6:15 Mon. night.

Dear Folks,

We have a lecture at 7:00 so might have to finish this letter. The mail is starting to come in now which is really swell. I got one from Zoe that was forever coming whereas your air mails come in about 3 days. Cleda, in regard to that place where the lights are on after taps – Taps are at 10:00 and I have come to the conclusion that anyone that isn’t in bed by 9:30 is a dmmmmmm fool. It is a long day from 5:15 till then and a hard one. Besides this it isn’t very comfortable in there anyway.

It has still been raining here every day and we are now marching in about 3″ of mud. So far my feet haven’t bothered me (knock on wood) in fact these GI shoes feel pretty good but they are plenty heavy.

We don’t get to leave the post for 14 days so I haven’t been able to get any pictures of me for you. There are no cameras on the post. Our work uniforms are green coveralls with green hats. We have to wear legging with them. We also have our flight jackets which we can wear with these or our OD’s. The latter (O.D.) is just the regular army uniform which you see around home. We get 1 O.D. coat with 2 pr. wool pants, 3 pr. of summer tan pants + shirt + wool shirts. Two coveralls, 2 pr legging, gas mask, overcoat, tooth brush, shaving brush + razor. Also two pr. shoes, 9 pr. socks. The gas masks are really swell, the entire thing is made of rubber. You keep it with you just about all the time and at night it hangs at your head.

This afternoon we had our 2nd shots and a lectured and practiced field stripping the sub-machine gun. If you ever saw a wicked looking instrument that is one. It will shoot 20 rounds in 2 sec. and would do better than that if the clip held more. We are suppose to go on the range with them this week sometime. It seems like they are using them more than the Gerand rifle^[1]M1 Garand Rifle. They are 45 cal. and can be fired from the chin to show that they do not have any recoil.

The food is getting alot better. In fact to prove this I have seen a couple of 2nd Lt. eating in the mess hall. I still don’t like the idea of eating out of the field mess kits. When we finish eating we dip them in 3 different barrels of hot water and they are supposedly clean.^[2]Loose food was scraped off into one barrel. Then the entire mess kit with loosely attached knife, fork and spoon was dunked multiple times into a soapy hot water barrel. Then the kit was dunked … Continue reading

I hope the shots we got today doesn’t effect me as much as the first did but I don’t think it will. It seems that the typhoid ones are the worst. My vaccination didn’t take so I guess my old one is still good, at least they didn’t give me another one today.

I got a letter from Elaine today and she certainly had a swell time at home. It must have been plenty cold when they got back to Chicago, however, Karen seemed to be all the better for the trip.

I had better close. I know my letters aren’t long but I though you would want me to keep them coming. The latest word was that we might be hear for 2 mo. but someone will probably come in in the morning and say we are leaving at noon. What a life –

Love, Tom