Dear Folks,

I guess you think I have forgotten you, but I hadn’t. We have been pretty busy and have had a good many other things to see about. I was plenty lucky last night in being able to get an apt. It is the first floor of a home, not far from the base and in a good section. The lady that owns it was pretty nice about the whole thing. I told her we would be here but a couple of weeks but that didn’t seem to matter. She furnishes everything, dishes, bedding, etc. The rent is $35.00 a month, we pay by the week. I don’t think you could beat that in Chicago. I think the Cartmell’s must be pretty lucky when it comes to apt. hunting.

You probably know that Zoe is getting here Fri. I am taking the day off and meeting her in San Francisco. We’ll probably be married Sat. night and if things work out as planned it will be out here at the Chapel. The chaplain is protestant, Capt. Close. Mort will be best man and I think Laurale is coming down then.

I finished my camera missions this afternoon. I had one high altitude one to go and thought I might as well get it out of the way. We start firing tomorrow, we are suppose to finish 4,000 rounds in 2 wks. Unless they get us some more planes or patch up some of these in the shop we never can do it. Our sqd. has only had about 6 planes to use this last week and you have to handle them with kid gloves so they won’t fall apart. On the one I had yesterday the right engine quit several times, which all tends to keep you on your toes. I told in Elaine’s letter about the boy bailing out at 1500′. He is still in the hospital but will be OK. He hit the ground mighty hard. They found out that all the gasoline had leaked out of his bombay tank so when he switched to his bombay tank the engines quit. He had only had about 2 hrs. in the plane so I imagine he got alittle rattled. He should have switched back to his other tanks.

Dad, I received your last two letters and they relieve me an awful lot. I am glad that you feel differently, and thanks a million. At the present my post war plans are to either go into commercial aviation or stay in the A.C. However, in my opinion, I’ve still got about 2 yrs. to think about that.

Armstrong, the boy that went to Fresno last month sent me a letter and they are really doing alot of flying. He flew on his first day over there, and got his R.O. (Radar Operator) on the second. They have been working together ever since. He gets every third day off besides one day a week. His wife is over there with him and he says there isn’t much trouble in getting a place to live. As soon as they got there they told them that they would be in combat in 70 days and every day since then they have signs up all over the place saying: “69 days to combat, 68 ‘ ‘ ‘   ‘ ‘ ‘, 67 ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘  etc. I guess we’ll all soon know just how good our training has been and if we’ve remembered everything they have told us.

Cleda, the box of candy and chewing gum were really swell. I still have some of the candy left, so you can tell that I haven’t been flashing it around so much. Say, did you receive the tooth paste? I just wondered, I sent it to Greenville.

I’ll telegraph you Sat. night if things work out. What will your address be then? You might tell Zoe’s folks that they can use my address to write Zoe if they want to.

Enough for now, hope the moving in proving out to be alittle easier than expected. Goodnight –

With love,

Tom