.

Hope you have sent my box by now. I’m waiting anxiously for it. By the way the address is changed again to:

Btry C, 222 FA Bn
APO 40, Fort Lewis, Washington

The package and your letters will reach me alright by the first address I sent though.

The nite we spent in Bend, Oregon was quite an experience. As soon as the churches and women knew we were coming they immediately broadcast a call for girls for a dance and other entertainment. It is a fairly small place about like Gering and when we landed there soldiers took over. We got free coffee and doughnuts and later a dance and the people were swell. But cold wow—the temperature went down to 20 degrees and when I got up at four in the morning frost was a half inch thick on my sleeping bag. I slept warm though even if it was on the ground in the open.

The next nite we stayed in Vancouver and of course it was raining and miserable. Got into town for awhile—also stood on the Columbia River bridge with one foot in Oregon and the other in Washington. Boy the country is pretty around here.

Tonite I went to a show to ease lying around and doing nothing. Also went last nite. I still believe we will be given furloughs soon, but for how long I don’t know. All kinds of rumors are out as to how long we will remain in this camp.

Well it’s fifteen until nine and still light outside. I can hardly believe it.

Enough for this time—probably I never mentioned a lot of things you are wondering about but I’ll take care of that next time.

Wish I was home.

Love,

24 April 1942

Dear Folks:

Well I’m a long ways from Escondido. This is the third day out and now I’m in Redding in northern California not far from Oregon. The first day we came through Pasadena, Los Angeles, and ended up in Bakersfield and stayed all nite at Minter field; the second day we came through Fresno and stayed at Modesto. Today we came thru Sacramento, Williams here to Redding. Our battalion met up with another outfit of quartermaster so our convoy is a plenty big one—well all three nites we have bivancaced on airports and covered nearly all the field so you see how large it is. They (the trucks) look like a great herd of pachyderms grazing. Here at the Redding airport we are surrounded by snow covered mountains and in the distance can see Mount Shasta. The airport is on sort of a rock covered plateau over which the wind is howling.

I think this trip will be remembered in my future years as one that took plenty of patience and roughing. In the back end of our truck our six men with fourteen barracks bags, rifles and equipment besides wire pharaphenalia. It is one constant effort to keep everything together. The first thing we do upon getting into the nite area is to set up the kitchen and get it going, then put up pup tents, and finally after a cold water shave and bath crawl into our sleeping bags. We get up at 4:45 and have chow at 5:00, pull tents, police up, and leave again at seven. For noon dinner we have two sandwiches but we make up for it with a hot supper meal, and do we eat.

Our ultimate destination is Vancouver, Washington so will be on the road for four more days. Tomorrow we go thru Klamuth Falls stopping at Bend, Oregon. Perhaps you can follow our itinary.

Tonite there is a show at the high school so a few of us are going in and perhaps get a shower and get this letter mailed.

You should see the guys shaving in a truck mirror while the wind dries the lather as fast as it is put on. I was one of the first ones to get to the small waiting room in the airport building, but with about a thousand guys on two sinks that didn’t last long.

Well I better wind this up so I can walk into town a couple of miles away and get back fairly early. Four o’clock comes around early. Remember my address:

Btry C, 222 FA Bn
APO 40, Los Angeles, California

Well goodbye for now, write you tomorrow if I can get to a post office.

Love,

16 April 1942

Dear Folks:

Time to write a few lines while everything is quiet after supper chow. Just got a letter from you that was put in the wrong slot in the mailbox.

Well, well-founded rumors are astir that we are moving out perhaps tonite or tomorrow. In fact all we have been doing today is loading and greasing trucks and getting our personal equipment in shape to pack quietly when the order comes. Where we are going is of course not known but the latrine rumor is to Los Angeles. Whether this is in preparation for something bigger I can only guess. The latest is that we may move after midnite tonite.

Tonite also we are having alittle battery party with talent supplied from our ranks to refreshments from the battery fund. Suppose we will have a lot of fun singing and horsing around.

I wrote Dick a few days ago asking him to come up so we could both talk to you on the phone. However if we move I’ll make the call, if possible, myself. I haven’t been down for three weeks now and would like to see them before we leave but perhaps this won’t be possible. The 19^th will also be the monthly anniversary of my army induction—seven months.

I am sending my mail free, but because I had a little supply of stamps thought I just as well use them for airmail.

