Tom’s original letter is lost, but his father, Dr. Cartmell, transcribed it on his New Lawrence Hotel stationary before sending it on to his Tom’s stepmother, Cleda. I have transcribed the transcription (below), but Dr. Cartmell’s handwriting is sometimes difficult to read and he sometimes changes spelling, syntax, or pacing.
Fri – Apr 28-44
Dear Dad,
Well here I am all settled and ready to start to work at 6:00 in the morning. This seems a good bit different than the ___ cadet life, but it really isn’t so much. We still have ground school, P.T. + flying, however the nice things are that we now have orderlies, that clean our rooms, make the beds, and you go places on your own rather than being taken. Things really sound pretty nice here, there won’t be more fooling around, in fact we start flying B25’s tomorrow afternoon, some jump from an AT6 with 550 horse power, to one of these with 3,000 H.P. from what I have seen of them they look like a pretty sweet ship, the instructors live and breath by them, and I don’t think I have ever seen a piece of machinery so respected. When we first arrived here we kept hearing about the gentlemen that we would meet down on the flying line, it wasn’t till this afternoon that we found out it was the B-25’s.
Mort Blaisdell and I are rooming together. The rooms aren’t very large, but they are better than I had expected. I am afraid P.T. is going to get plenty rough here because they are supposed to be getting us ready for over seas duty.
I have heard that they moved the field in Florida that we were going to, out here to Calif. That _______ any chances of leave for us, but we can worry about _______ will be here 10 weeks and get in 100 hours in the B25’s. The food had been good so far, we can go into Sacramento any evening that we want to and aren’t night flying, how ever when you _____ get to get up at 6:00 + fly for 5 hour stretches at a time, because it doesn’t pay to _______ one of these up just for an hour or two. I imagine you will spend most of your evenings in bed.
Our flying area is all over the west, we take cross countries to Texas and back without landing and others over to Oklahoma.
Well Dad it is time for dinner, and this is mostly to let you know my address and a little bit of the set up here, tell every one hello + tell Elaine I rec’d her letter this morning. I hope everything is getting back to normal for you folks, and I was certainly glad to see everything going well.
Tell Elaine I will write a _______ letter to her in a day or two.
Mort is getting hungry so will close.
Thanks again for a swell vacation ______
I will always remember.
With love
Tom