There Aren’t Many Pores Or Air Holes

Thurs. 28 Dec. ‘44

12:35 noon

 

Dear folks,

Hi again. I’ve got some time on my noon hour so I’ll start a letter. Something must be wrong as it’s developing into a nice day. The fog has cleared away and believe it or not the sun is actually shining. I got to bed at about 10:00 last night and was up at 7:00. I’ve been averaging 9 hrs. sleep per night lately which is good. We have regular reveille every morning now and it’s really cold out at about 7:00. It’s colder than at night. We hear it was 26 degrees below zero in Chicago last week & that Detroit had a big snow so you must be having some real winter there. There’s no snow in sight here, only white frost on everything.

Back at 7:35 p.m. The days are pretty routine now – reveille, breakfast, work, dinner, work, supper & then here I am. Let’s see: the menu today was – breakfast – hot cereal, milk, apple fritters, syrup, butter, & stewed apricots. Not bad at all. Dinner was beans, creamed carrots, salad, bread, butter, corn bread and cookies. Supper – spuds, sauerkraut, bread, butter & pears. We get a good variety of fruits, canned naturally. So far we have plenty of butter – some canned but mostly fresh lately. The bread is good but a bit more solid than American bread. There aren’t many pores or air holes. Our vegetables are mostly green leafy, that is the ones not canned. We get canned string beans, etc. and fresh vegetables like cut cabbage, brussells sprouts, plenty of cauliflower & carrots & spinach occasionally. The meat runs pretty fair with a few too many pork chops so far as I’m concerned but all in all the food is doggoned good so far and a lot better than I expected to find over here.

When I got to work this morning I learned that the other boys worked last night so I got on the ball and batted out my pay roll in a hurry this forenoon. She’s all done and nearly all signed now. Once that’s in we’ll have less rush in our work. It warmed up a bit today but is cooling off plenty. One of the boys found a 2 day cleaners in town so I sent my O.D.’s in with him for a cleaning and pressing job. They really need it. After getting lost last night I believe I know the way to town and I have the 3 theaters lined up in case I want to go. The shows are sort of old but still something to see. I guess we’ll be getting a little better deal here in camp pretty quick. They are going to get us movies at least twice a week. Also the P.X. opens in a couple days. All P.X. stuff is rationed. Each of us gets a card good for 8 weeks. Some items you get every week, some every 2 weeks, some every 4 and some every 8 depending on the scarcity. We get a weekly ration of candy, soap, cookies, etc. Every 2 weeks we get peanuts & a few other items. I don’t have my card yet so I’m not exactly sure how it all runs. Anyway we’ll have a chance to buy a few things. Stationery comes every 8 weeks so here’s a new request. Send me – some stationery, light weight air mail would do as we use but one side anyway, find me a steel shaving mirror, put in a couple pairs of wool socks, and fill up the rest with candy, cookies, gum, peanuts, raisins or anything else you have. This is the second request. Now you don’t have to send this out as soon as you get it. The idea is you have to have a request from me to be able to send me anything so I’m making sure you have plenty of requests on hand. See. I got 20 air mail stamps today so I have a few but don’t hesitate to send some as I can always use them. Cover the expense from the allotment. There’s plenty there to cover it all O.K. No mail for us today – 4 letters for the entire Bn. Some day there’ll be a whole barrel of mail (we keep telling ourselves).

Well that’s about all there is to say tonight I guess. I don’t imagine you’ll get any of my letters for a week or two yet. You’ll probably get V-mail first if it works like it has here. All we can do is wait. There’s still something out for every day. So for another day I’ll say so long,

Love,

Arlington