Don’t know exactly when our $42.00 will be effective but will probably effect our pay on the first of June. I will send you $20.00 to use in coming out. Wish you could come on the train. I think Dick and I can arrange it that way. If we each donate $20.00 or so you could afford it then. It would be better for you than riding in a car.

Yes, even get to sleep late if we walk at nite—the usual tour is 4 hours on and 8 hours off. We haven’t heard anything about furloughs for our bunch and are not expecting any—at least I’m not. We took all of our shots in the arm and after about three they were nothing.

Right now I’m reading ‘Inside Europe’ and ‘The Green Lights’, but if we move won’t get to finish them and incidentally, I’m wondering how I can return them to the library.

Last Sunday I was on KP and while looking around the kitchen saw a carton of beef from Cook’s Packing Company in Scottsbluff. Kind of surprising.

I gave up my job as assistant battery clerk for lack of anything to do in there so now I’m in the communications detail. We string wire from gun phones to the switchboard to the observation point (OP). From the OP the CO (commanding officer) relays his firing data to the guns which go thru the switchboard hidden in the brush somewhere. It’s a pretty good assignment and more interesting than doing the cannoneer’s hop. Pulling two or three miles of wire by hand is a workhout. One of our trucks has a small gasoline engine for this purpose mounted on the back.

Well guess this is all this time. Will write you all I can about what’s going on.

Love,

10 April 1942

Dear Folks:

Suppose you will be surprised by the series of lots of letters but I’ve had so much time to do nothing that letter writing becomes a good recourse when the time drags.

Finished my tour of guard duty at Carlsbad so I’m back in Escondido. Two letters were waiting for me—one from each of you. When you send me a box again will you include a heavy bath towel and perhaps a couple of hankies? I know you will send a box as you always have so I just as well make my suggestions. Some other things—hair shampoo, whole peanuts, that’s just about everything. I’m as proud as pie over the sweater and hate to have to wear it underneath. I can wear it on the outside only on unofficial formations.

Guess I’ll dig up your letters and take care of your questions. First—the actual temperature doesn’t seem to get so low but somehow the nights are very chilly and invariably we wear jackets and overcoats on nite guard duty, and then we still get cold. Yes, I sleep in my sleeping bag every nite. I would freeze without it—or I feel like I would. Usually in the evening we have a fire going in our little cone shaped stove so it’s comfortable in the tents. In fact your Easter card and the letter about the suit—take your pick—and I also hope Dad is making use of them. When the day comes that I will be handed that precious little document inscribed with the word ‘discharged’ I am going to wear different clothes everyday just to see what it feels like. Now that I got to thinking about it, it will seem odd very different to get back into civilian life. I never realized the freedom and privileges that I enjoyed. Suppose you will for awhile have to wake me with a bugle, blow a horn for chow and give me an inspection on Saturdays. How good it will seem to be relieved of the regulations of uniformity that we all follow.

Last Wednesday got a letter from Gram inviting me to a Nebraska picnic at Long Beach. Dick, Loyd, and June are going but I’m tied up, of course, so can’t attend! It does no good to make plans for anything—take your liberty as it comes and make arrangements later. Last nite a group of women with the Women’s Club in Vista entertained about forty of the soldiers to a dance and games in their clubhouse. I became entangled in a good bridge game with three of the town’s solid (+ solid) women who rank with the sharks. Of course I’m not acquainted with all the intracies and opportunities of the game but we got along pretty good and they were very gracious about my ineptness. They hung on all my words and finally we both recalled someone we knew in Scottsbluff so we became very chummy.

Another Sabbath tomorrow which means pancakes (a rare treat) for breakfast and church later. Besides pancakes-I also saw a boiler full of chickens so suppose we will have chicken for dinner with some good mashed potatoes.

I don’t know any Hoover in my battery although he may be in another battery of the battalion.

I see Dad you mentioned something of going to Alliance to see the army pass threw. Well I suppose a uniform would cause a mild sensation back there but out here they are so commonplace they are never noticed. Everyday convoys of trucks for miles in length pass through the town and P-38 interceptors, bombers and fighters fly over incessantly. Searchlights cut swatches of whiteness in the nights, and boys sit in rooms of sandbags keeping accurate logs of every happening along the coast. Troop trains sweep along, blackened out like a deadly animal and the yellow light of an alert flashes on once in a while. Rumors fly like confetti in a March breeze and the next most important topic is dope about furloughs and passes and (of course) women. I wish you could visit our battery and see what we do. Each move a vital cog in a big war wheel.

Well this covers about all from this news front and perhaps a little to much space so until the next letter.

Love,