Regrets Archives - Page 2 of 2

10 October 1942

Dearest Folks:

I don’t know how I’m going to fill two pages but at least I’m going to attempt it. I suspect the number one issue is the wedding. Received your letter before I did Katie’s about the event, so it wasn’t until tonight that I answered it. Things like this are inevitable, but now that they are coming into reality for some darn reason, I begin to get sentimental about it all. I wish Katie the very best and I hope their venture turns out with the same success as you and Dad enjoyed. All our squabbles and disagreements don’t strike me as something to be regretted, but rather as something that colored our lives and made the family circle binding and effective. Really regret (that) I can’t be there for the wedding and especially to put my arm around you when you begin to cry after the ceremony, and not least to meet Tommy and get in on the festivities.

I’m the same guy you kissed goodbye in [Camp] Stoneman. Was on pass yesterday and aside from a swim accomplished exactly nothing. Ate a casserole of steaks and sat in the USO building, squalling in the layroom tent now, listening to some football scores to the hit parade. Got my GI specs today—look like an insect with bulging eyes. Good glasses though. Another sheet would exhaust me.

Love,

8 October 1942

Dearest Folks:

Can’t think of much to write about but at least it will be something. Received the letter in which you mentioned Katie’s coming marriage-suppose such things are inevitable but I can’t imagine her with a husband. And I won’t be there for the occasion-probably the biggest thing since Nancy was born. Send me a picture of Tommy when you get one. By the tone of her letters I thought he was little more than another flame. Haven’t received a letter from her since I’ve been on the islands. Can see you doing all your canning and although I disliked helping you wished I was there. Also I received an old issue of the Free Press that I gobbled it up like an Esquire issue. Going on pass tomorrow for a little fun in town. Also received a letter from Dick in Pando and one from Gram. Gram said June was in the hospital so suppose I am an uncle by several weeks now. I am happy and satisfied and just biding my time until this is all over. Believe my discharge will be an even greater occasion than my wedding. I wish I was with you so much it hurts but it’s hurting plenty others too.

Love,

11 May 1942

Dear Nancy:

Perhaps I can sketch you a few lines before the lights go out. Instead of my remembering you at another annual milestone you remembered me. But in letter only for when May 6 came around I really thought about you. You know I think of you all when you are no longer around to take for granted. Maybe that’s one thing (and perhaps the only thing) that times like these inculcate in a soldier—the appreciation of the sometimes doubtful investment your folks make in you.

Looks like you rate another title—the first one in the family to be a valedictorian—that’s nice running and don’t slacken up the next four laps. Keep on being a tape breaker.

Guess you get the dope from the folk’s letters so there isn’t much to tell you about me. You should see the soldiers around here, as common as the hula in Hawaii. Darn pretty with all the woods and mountains.

Write again Nancy and get Hank to sling a little of his quaint style this way.

Love,

11 May 1942

Dear Folks:

Guess I haven’t written for about a week so better get at it.

When I got in today your picture was here and is it swell. I’m so glad you sent it. I can’t adequately tell you how much it will mean. Then yesterday Katie’s(photo) came so with these and the one of Dick, I have quite a gallery of good-looking kin. Katie is getting prettier all the time but since the last time I saw her, in about August ’40, I believe, she seems to look a little more mature and womanly. When exactly will she graduate? I’d sure like to see her badly. I feel like a terrible heel for not sending you something beside the telegram on your big day last Sunday,but then I thought that if you were coming out to see Gram or up here I would send you fifteen dollars for the trip. Suppose your back is badly bowed by the season of the year but it would be swell if you both could get away from it all.

I’m still in the dark as to furloughs—as a matter of fact haven’t even got wind of a good latrine rumor. Other fellows seem to get these but no dice in this outfit I guess.

Several troop trains have pulled out last week and even tonite a long one is standing on the tracks waiting to be loaded. The latest info from seat 5 is that we won’t be here for longer than a month, but then this is all rumor. Today we were on the rifle range firing plenty of ammo. I didn’t do as good as I have before—a 154 out of two hundred. Last week I started to attend survey school. About three men from each battery were chosen, this is the brain part of field artillery. Hope I go long enough to get some benefit from it.

Last Saturday afternoon got a thirty-six hour pass so Johnnie, my pal, and I went into Tacoma but came home fairly early for lack of anything to do. This guy Johnnie is really a swell fellow—a tough existence ever since he was born, living under a drunken Dad and keeping his mother. Plenty handsome, modest, and sincere. His qualities remind me of Jim Sandison, but Johnnie is much more handsome. Black curly hair and big friendly eyes. Wish I had a picture of him.

