Letter 279- February 19, 1946

Giessen, Germany (Hesse)

February 19, 1946

Dear Mudder and Dad,

Today I took over my first duties as First Sgt. in this Company. Sergeant Conrad received his orders that he leave tomorrow morning bright and early so that leaves me suddenly with a new job. It won’t be too difficult since I’ve been Co. clerk for quite some time now and because we haven’t got a DEF left in the Company. Unless I miss my guess though we’ll have one before the week is out. One company down the line is getting five-hundred in before next week and that’s a helluva lot of prisoners for one officer and seven men to handle. My guess is that we will probably move down into town somewhere and acquire a company. I’d be just as happy if we didn’t but that’s the way it goes. On the other hand there is talk that we’ll be transferred to another Labor Supervision Area. I prefer not but there’s no reason to fret since I doubt whether I’ll be here long enough for it to make any difference at all. I don’t see at all how we can be here after the first week of March and I wouldn’t be surprised if we leave before then. The only thing wrong with that picture is that once we do move into the pipeline there is a lot of rigamarole and weeks of waiting before we actually get on the boat. They have a program called “The Privates Meet the Generals” broadcast from Frankfurt once a week and they made the statement that it takes about eight weeks to go from the beginning to the end of the pipeline so that’s about it.

The job of being First Sgt. around here is merely making out the various reports and answering the phone. I think that I got the job mainly because I can spell better than the rest of the boys. Anyway it means I won’t have to drive anymore and that’s okay with me. I’ve had enough jouncing around in that truck to last me a lifetime.

I received some more back mail today so I guess that the post office boys are really scared. I though there for awhile that you’d given such a scare that they’d be sending my mail by special courier in an armored car or something. I don’t know what you wrote in that last letter but it sure must have been good. It seems to have accomplished more than the protests of everyone in the ETO for the last two years.

Did I tell you that I won a watch in the PX? I shouldn’t say that because I had to pay $9.00 for it but the same watch would cost about $30 in the states. I really got it at a good time since the mainspring on my other watch had broken only two days before. My other watch is really a damn good watch so I didn’t want to take a chance on sending it to a jeweler over here, not that they are not good jewelers but rather that they don’t have anything to work with these days. My other watch only cost me $16.00 but since then I’ve found out that they retail for around $50.00 at home.

That’s about all for tonight. I hope that everything is “prime” at home. If you see Lee tell him I’d like to talk to him too. You just put two Infantrymen together and we can chin anyone else under the table.

Best Love,

Bill