Sort Of Confused

Thursday 13 December 1945

 

Dear folks

Just came in from a movie so I’ll write a little before I go to bed. Tonight we saw “On Stage Everybody” with Peggy Ryan and Jack Oakie. I had seen it before but parts of it were pretty good and I didn’t mind seeing it again. Not much new today. Things are still sort of confused but the outfit is definitely going to deactivate and it isn’t very far away by the looks of things. As near as we can tell the men with 50 and more points will go to units ready to return to the US around the first of the year and the rest of us will be around someplace until it is time for us to be sent back I hope in mid January. We should know for sure in a day or so. I had another chance to get a transfer today, this time to the Engr Section of Basex to work on a classification team to inspect records of units going home. I turned it down and have turned all of them down for the same reason. I could get a Staff and maybe a Tech before leaving this outfit but I’m not taking any chances of getting stuck out here for an extra month or two just for another stripe which I would have for [so] short a time. All I want to do is get home and staying here looks like the best bet to me. If I’m wrong about it then that’s something else but I’ll take a chance on it. I tried to put a little deal across here but couldn’t make it. There is still one rating open that no one has been put in for but it is in another section and out of reach so to speak. One can never tell what might happen before things finally break up.

Today I got Gram’s letter & Xmas card and a card from Edna and yesterday Gram’s letter of Dec. 2. The mail has been pretty slow lately but maybe I just don’t have any coming. That would be no surprise because I seldom write to any one but you anymore anyway. I sent out some Xmas cards the other night and told them not to write to me out here after Jan. 1. I may be here quite awhile after then but I don’t want a lot of letters chasing around after me. It might take a couple months for them to reach me and then probably after I was already home I hope. Miller hasn’t been back since he left but the boys who went to another depot on the same day expect to leave in about 2 days. So they should be back in the US about the first week in January. The other boys with less than 55 points expect to leave about Xmas. That’s about the picture of things.

I’m glad you are getting my letters in pretty good speed now. I didn’t think that sketch looked too much like me but Miller thought it was quite accurate. Maybe I am a bit thinner although I am up to about 160 pounds now. If my eyes look tired that’s understandable too I guess. Three years is enough to make anybody tire. I think some of these snaps we had taken show me a little more naturally. Here is one of the section as a whole. I am not in it though as I took the picture. It is always that. I have another one that was taken by the photographer that show all of us but it is pretty dark.

I still haven’t seen anything of those Xmas packages but surely they ought to be coming in pretty soon. No one seems to have gotten any yet. I have three on the way according to latest reports, two from you folks, and one from Edna.

Well this seems to be all for tonight so I’ll call it off and get to bed,

Be seein’you

Arlington