Monday Dec. 8, 1941

Darling,

I am going to do my best to try and get a furlough and get home to see you, it probably will be the last one we will get for a long time, if I do get a furlough I will come right home to you. I am going to try and get it for New Years Eve. Pray that I get my furlough and that I see you once more before we leave. Red I still want to marry you even more now than I ever have before but I can’t marry you now Darling it won’t be fair to you if I do. I love you Ann and I always shall as long as I live, but there is no use fooling ourselves we are at war and I might not come back and I don’t want to leave you a widow with maybe a child. I can’t explain my feeling Monkey but I want you, I want you in my arms and there is something you have been saving for me that I want. I can’t explain what makes me feel that way but since the threat of death and war is somewhere in the future I have felt that way. I have longed for you before but never anything like the longing I have for you now. The way I feel right now I would almost be afraid to be alone with you yet I would give everything for two weeks with you. Red if you really want to help me please don’t miss a day writing to me.

Darling I saw something today that I will remember as long as I live. There were about thirty or forty of us laying around or sitting around the Pay Room listening to the President’s speech when it was over they played the star spangled banner. You should have seen that room, as a single man we all rose to our feet and stood at attention. Every back was still and every chin was firm not a word was spoken, and in some eyes there were tears of emotion. If you or anyone else could have seen those faces you would never worry about the outcome of this war. There is a grim determination, the likes of which I have never seen, in every face. Yesterday this life was a game today it is real. You would never think it was the same place. Orders are obeyed with a snap and there is the feeling we have a job to do. Let’s get it done. We may get furloughs and we may not, the only thing there is left to do is hope and pray that fate grants us this one brief moment of happiness before it tears us apart perhaps forever. Under those circumstances would you want to still marry me, if by chance we did get married I would want to spend our time in Newark because it might be the last time. I must sound awful morbid tonight, I admit I am looking at the worst side of things that is the only thing to do then if it turns out for the best everything is swell and nobody is disappointed. Red would you still want to marry me in spite of the way things look now? Darling I want you tonight all of you the feeling I have must be that feeling men get that makes them want to leave something behind them. Don’t worry Monkey if I do happen to get a furlough I will behave myself I will be out of this frame of mind I hope. Darling Bakelite had my group insurance to Army insurance and they are going to take pay for it for a year. The only trouble is I have to have it in my mother’s name or some blood relation of mine. I tried today to get it changed to you but nothing doing so I will try again after we are married and see if I can have it turned over to you even though I won’t have permission to get married. Red if only we had gotten married before I came into the Army. Honey I didn’t hear from you today, don’t miss writing to me anymore. Red are you going to keep right on loving me or are you going to forget about me when we are shipped away. I can imagine how you are worrying right now but don’t worry everything will turn out alright. In another week or so we should be able to tell whether or not we are going to get a furlough or not. The boys all feel that if they just give us those fifteen days we are ready to take whatever comes but we will want that short time in the arms of our loved ones. It is funny I read about the English soldiers taking a short leave and then not giving a damn what happened and that is what is taking place here, I love you Red and I want to marry you but there is the chance of not coming back or coming back a cripple and I don’t want to burden you that is the last thing I want to do. Sweetheart you and you alone will be the only woman in my heart as long as I live, I will come back to you Red never fear.

Yours always

Sidney,