Letters To Home

Well, it is now 3:00 p.m., Sunday, the 24th of December. I am holding down the fort at the office this afternoon and thought a post would be in order, so here it is. If I didn’t know otherwise, I would think this is just another day. Perhaps I’ll get more of the Christmas spirit as the evening progresses.

The weather is not very Christmas-sy today. It is rather nice for a winter day, though, in Ireland. Not even rain and/or wind. No cases of sun stroke or sun burn have been reported yet, for that matter. I would like to see it snow about two feet over night. Without the snow, it just isn’t Christmas.

I will be spending a very quiet and uneventful Christmas Eve. I’ll work until five, eat my supper, go to the show with Harvey and Mac and Jack (who got out of the hospital yesterday). Then we’ll all go to the Aero Club and eat and drink and talk until about midnight. Then I’ll return to the barrack, dig my bed out of the mountain of beer bottles, and hit the sack, provided, of course, that someone hasn’t mistaken it for the gutter and fell into it first. Boys will be boys, especially on Xmas Eve. I think I’ll go on a spree tonight and have three cokes. John has moved to a different part of camp now and I haven’t been able to locate any card players lately.

All those nice parcels I got from Mom and Dad gave me many a pleasant surprise. I don’t think there was anything I enjoyed more than that Delicious apple. They certainly melt in one’s mouth. This one was mellow. I’m always boasting about our Washington apples and would like to have shown this big red one to Doris and the others. But she would have wanted it, and, after all, there’s a limit to friendship. So I ate the damn thing before I could get any more silly ideas. I had that paper pail of nuts around for weeks before I “discovered” that apple. What I wouldn’t give for a box or two of those!

That fruit cake was delicious, as were the Nabisco cookies. If there’s any more of that stuff available, I hope Mom will snap it up and send it to some boys in the service, me, for instance. I would never have believed it possible, but most of the Xmas supplies I had stored here and there have disappeared. Termites? No, that couldn’t be because they eat wood. The mice, maybe? At times they have threatened to take over the place. It’s not a question of keeping them from eating our stuff, because they always get it in the end. But we do make them work for it. You should see some of our ingenious schemes for putting things out of their reach. By the way, I wonder how Cleon is making out with the ants?

As I told Bonnie in my letter Thursday, the mail situation has eased up and a few letters have come. Makes a nice Xmas present for us because some of the fellows were getting desperate and threatened to stop writing home. But they talked me out of it.

It was a problem to decide where I was going to have my Christmas dinner. I suppose the best dinners tomorrow in the British Isles will be served right in our Army mess halls. But it is only a dinner, after all, and we sometimes tire of eating at the mess hall. Also, the Red Cross in Belfast will be serving free turkey dinners tomorrow that will be quite good. However, since the Presses have been good enough to invite me to their home for dinner, the thing has been solved. Harvey will be going there, and a friend of mine that we call Gus (he is from Arizona and his wife is now living in Idaho). I guess Gus pulled some strings in order to get coupons from the Army for the three of us. We will give them to the Presses. They’ve probably gone without meat, butter, etc. for a week in order to give this dinner for us boys. The rationing over here is murder, believe me. Of course, these people have never eaten the way we do in the United States. So much of their food has always been imported, was therefore always high in price and beyond the reach of much of the working class of people. No one in the U.S. realizes the extent of the difference between our standard of living and that of these people. And at that, the British are better off and have been better off in past years than the continental Europeans.

I may be over here for quite some time yet, but some day I’ll be going back. These people are stuck here! (My morale has just gone up 5 points).

[letterstohome copyright 2008]

Uncle Ralph and I don’t do much writing to one another, it seems.  We’ve exchanged perhaps four letters all his year.  He has so little to say, as a rule, and it’s difficult for me to write to him.  Except for the Army, we have practically nothing in common.  We don’t even have that in common, really, for I’m in the Air Corps, where things are different.  I don’t believe he’d like to hear how easy we have things here in Ireland.  So I answer each of his letters and let it go at that.

Would surely like to see my big, fat Twinkle.  Only now am I getting over the news of the untimely passing away of Twinkle Junior.