The recent sea battle was certainly good news wasn’t it? Hope we treat ‘em plenty rugged from now on. A bad note has been coming up lately and that is gas or chemical warfare. The use of that will increase the horror of war many times. I’d think Germany would be afraid to use it because of his own extinction.

Last week one day I was on regimental fatigue and was handed a shovel and dumped off on a coal pile. Boy did I get dirty but it was a good workout. We hauled it to the hospitals and to the homes of the brass boys (officers).

It’s still been raining off and on for the last week but a couple of days were really nice.

Well I’ve got to write some more letters so better get around to them.

Your picture will be my most valued possession.

Love,

The picture is a 155 mm howitzer of our battery.

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,

21 January 1942

Dearest Folks:

I suppose that before you even opened this letter you guessed the good news. Yep, I’m using my new pencil and stationary from it. The box came only 15 minutes before my guard duty so I had to laboriously and impatiently bide my time for four hours until I could get back to open it. I took a hurried peek just before and managed to pull out the picture of Nancy. The box was in good shape and surely there could be nothing missing for all there was in it. Well after guard tour I came back, lit a couple of candles and began to explore it’s depths. I walk guard again tonite from 4 am to 8 am and in the morning will make sure my eyes aren’t fooling me. I don’t know how to start to tell you how I feel about it. I opened it by myself in the tent and as I hurriedly opened package after package I really felt like crying a little. You went out of your way and spent a lot of time and money getting it together and such devotion and love I feel I hardly deserve. The army is a place where you stop and think a lot and I’ve done plenty. I feel so physically far away from you tonite and with no furloughs in sight, don’t help the situation much. I could get very sentimental but I know that would make you feel low. I wonder how you tolerated for a long, long time my disrespectful and unkindly acts and words and I just hope that I make the same kind of father to my children as my dad and as my wife will to my children.

I have the watch in my pocket, the pencil in my hand and the stationary in my lap and I’m going to wear the sweatshirt when I get up at three in the morning. It’ll be plenty chilly. Everything is so very practical and I’ll use them all the time.

Of course the cake was a little hard but ‘happy birthday’ stood out plainly. I think those two words touched me the most. The candy is still good.

Well mom and dad, my candle is about a half inch long and I’ve got to get up at three so I better stop soon. Thanks to every one of you a million times over for everything. I’m positive the box was untouched.

Goodnite and I’ve got to say it again, thank you all.

Love,

I’ll send you some pictures tomorrow.

23 November 1941

Dear Folks:

I’ve been a little slow in writing this time—last week seemed a very fast one. Thanksgiving Day was the hi-spot of the last fast week. Everything was in traditional Turkey Day setting and food was more than plentiful. To give the layout of menu we had of course all the most delicious turkey we could push down, potatoes, candied sweet potatoes with marshmallows, celery, ham, corn, beans, two kinds of pie, two kinds of cake, nuts, cranberry sauce, ice cream, dressing and probably other things I’ve forgotten about. It was all beautifully laid out cooked just right. Unfortunately I was on KP duty all day so had to work the holiday. I ate, as we all did, leftovers and I was almost waddling instead of walking.

Probably the thing that added most to the hurried flight of the week was that our radio training began in earnest on Monday. The first thing of course is to master the international Morse code. We sit at long tables opposite each other and listened by the hour to the code as it comes from the tape. Almost all of the fellows, after the first horn, feel they can’t tell a dot from a dash and will never learn the d— stuff. It does become depressing to hear the constant taboo of the sounds. Also we have classes in map reading, organization and duties of message center personnel, and the different kinds of code used by radio operators. We have three textbooks and a notebook. It’s all very interesting.

But of course what was most looked forward to and what made you all seem closer was the overflowing box. I certainly have a grandiose array of supplies and eats. It was so much appreciated especially when the work and care and money that you put into it was considered. It was a real delight to open it and wonder what each grab would produce. To get such a show of love from home, makes me recall times when my own conduct was anything but appreciation and gratitude in return for the deprivation and care that goes into the building of twenty years in a boy’s life. Anything I could write would be inadequate. But the candy and cookies were really swell and the rest of the items are all necessities that almost certainly are needed.

I guess this covers my past week’s activities, so so long for a while. And I still think I should say thanks again for the box. Mrs. Carroll sent a box of candy so I had 3 in all.

All my love,