As of September 9, 1945, Dad had his final address on Guam and was hoping to be shipped home by February before the baby’s birth in March. There was already a tremendous release of tension among the soldiers, who knew they would soon be on their ways home.
Sept. 9, 1945
Guam
Dear Mom and Dad,
I am settled now and my new address will be the address I’ll have for my stay here. It is:
507th Air Material Squadron
90th Air Service Group
APO 334 c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
When you write to this address you’ll know for sure I’ll get my mail. I don’t know when the other mail will catch up with me. I sure wish I could hear from you and from my honey.
We have a nice barracks here, and our whole area is built up pretty good. In the last place we had to wash out of our helmets, and the showers were big oil drums on platforms with spigots on them. This is comfortable for being on an island. I was really surprised. The natives here speak English, and the native women wear regular dresses and make-up. Their form of transportation is an ox and a two-wheeled cart. It rains here almost constantly, and the mud is terrible, but overall, it isn’t that bad. I sure wish I could be there with you now. Oh, yes, Dad, remember these soft shoes you gave me? Well, they really are handy. I wore them on the ship all the way over, and now I wear them in the barracks. I really like them.
Well, this is a very short letter, but I’ll have to close for now. It is time to eat supper.
Bye for now. Be careful, and pray I can come home soon, Eddie and I both. God bless you and watch over you. I sure do miss you.
Your loving son,
Elwood
p.s. Write soon!
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
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