Dear Dad,

Received your letter today and it was certainly swell to hear from you. There isn’t much more to tell you aside from what I wrote in the family letter yesterday. However, I didn’t freeze as much last night as I had, mainly because I wore all my heavy winter flying equipment, including fur lined pants, jacket and heavy wool socks. They are having a movie here in the officers’ club tonight so Andy and I are taking that in. We have alittle while to wait and thought this would be a good time to answer your letter.

I was glad to hear that Dr. Mark was satisfied with Zoe. I was hoping she would get over there soon as she hadn’t had a check up since our trip across the states. I’ll finish this after the show.

It was a pretty good show, alot better than you would expect to see out here.

I was sorry to hear of Martha Shutt dying. Wasn’t she the daughter that played the piano? Let me know alittle more about it before I write.

Andy is OK, we are both trying to steer clear of colds as it seems everyone has one and we are on the verge. He said to tell you hello.

I hope Stan can hold out alittle longer and at least finish his semester. I really hope that he can stay out all together. There are probably alot of fellows that have it worse but I still hate to think of Elaine being alone with the kids. With alittle luck he could probably be stationed in the states for a good while and maybe for good. It seems that as far as I was concerned there were always opportunities for that. That is up until I got so far along in training. Tell Elaine that she and Zoe will have to get together as we had talked about and take care of one another. Also Dad you have quite a job to do yourself, you will have a bigger family than you ever did have to look out for pretty soon. Over here we don’t have too many decisions to make and you have to help make alot over there.

Hope everything was OK at home and that you didn’t have too much trouble in getting everything straightened out. I guess I sort of let you down on not being there to help.

Thanks for offering me any extra money if I needed it but there isn’t anything to spend it on over here. I am even going to try and save my own and enjoy it in the states. I never really realized what a war could do to a country before.

Time for bed – goodnight.

Love,

Tom