Letters To Home

The dinner we had here last Sunday was almost as good as our Christmas turkey dinner the day before.  Only this time, the featured attraction was ham, and plenty of it.  How I love to go after that stuff.

This was extra good ham.  It had a “cured” taste that hit the spot.  I didn’t think it was especially salty while I was eating it, but I made about 15 trips to the drinking fountain that afternoon and still felt as if I were in the middle of the Sahara.  Also on the menu were mashed potatoes and gravy (the old standby), canned corn, and some delicious apple pie.  The upper crust of the pie was just a layer of toasted crums, and the whole thing melted in one’s mouth.

For our Sunday night supper we had stew and french-fried moth balls (hominy grits).  Up to their old tricks again!  You know what hominy grits look like, don’t you?  Well, the grits and a recording of Bing Crosby was the closest we got to having a “White Christmas”.

According to what I read in the papers, the boys here in the ETO get the best grub of any soldiers anywhere.  We do get some good food.  Take just our breakfasts for an example.  Here’s how they stack up:

We have a choice of fruit juice, cold canned milk, or coffee for a beverage.  I always take the fruit juice, which may be grapefruit, pineapple, orange, or tomato juice (maybe you didn’t know tomatoes were fruit.  Well, you learn something new every day!).

We are getting more and more in the way of “dry” cereals as time goes on.  And that suits us fine.  You don’t know what hardship is until you eat Army oatmeal mush.  That’s only my opinion, of course.  Back in Kearns, before I knew better, I rather liked the stuff.  They served fresh milk with it then.  During the last few months, we have had puffed wheat and rice, shredded Ralston, wheat flakes, and shredded wheat.  Not bad, eh?

There is always some kind of fruit to eat with your cereal.  Peaches, pears, apricots, prunes, and plums are the most common.  And put pineapple in there some place.

Our favorite main dish for breakfast is hot cakes.  But that isn’t what we always get.  Powdered eggs cause the most trouble.  Sometimes they’re okay and at other times they aren’t so okay.  It depends on who makes them and what he puts in them as an added inducement.  And then there’s a “nifty” little dish, known technically as “creamed beef on toast”, but we have a more appropriate if less pleasant name for it.  Need I add it is not fit to go in this post?

In one of Mom and Dad’s letters they asked me to write a little something about my plans for after the war.  I’m glad they brought that up.  I’ve been intending to touch on that subject but have never gotten around to it.  Some things I’ve decided fairly definitely, others I’m still thinking about.

I’m not sure that Mom and Dad will appreciate some of the ideas I have.  For instance, some day I hope to have an office of my own.  Of course, my LaSalle diploma will be hanging on the wall.  I have in mind a rather large office with all the modern conveniences, including a massive, six drawer, glass-topped, knee-hole walnut desk and a small, blonde and blue-eyed, five foot five private secretary.  Nice, eh?  Ha Ha!  On second thought, I guess I could get along without the desk.

I hope you’ll excuse all my mistakes in typing tonight.  I’ve been typing all day, and my hands don’t seem to know what they are doing.

By the way, since I have been typing letters to send home, the single-spaced typing takes much less space than writing in longhand, so Mom and Dad have been getting longer letters than they might think.  But, since I don’t say anything, what difference does it make how long it is?

[letterstohome copyright 2008]

Today is Christmas! How do I know? Well, I don’t know for certain, but I am hoping it’s Christmas because that stuff I got from home for the holiday season has wasted away to a shadow. Another week and I would have had what the little dog shot at! As it is, I’ve been on a ration of one raisin a day since December 17th It was certainly good stuff while it lasted.

This state of affairs may be hard for Mom and Dad to understand. They sent me so many things to eat. One trouble was that every time I lifted the lid of my foot locker, there they were. Tempting, no? Put a can of 3-in-1 oil and a roll of adhesive tape where Cleon will run into them several times a day and see how long they last!!

All of us boys from the Northwest, the Midwest, and the Northeast have been “dreaming of a White Christmas”, but that is all the good it has done us. This year my Christmas is decidedly green. Many of the trees still have their leaves or needles and one need only look at the beautiful carpet of grass to appreciate the extensive “precipitation” we have been having of late.

According to the Stars and Stripes, at least a few soldiers in the ETO were “dreaming of a Tight Christmas”. Could be!!

I’m not one to rub it in, but I’ve been wondering if I had a better Christmas dinner than Mom and Dad did. If I remember their dinners correctly, that would be going some. I’ll tell you just what I had this noon. It didn’t cost me a single penny or point either.

