Dear Dad,

Received your letter yesterday, it was good to hear from you.

To answer a few of your questions: He didn’t pull any teeth he wants to let the upper wisdoms grow out alittle more and then pull it. He filled a small cavity in about 5 min. but seemed to do a good job. I am going to send you a money order in a week or two, we are due to get our April pay soon. I don’t know if they are planning on making navigators out of some of us or not. Even if they do a navigator goes through a complete flying course. It is necessary now for every man on the plane to know how to fly. I don’t think taking this navigation means much because the cadets that I have talked to say that a pilot needs to know alot of navigation but a navigator needs to know a hell of a lot, so there isn’t much difference.

Those pills you sent seemed to take care of my trouble. I didn’t take but one of the capsules. I have just one of those others left. I haven’t had to take any lately and when I did take them I just took 1/2 at a time. Sometime if you get a chance you might send some more of the pills (not capsules) just in case.^[1]Sometime after receiving this letter, Dr. Cartmell had drawn a line through this paragraph, and did not include it in his own transcription of the letter.

This morning we started at  7:00 to G.I. the place (that is cleaning) we finished just alittle while ago. At 1:00 o’clock we have drill and then at 3:00 P.M. we have to run 3 miles. We ran 2 miles the other day and the coach says we should be able to do 3 today. The coach was the football coach here and he is really set on running. I wouldn’t be abit surprised if there aren’t some fellows that get out of here with enlarged hearts. Is that possible to get that from running? Alot of us have been wondering.

We are starting to live on salt pills now, been taking about 3 a day. I hate to think how many we will be taking when it hits about 120°. The first one I took made me sick but since then haven’t been bothered with them.

Start taking Physics Mon. just completed medical aid and military indoctrination.

They flooded the whole campus again and it looks like a lake outside our window.^[2]Tempe, Arizona is adjacent to the Salt River, which also runs through Phoenix. Large land areas are sometimes intentionally flooded, using the river as the ultimate source, in order to irrigate and … Continue reading

All the other squadrons have passes this weekend. They were here before us, so we are here all alone. The only good thing about it is that we get all we want to eat. The worse thing is that we have to run the three miles which the rest get out of it.

I hope you folks had a good Easter. I got a letter from Elaine and she said that Stan had alot of eggs to fix Sun. morning. This will be the first year that I haven’t fixed any. Last year when Steve and I helped fix them I didn’t have any idea I would be here one yr. from then. Maybe next year we can color some. That maybe sounds awful big. However, things do look better for us in the war. What did you think about Doolittle taking off from a carrier in B25’s? It was too bad about the fliers that were forced down. When this war is over I don’t think there should be any question about what to do with the ones that were the instigators of their death.

Had better close and get ready for drill.

With love,

Tom