As of this letter from early July of 1943, Dad was still a private, then stationed at Camp Santa Anita in Arcadia, California. Knowing that Dad was an even worse typist than I am, I feel impressed by what I suspect was a true labor on his part to do this letter. He at this time is becoming more and more homesick, and I think the reason for his being CQ (confined to quarters) was once again that he hadn’t made his bed properly. A quarter was supposed to bounce off the tightly arranged sheet and blanket, and I’m pretty sure my mother would confirm the fact that Dad could never make a bed. He was closer to being an Oscar Madison than a Felix Unger. Still in training, he was taking technical courses on mechanics. London and Guam were yet to come. JB
July 25, 1943
Dear Mom & Dad,
I received your letters and pictures and I sure am tickled. I’ve waited a long time for them and I’ll sure keep them on me. I’m sorry again I haven’t written to you but you know why. We were given a test the other day and I guess we passed all right, so maybe we won’t have to keep up this stiff training much longer. I hope we won’t anyway.
I guess you are wondering how I rate writing with a typewriter, don’t you? Well I’m on CQ tonight and I’m enjoying the lieutenant’s typewriter very much. How are you and everyone else at home? I sure wish I were there with you tonight but I’m not, so I guess that is that. We are leaving in the morning on bivouac until Friday morning. We will be on the desert for those four days. I hear we can only have a canteen full of water each day and only our helmet full to take a bath in. They are pretty smart. The water we drink out there has been treated with a chlorine solution and can be drunk, but the water we are given to wash in is poisoned to a certain state and will make us sick if we drink it. That way the men won’t be filling their canteens out of their wash water.
Gee, Pop, I’m glad you feel better since you gave up some of that hard work in the mill. You may not have the money you were making, but now maybe you can enjoy yourself a little more.
Say, how did you like the headlines about old Mussolini getting kicked out? I hope those other leaders follow him now by getting kicked out too. If they do, I’ll get a nice long furlough. (The duration and six months would be around the corner.) I’m getting tired of army life now and want to come back there to Indiana and never leave again. California is OK and so is the army but I know now what “There’s no place like home” means.
I haven’t written to Bonnie for the last three days either. I hope she understands why. This is one of the toughest training centers in the United States, and they have had us going until we didn’t know what to do next. the whole thing is they are trying to give us a couple of months training in a couple of weeks we’ve been here, and when the army makes up its mind to do something, it’s done. If we can start on our technical training now, we’ll be able to leave this field that much sooner and maybe be come back east again. I sure hope so anyway.
Well I’ll have to close for now, because I’ve taken so long trying to type this letter that I’ll be too sleepy to write to Bonnie in a little bit. If you don’t hear from me again for a couple or four days, please don’t worry about me. This isn’t as long as I wanted to write but I’ll have to write to Bonn or she’ll “moider” me. Bye for now. write again soon.
