Thursday, March 4, 1943
Dear Mom:
We have not started studying as yet so I am taking this opportunity to drop you another line or two.
I’ll give you a general idea of what we are here for and what we have done so far and so on.
We arrived here Tuesday as I have told you before and so far we have not done anything. We had an inspection today and played some baseball and other sports. They have been letting us take it fairly easy.
We are living in the Gymnasium while our barracks are being completed. We will start our studies soon, we will study under regular college professors and will be $50 a month college students.
They will stress physical fitness here as well as mental alertness. According to a newspaper article one of the boys has, we are going to be training for 15 ½ months from the time we started so it will be about the middle of 1944 before I will be ready to go off to the wars.
That knowledge should make you and Mrs. King rest better at night, shouldn’t it?
We have been eating at a Café and
over at the girl’s dormitory, half at each place, we really get excellent food.
We get all the milk we can drink, all the butter we want, or all the coffee
that we want. We did not have that at
We called ourselves the
new A.E.F (Americans Exiled in
Mother, please send me some fur lined gloves. My hands have nearly frozen off these few days. Mom, it is really cold up here, colder than any weather I was ever in before.
Be sure and get brown. Please do not get that real dark brown and not light tan but sort of a happy medium. Get a real pretty color brown for me please and tell me how much they cost and I will mail it to you. Send them as soon as you possibly can.
I would buy some but all of the good ones in town are already gone and besides we are not allowed to be in town at all, we have to get out things through someone else. It is sorta inconvenient but I am crazy about it here.
This town is just exactly what we had visioned was a perfect place to be sent too.
We said that we wanted a small town, and this one has a population of about 60,000 and not 80,000 like I said before. We wanted a small town with no soldiers and we are the only soldiers here and the nearest ones are 60 miles away.
In every way it is perfect. The people look at us when we march past and we are something different. Nearly every where else, soldiers are like grains of sand but we are novel. Everyone stops and looks at us sorta admirably.
Our officers are very much pleased, they said that we had surpassed all expectations and then some.
I think I told you that I am now a captain. From Sergeant to Captain is a pretty good jump.
I was chosen by a vote of all the men so I must have been a pretty good sergeant because it was a unanimous vote. I really felt fine about it when I was elected. I am in command of Squadron A. we have three Squadrons, A, B, C and I am in command of the first one. Bob is the Lieu. of the first Flight in my squadron. I had to appoint my Lieutenant so I picked him. He and I get along like peaches and cream.
We had a parade yesterday just after we were made officers and the Army of Lieutenant said we looked swell. We must be doing all right or they would not keep saying so. I just hope we can all finish but the going will be getting steadily harder. We probably wont all finish here. Some of us just don’t have what it takes and there isn’t must that we can do about it.
Mother, we came through
7 states to get here including
Mom, I am sending you a clipping from the college newspaper telling about us arriving.
I thought you might be interested in seeing what they had to say about us before we arrived here.
Mother, you could send me some Air Mail stamps and some cookies or something good to eat.
Well, Mom, I guess that is about all I can think of for now, ask me questions about things I have not mentioned and I’ll try to set you right on them.
Give all my love,
Mother, I had already put the stamp on the envelope and it got hot and stuck together.