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Sometime back, I came into possession of a large box of letters written by my father during his soldiering years, World War II. I haven’t gone through them all and, in fact, years go by between visits. There’s a lot.
In my family, I might be the most sentimental. My brother Al, more stalwart in every sense, is a better keeper of records, important papers, facts. He’s the one to trust with anything valuable (though I suppose it depends on what you value). I’m the one more likely to marvel & grow wistful over the fact that my mother used to call me a “skinnymalink.” My sisters Barbara and Jean fall somewhere in between, though they are inscrutable to me. What do they think and feel? I’m often not sure.
Anyway, I thought I’d share and type out this one, almost taken at random. It is a letter from a son to a mother, attempting to ease her fears. In general, there are far fewer letters written to his father, my grandfather, but those tend to be more interesting. A little more meat to the bone.
Dad was in the air force, a navigator, not sure of his final rank (he’s second lieutenant at the time of this letter; a little research suggests he received a base pay of $150 per month), staged in the Pacific. When he knew that he’d enlist, waiting for that birthday to come along, he famously stopped attending high school. I mean, why bother? So he skipped 23 straight days, mostly following the horses out at Belmont Park, and then headed off to war. At least that’s the legend as I remember it.
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Dear Mom,
Well how are you? I’m still making out O.K.
I’d just like to tell you not to worry. Sure things will get tough from time to time but on the whole it doesn’t look so bad at all. I really mean that.
You see Borneo has a lot of rather easy spots but I guess that every other place does too. But what I’d really like to say is that they make every possible effort to look after you. Boy they don’t miss a thing especially on these briefings. Everything is talked over to the fulled extent. If the tactics look dangerous to someone he says so and then they talk it over. If he can show where it will be even slightly better another way they by all means do it. In short they look after you as best they can. I guess we are sort of valuable to the army.
Say if you ever read any newspaper items that you think I might be connected with please send them to me. That will serve a two or three fold purpose. I’ll probably get a laugh out of the write ups on our strikes and if I’m not concerned I can keep track of what the rest of the army is doing. The third reason is that I can get an idea of what is going on in your mind. I won’t be able to say anything about them but it will be very interesting to me.
From time to time I’ll fall behind in my letters but bear with me and I’ll try to make it up later on.
Well how is the home front getting along. We are starting to eat a bit better now. It seems that either supplys come in or else someone is getting generous. Even so we don’t eat bad because we are lucky to have a good staff in our mess hall.
The natives here sort of remind me of the Mexicans in San Antonio. There doesn’t seem to be much difference except that you can see a bit of oriental in these people.
I’ll write again soon.
What is new at home?
Love Al
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