Letters from George

Dear Marian

I know I haven't written to you for a couple of weeks but that is the way I am. As long as I am doing something every night and having a good time and getting a letter now and then I just let the letters accumulate with the intention of answering them later. When the letters stop coming in it comes to me that I am not writing any myself.

There is no chance at all of us moving right away. They don't keep us in suspense much any more. We have a schedule up on the Bulletin Board telling us what we are going to do weeks ahead.

Either the middle of next month or the first of October we are going to Tennessee for a months maneuver. The first thing on the schedule is to walk two hundred miles in eight days carrying a full field pack. That sounds like a lot of walking but it is only twenty-five miles a day and we can easily do that now.

I think I forgot to tell you about Slim. Do you remember me telling you about the guy I used to kid about not being in step marching and he missed the train going home on furlough? He came back from his furlough really crazy. They had to discharge him. He only got a seven day furlough and left the same day for his. That I did so he was already in the hospital (Goofy ward) when I got back. He didn't know any of the fellows in our gang and he kept asking where his mother and father were. An officer was standing outside a building and he stopped and saluted him about eight times right in a row.

you'd be surprised at some of the fellows you meet in the Army. The other day we were having classes on how much dynamite to use in blowing up a bridge. It's only real simple arithmetic. A few though were taken aside all morning and still wound up not knowing a bit more than when they started. The Captain would ask one fellow what three times twelve was and would get an answer like seventeen. I never knew there were so many guys with no education at all.

Those pictures of all of us were really good. I'm starting a small art gallery. Some of the pictures of the fellows I'm with in camp I'll have to send home. I've got so many pictures now that they are a small load and we are going to have to carry all of our equipment around with us now. They took all of the trucks away from us and we have to hoof it every place we go. We were trained for mountain fighting. But now they split us up and the bunch I am in are for jungle fighting and trucks can't move around there. I'm glad I stayed with the eighty-ninth because the fellows that were transferred got mules. I would go to the guard house before I'd lead one of those stubborn jackasses around. So far I've hit it pretty lucky in the army.

Well I guess this is enough bull for one letter. I'll write again soon.

Brother George