Hello Schwenk:
Sorry I didn’t get around to writing sooner, but between the “blues” and the “pressure” here I’ve been kept so darn busy I don’t know where I am at half the time. Things are sure plenty rough here lately, so darn rough that it’s worse than the days of training when I first came in the army.
I’m still at the same old teaching game, and guess I’ll be at it when the war ends at this rate, right now I have the worst class of men I’ve ever had to handle, they really don’t give a darn for anything, yesterday I had to put one of them to swinging a pick for several hours because he wouldn’t get on the ball and behave, they are all washbacks who have been through thise course as many as three times, so it’s rough trying to keep them interested and listening to what’s being taught.
We had a big parade and review here Memorial day, it was really nice to see, for once we instructors didn’t have to take part in it, we were allowed to be spectators, ha ha. The governor of South Dakota spoke, and some of our boys who have returned from combat were present with their combat metals, some had so many I don’t know where they put them all.
Things in town sure are plenty rough lately, nearly all the men on the post have sundays off now and what a mess! There are far too many soldiers for this town so everything is jammed to the gills with G.I.’s, you can’t find hide or hair of civilians on the street on sunday they stay home because you just get anything or go anywhere unless you fight your way around, the townspeople are trying to get us back on the told stagger day-off system when only a limited number of men were in town in one day, but I doubt if that will be able to do it, the colonel is a hard headed old coot, ha ha.
We had a nice fire here in the hanger last week, several planes burned up and more were damaged, it’s the worst so far and was caused by carelessness, needless to say the fellow responsible for it wound up in the guardhouse, I don’t know if they hanged him yet, ha ha.
Lately we have been having too much rain here, almost every other day it rains and its hot and moist as all heck and the bugs and flies sure are thick right now and pesty. Part of the town was flooded last week, not so bad though, but its high time the rain stops or we will be flooded.
How’s things going with you and the folks these days? I hope everyone is well and happy as can be, enclosed is that color picture we took down home, it’s not so good as it could be, but it’s not too bad for the first time, I’ll improve as I go along, ha ha. I guess by now you have quite a bunch of smoked fish or didn’t you get to do any fishing yet? I sure would give a lot to be back home now, I’ll bet it’s really beautiful back there. I’ll have to close for now, write when you get a chance. So long and best wishes,
Red