Wack Wack Country Club

Fri. 26 Oct. ‘45

Wack Wack Country Club

Manila

 

Dear folks,

I have an hour left of my lunch time so I’ll get on the ball and write for the first time since Mon. We’ve been pretty busy since then and I’m not kidding a bit. We spent practically all of Tues. getting our stuff loaded on to the truck and a couple trailers. We must have less stuff or something because we seemed to have lots of room left over for a change. We were up at 4:00 Wed. morning, got all our personal stuff loaded, ate breakfast, struck our tents and were ready to leave by about 6:00. It hadn’t rained for 2 weeks so Tues. night it started and rained off and on all day Wed. We pulled out at about 7:00 and after an all day ride came into our area at about 5:30. What an area. When we saw it we were just about ready to quit completely. We had a nice big rice paddie [sic] at the foot of a slope. It’s still the rainy season down here and there was 2 inches of mud and water all over the place and in many places it was a lot deeper. The caribou had been using it as a wallowing place.

There wasn’t much we could do so we dragged off our tent, though [sic] it up in the mud, ate, and got to bed at about 8:30 just to keep our feet dry. It rained just about all night and was still raining when we got up at about 9:00 yesterday morning. When we stepped out of bed the water was ankle deep inside the tent. What a mess. About that time somebody finally got a little backbone and went to higher headquarters to get us out of there. It had reached the point where you needed rubber boots to walk around. So we took our tent down once more (you can guess what it looked like in all that mud and water and was it heavy!), packed up and pulled out.

When we saw this area it was like a paradise in comparison. We got here at about noon and had to work the whole day but it was worth it.

We are in a Philippino golf course or what used to be one. An evacuation hospital has been here but their patients are all gone so we got the areas where their wards were. There are floors and side frames built so all we had to do was pitch our tents over the frames. Our section was about the only ones around so we ended up putting up roughly 10 tents which involves just a little bit more work than I had done in quite some time. We did far more than our share but eventually got finished and had a chance to fix things up. It’s the first time we’ve been “off the ground” since Germany in June and it feels pretty good. Of course we now have floors to mop but it’s worth it. I have my stuff set up pretty well now and I hope we won’t get pushed out of here. The hospital unit is leaving so we may get into barracks then although I’ll be satisfied where I am. The shower room is about 20 feet from the back door and there is running water in the tent. If this can only last we’ll be all right. The boys had lights installed before dark last night. By the time we finished I was mud up to my knees and filthy dirty but I finally got cleaned up and got to bed.

We were up at about 7:00 this morning and at about 8:00 we went to work. We have the best deal for an office that we’ve had since Maxey, believe it or not. We got all our stuff unloaded and got the office arranged pretty well this forenoon. By tonight we should have everything under control.

It’s still raining and has been nearly continuously since we’ve been here. I guess it just stays that way all the time.

Our APO is 75 again, the same one we had when we first hit the Philippines. I got Gram’s Oct. 14 letter Tues. night. I don’t suppose we’ll be getting any for a day or 2 now.

From what the C.O. said we have plenty of work. We have enough construction work to do to last a good long time. If we are surplus troops they surely intend to put us to good use while we wait. I may be wrong but it sounds as if we’re good for 3 or 4 months here as a unit so unless points drop or something else pulls us out we’re stuck.

That’s about how things look now and it’s time to go to work so I’ll have to call this enough until next time.

So long

Arlington