Letter 261- December 11, 1945

December 11, 1945
Giessen, Germany (Hesse)

Dear Mudder and Dad,

Well, it’s Tuesday night and I’m on CQ again. It seems that this is beginning to get to be a bad habit. One is supposed to be either a Cpl. or a Sgt. to pull CQ so I think that I’m getting the dirty end of the stick. Anyway here I sit in this dreary office looking at the posters on the wall which proclaim the Army Enlistment Program and other such repulsive things. I know that I should have a better reason to write you a letter than having nothing else to do but I’m afraid that’s the situation. I haven’t received any mail from you to this address as I suspected I would by now. I think there’s something phoney here in regards to that. None of the fellows in our group have been getting any mail at all for a damn longest time now. This Captain we have here always claims to be the top thing when it comes to efficiency, but I notice that he hasn’t done a damn thing about the mail. Oh well! He’ll be leaving pretty soon and the lieutenant that’s here to take his place is a pretty good guy. I get along good with the Captain as far as that goes but I don’t believe he’s got a helluva lot behind that eagle on his cap. He’s a cousin of General Eisenhower and he never lets a person forget it either. I think that everything would be fine if I only had the authority to tell him to get down off his high horse. He loves to start an argument with somebody and then when the other fellow puts him in his place he says “Don’t forget you’re talking to an officer.” He’s just another of these rear echelon commandos who cannot tell the difference between the armed civilian troops and the toy soldiers of the peace time army.

Well, now that I’ve vented my spleen on him I go on with the letter. The weather as usual is lousy. It snows all the time and it’s too cold to do much of anything. Boy, will I be glad to get back to good old Southern California. Some people may think that snow and ice are the berries but give me the good warm sunshine any time of the week. Probably it will be raining when you get this, but I’ll even take the rain in preference to this. I’m not doing a great deal these days. I drive maybe fifty or sixty miles a day as a rule but it never amounts to much. In between times I type out a few letters and that’s about all. This is all so useless though that I feel that it’s all a waste of time. You know anything to keep us in until they can get another war started with somebody. I honestly am beginning to believe that. I think that there definitely are some elements of the armed forces that are very unhappy over the pending reductions in rank and authority who would even be willing to plunge us into another war just to maintain their own personal power.

Had to drive over to Mannheim yesterday just to have five minutes work done on a sewing machine. Wonderful, ain’t it? The truck only burned up thirty-five gallons of gas going over there. Just another example of the way things are done.

All I’m hoping for now is that they put the two year plan for discharge into effect before I grow too old for the service. I don’t see why not now. There are many going home now who haven’t got as much service as I but who’ve been more fortunate on the battle star situation. Forty-seven points still doesn’t look too good but 26 months service does. Maybe I ought to start my letters like the Army Hour, you know, “On this my 800th day of service in the Army of the United States--.” By the way this is either my 799th day of agony or the 800th day of misery. I can’t quite figure it out.

Really that’s about all I can say. I haven’t seen any of those replacements that we’re supposed to get yet. I sure hope some of them come and replace me pretty soon.


Best Love,
Bill








(MY MY SO MUCH EMPTY PAPER)