The main course was, of course, turkey. And what turkey. No bones, no necks, no waste of any kind. Just great big slabs of white meat. And more than one could eat. With the turkey there was dressing (the only thing I didn’t like) and cranberry sauce.

Besides that, there were mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, pickles, bread, hot rolls, butter, and some cake which was just like mother used to make. We even got some G.I. Christmas candy.

I thought it was a much better meal than the one we had Thanksgiving. You may wonder if we stuffed ourselves. If Hitler had launched an attack today at one o’clock, he would have caught us with our pants down. I know I couldn’t have put up much of a fight.

For supper we had baloney and beans.

In many ways it has been just another day for me. I lounged around in bed until 7:45 but still made it to work by the usual 8:30. I am always busy on Saturday morning, and this morning was no exception. This afternoon I was just there.

I’ve got the Christmas spirit, though. I took one bag of the hard candy that Mom and Dad sent to me and gave it to the Irish janitor who works down at our offices. I wished him a Merry Christmas, and he seemed very pleased. It has given me a good feeling all day.

This evening I went to the show here on the base. “Hello, Frisco, Hello” was showing, and I enjoyed it more than when I first saw it in Kearns some eight months ago.

Of course it is several hours earlier in the States. Mom and Dad may very well be eating their dinner this very minute. And thinking of me as I am thinking of them.

[letterstohome copyright 2008]

Here it is Christmas Eve!  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  I know that some of my letters home have taken a while to arrive, so it may be that my Merry Christmas letter home should more appropriately say “Happy Easter!”.

I have received several letters from home within the last few days, among them one written on November 24th.  Well, good for me!  (Another old Ed’ard’s saying of mine). I’ve really sweated that letter out, believe me.  Letters have come and letters have gone, and all the while I have waited for this particular one because it was the first that Mom and Dad wrote after waiting 17 days to hear the “big news” about my job.

In other words, this was one letter I was especially anxious to receive.  That’s probably why it took a full 30 days to get here!  Incidentally, there’s one little question I want to ask Mom and Dad:  Do you think the letter might have come over in less time if you had put a stamp on it?  Ha Ha!!

Evidently it came over by boat.  And it’s a wonder it came over at all!  Mom and Dad finally put something over on the Post Office Department, didn’t they?

I’m afraid that Mom and Dad are disappointed to find so little in my letters (period) that has to do with the work I am doing.  I may be allowed to tell say more about my job than I have so far, but not all at once.  The news will have to be spread out over several months.  That’s the way I did it in the M.P.’s, and it worked very nicely.  At first Mom and Dad didn’t have the slightest idea of what I was doing, but after I had written a hundred or so letters – they knew still less!  Maybe the less said the better.  I wonder what Mom and Dad think.

One thing I can say about my job.  I like it very much.  It’s not exactly the job I had in mind when I went in, but that’s not a very good basis for comparison anyway.  I’m not certain that I could have handled the job I had in mind at that time.  So I’m perfectly satisfied with what I have now.  “One in the hand is worth more than two in the brush”.

I can’t get over how quickly I’ve become used to doing this office work.  I took to it like a duck takes to water, and it seems like it’s what I’ve always been doing.  Yet two months ago M.P. work was very real to me.  Very real!!  When one of my M.P. friends meets me and says, “Do you really like your new work?  Are you glad you made the change?”, I have a ready answer.  “Are you kidding?”.

Mom and Dad think we boys in Northern Ireland are a little “high-tone”?  Perhaps they’re right.  I would be the last to deny that N.I. is one of the best places a soldier could hope to be stationed.  And when I write home about Spam, rain, ginger snap shortages, etc. I’m only kidding.  As they say in their letters, “I’ve got to write about something”.  Besides, if I don’t tell them about all those things, they will never know very much about Army life.  (And don’t say, “Is that bad?”!).

A few days ago I sent in $3.50 for a year’s subscription to that small, lightweight edition of TIME magazine.  The copies the Army distributes to us are free; but there haven’t been any for two or three months.  Now I can have a copy all my own, sent to me each week by first class mail.  And at a cost of less than 7 cents a copy.  In the states the regular edition is 15 cents.  It looks like a swell deal to me.

P.S.  I have begun to type my letters home.  Unless Mom and Dad object too strenuously, I am going to type them all from now on.  My handwriting isn’t so hot and the typewriter makes a better looking letter.  It is also easier for me, takes less time, and gives me practice on the typewriter.

[letterstohome copyright 2008]