Sat. night.
24 Mar. 45
“Southern France”
Dear Folks,
Well we have finally got our tent all fixed up. Today I put the finishing touches on my part by building a table. There are four of us in the tent and we really had to start from scratch. We built a floor, door, sky light, a bunch of shelves, two wardrobes, stove, and desks. It is pretty nice now after getting everything arranged. There are a good many women that come out from one of the town who will do your laundry. We also buy fresh eggs (oeufs) from them which taste pretty good. It is a big job cleaning up the mess kit after cooking them so I usually hard boil mine.
I went to Aix the other day and just got to see alittle bit more of France. Andy and I went in together and we really felt lost for awhile. Neither of us know much French and we had one heck of a time finding the hotel we were looking for. We walked all over town before finally finding it, every Frenchman we asked for directions did give us just the opposite directions than the last. Next time remind me to take French in H.S. instead of Latin because it hasn’t been a bit of help.
Alot of the people know German which helps alittle but it would be much more interesting to know French. I am enclosing a post card from Aix, there isn’t much to buy that is worth having. They even say the perfumes are pretty lousy and anything that is half way decent you pay about fifty times more than whit it’s worth. Once you leave the base about all there is to drink is wine or French beer. The water in the town isn’t too safe to drink unless you go to an officers’ club or someplace where it has been checked. I don’t care much for the wine and the beer taste like one part of American beer mixed with five parts water. We ate lunch in a French restaurant and believe me never again. Some kind of salad with potatoes in it, spinach, something that looked like oysters but finally decided it must have been barnacles, and wine. Cost of which was 130 francs ($2.60), it made Andy sick and I didn’t feel too well. From then on we ate in the officers’ club in Aix.
There isn’t much more that I can tell you as things are censored pretty close. I am enclosing two cards, one for you folks and one for Elaines’. Hope everything is working out OK for Stan and that all of you are well.
Enough for tonight –
With love,
Tom