I enjoyed Mom and Dad’s letter about my Aunt Lizzie and her troubles, what with the election and rationing and shortages of trucks, washing machines, refrigerators, etc.  That’s just too damn bad!  I wouldn’t mind giving her my views on the subject.  It’s too bad when people don’t realize when they’re well off.  If I have the misfortune to run into some of those farmer relatives of mine when I get back home, I just hope they start crying to me about what they’ve gone through during these war years.  I’m not as squeamish as I used to be when it comes to telling someone what I think.  Especially farmers!  With my Uncle Reuben backing me up, I can’t lose.  I don’t mean to imply that I’ve gone through anything in the war; but I have done the job they gave me to do.

I am surprised that Cleon leaves his camp to go to town so often.  I always preferred to stay right at the base.  During the four months I was in the states, I went to town on pass only four times:  Twice to Augusta, Georgia, once to Walterboro, S.C., and the trip to New York.  A homebody, what?  I’ve done a little better over here.

When Mom and Dad wrote on the 14th, they were all worked up about my change of address, just as I knew they would be.  It wasn’t’ entirely their fault this time; the letter in which I explained everything must have been delayed.  It would be!  My transfer will have no effect on the mail.  I haven’t so much as moved from the bunk I occupied while in Hq & Hq Sq.  (I’m going to have to tell Mom and Dad that the blue pencil they have been using to address my packages is not very good.  It rubs off.  Some of the addresses are so dim by the time the box gets here that I don’t know who it’s from, and it takes a good light to make out my name.  You can’t beat ink).

Well, I’m going to cut this short.  I plan to tell you some more about my furlough in this coming Sunday’s post.

[letterstohome copyright 2008]

Well, the weeks are passing by, and I’m still putting “Northern Ireland” up in the right-hand corner of the letters that I write home. I hope that some of the letters in which I hinted that I might be leaving N.I. one of these days didn’t upset Mom and Dad. Perhaps I was jumping the gun a little—perhaps. . .! I’m somewhat surprised at myself. It is not like me to write about such things; as a rule. I would leave Mom and Dad completely in the dark about it until it had actually happened. But this time, in a moment of weakness, I told them what was in my own mind. They’re probably wondering now exactly what the score is, and so am I! (The more time I put in in the Army and the longer I am away from home, the more I realize the truth of that old saying, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you”. The guy that dreamed that one up knew what he was talking about. How many things have you conveniently ‘forgotten’ or deliberately belittled? Hmmmm? Fun, isn’t it? I should know! I guess I’ve never told Mom and Dad that I sprained my knee quite badly the day before I got off the boat over here. I had a time of it for a while, hopping around with nearly a hundred pounds of clothes and equipment on my back. Do you suppose True Confessions can use that? And when it comes to “editing” the news, Mom and Dad have been with me all the way. Were it not for Bonnie, I wouldn’t know, even now, how ill Mom was. Here’s to bigger and better “kidding along”!)

In a recent letter home, I enclosed a money order for $40. That’s £10 practically shot to hell. (Note: “£10” is ten pounds in English money). As usual, $30 is for the bank. $7.50 will square me up with Mom and Dad in regard to everyone’s Xmas gifts, and the remaining amount is for Mom and Dad to cover the cost of packing and mailing something or other. I’m going to make a special request in a few days for a new billfold and some fig bars.

I will be sending another money order home on the 31st of December. I let Mom and Dad know that they can save this $30 and deposit the two together, thus saving a trip to town (as if I didn’t know they’re always looking for an excuse). In mid-January, as soon as they have banked my Dec. 31st check and money order, I hope they will let me know how things stand. To render an accounting, they don’t need to go back beyond July. I wonder if Cleon sends any money home each month.

About the only mail I have received in the past three weeks was a letter from Time, Inc., asking me to renew my subscription. Ha Ha! What a life. This letter started out this way: “Dear Subscriber: I hope the mail that brings this also has a letter from home for you, for I know how I would feel if the only letter I received was one asking me to renew my subscription to Time”. Good, eh?

I have read in the papers about cold snaps and heavy snows in various sections of the country, but nothing about Washington. Great state, Washington. I imagine it’s still like summer there. Boy do I brag on our local boys and girls who have made the national spotlight: Bing Crosby, Eric Johnston, Patrice Munsel, Susan Peters. I think when the war is over, I’ll probably go back there.

[letterstohome copyright 2008]