7-19-44

Dear Dad,

Didn’t have much to do for tonight so thought I would drop you a line. First off, I endorsed the check and sent some to Mr. McCane.

As you can see we are still waiting around here. are suppose to have our last day of classes tomorrow so from now on until we do leave will probably get just that much more sleep in. Our ground school classes have been pretty interesting here, some classes in code, chemical warfare, some skeet and pistol shooting, emergency equipment and learning alittle something about radar and other IFF equipment.^[1]IFF = Identification Friend or Foe We haven’t had any P.T. while here and I think we are all getting so we could stand just alittle.

Say did you know that Jim Brewer is here? The other day I just about passed out when I turned around in the P.X. and there he was. Edith, (his wife Edith Hunter) is out here with him. They are living in Lemoore, however, now is confined to the post for a week for getting caught speeding. They drove by the barracks last night to see me and on Jim’s first day out for P.T. here he broke a bone in his foot and he has been in the hospital for the last couple days and is on crutches now. He’ll probably be here for several more weeks now till he gets better. I think he will go out with his crew here as a bombardier on a B24. He and Edith were feeling pretty good last night because they had just come back from the ration board with two brand new tires and a B card. He said they couldn’t do enough for you if you if you went to them on crutches.

The way things look now we are not going to get in our flight time for this month and consequently won’t get our flight pay, however, next month it will just be that much bigger. The way it works is you have to fly 4 hrs. a month to get the flt. pay which in our case is $75.00, however if you don’t get it one month you have 3 mos. to make it up in so next month when we get 8 hrs. in our check will be about $320.00, it is ordinarily about $240.00. Counting our officers’ club dues, food and living quarter which we have to pay for you can knock off about $40.00.

Well Dad, this is just to let you know that every thing is O.K. Tell the folks hello for me.

With love,

Tom