Camp Cooke

June :, :,:
Dear Letty,
Had your letter today and this is what I call a prompt answer. I am
trying to make up in promptness what my letters may lack in interest.
It is a poor substitute, but I am hoping it will serve the purpose for which
it is intended, viz. to keep your letters coming. You see, I am a selfish
chap and I like your letters.
I wish I could have heard your duet. By the way, who is the other
half of the team? But I didnt know you played the piano. Wish you
could come out here and give me a demonstration on the piano in our
day room. The boys here really murder it. Any similarity between the
noise and music is purely coincidental.
Saturday is our big day, but it is not exactly a day of rest. In fact, it
is a day of work, for then we have what is called inspection. The boys
enjoy it so much that they describe it in colorful language. But it is not
the kind of language you would expect to hear in Sunday school.
Saturday morning, the sergeant usually says, Today we have an
inspection of our field equipment. And all the boys begin to enjoy them-
selves so much that they are hard to control.
Then we begin trying to get all our stuff together. In fact, we only
leave the shower and our cot behind. The remainder of our stuff is rolled
into compact bundles and stacked in a neat pile about the size of a bale
of cotton and almost as heavy.
When the whistle blows we begin trying to shoulder the stuff.
Finally, we get it up and stagger out with it. We have to hike with it for
a while just to show the officers that we are good soldiers. A few of the
weaker men fall and fracture a leg or break an arm, but they want to
weed out the creampuffs anyway.
Finally, we stop in the middle of a sand pile and the sergeant says,
Prepare for inspection, and we begin to unpack the stuff. All the time,
the wind is blowing a pleasant little gale and the sand is blistering our
faces. It is worse than a West Texas sandstorm.
All our stuff must be spotlessly clean, so we spread it out in the sand
and wait for the officer to come by. Presently, we see him coming and
take a final look at our stuff. By this time it is completely buried in the
Alls Fair ;
H
3-1st_pages:Layout 1 7/21/11 11:30 AM Page 7
sand and we begin digging like a bunch of garden moles. We uncover a
few prairie dogs in the process, but we finally come up with most of it.
We empty a part of the great state of California out of our mess kits
and try to shake some of the sand out of our blanket, and the wind carries
us away like a bunch of sailboats with olive-drab sails. We all get Sunday
KP because our equipment is dirty.
The lights will be out in three minutes.
As ever,
Leland
Camp Cooke, Calif.
July :, :,:
My Dearest Letty:
Your letter came Monday, but I have an acceptable reason for not
answering it before now. I had six letters in the Monday mail call. I really
hit the jackpot. I had first opened yours, and the others were waiting to
be read when the sarge blew the whistle and called us out. We only had
three minutes to get ready for a two-day trip. So I did not get to read
your letter and the others until we came back today.
They took us up into the mountains for a bivouac. We climbed until
eleven oclock and they stopped us on a ledge somewhere up in the
Rockies. By this time the moon had come up and we could see that our
little shelf was about fifty yards wide. Above us, a cliff rose three hundred
feet. On the other side of the ravine, the mountain dropped away so that
we looked down on the tops of trees. Such places always deflate my ego
and I felt like a bit of bric-a-brac on a corner shelf.
I was trying to think of some excuse to stay up (I didnt want to go
to bed) when they put me on guard. When the others had gone to sleep,
I could hear the voices of the mountain wildlife. A coyote perched on
the cliff over my head and sent his howl out across the canyon. The owls
held a convention in the trees, and about three oclock some kind of a
mountain cat gave out an eerie cry. And all the time a chorus of frogs
were doing a grand symphony. I thought there must be a stream down
there, and when day came I went down to investigate.
Dearest Letty
h
3-1st_pages:Layout 1 7/21/11 11:30 AM Page 8
I found the clearest little river I have ever seen. The water was icy
cold, but I went swimming and almost missed breakfast. Wish I were
able to describe all this to you. It was one of the most beautiful places I
have ever seen. Even if I tried to write poetry I didnt have a chance to
describe the bivouac area.
Thanks for the compliment on the newspaper article, but there is
really no excuse for my dear uncle, Sam, to be proud of me. I am the
most inconspicuous rookie among all the six million guys.
And the newspaper was all mixed up. The other boys are both with
the ,c;th C.A. down at San Diego. I am ,cc miles up the coast with the
,th Armored Reconnaissance. We are the modern version of Daniel
Boone. That is, we are scouts who ride in cars and send our information
back to the main Army by radio. It should be a lot of fun.
I hope you understand that my letters must be detached and imper-
sonal. Military reasons, you know. But dont think I dont enjoy the
clever notes you write. I am only hoping you will make the next one
longer.
Love,
Leland
P.S. How about slipping a little snapshot into the next letter, PLEASE?
Camp Cooke, Calif.
July ::, :,:
My Dearest Letty:
Speaking of speed in answering a letter, how is this for a record? Your
letter came just thirty minutes ago. Just as I had finished it the chow
(dinner to you) whistle blew, and now I am writing. To really appreciate
my speed, you would have to know how tough the chicken was. It was
so tough they didnt throw the scraps into the garbage. The government
took them to a laboratory to study their potential value as a substitute
for rubber.
Yes, I listen to the Hit Parade. And Dont Sit Under the Apple Tree
is my favorite song, too. (And see that you dont.) Funny how our tastes
are so alike. If you listen to Glenn Miller you know that he gives a
Alls Fair ,
H
3-1st_pages:Layout 1 7/21/11 11:30 AM Page 9
radio-phonograph away each week to the Army camp that selects the most
popular song for his program. Camp Cooke voted for Dont Sit Under
the Apple Tree and won the radio-phonograph for the Service Club.
I hope you realize just how important your job is. You may think it
is dull to tend a victory garden, hunt for scrap rubber and keep the
home fires burning, and it is not exciting. But it is just as essential as
the things I am doing. Your kind of life is the thing we are supposed to
be fighting to preserve. Someone must preserve it while we are away.
That, more than anything else, is your job.
And dont think we could come back and take things up where we
left off. It is not as simple as that. There will have to be a nucleus for us
to start with. There must also be some connection between us and your
way of living to make us realize constantly that it is all worth the effort.
Your letter helps provide that connecting chain for me.
The job of the Army is to make a man over into a rough, uncouth
and uncivilized part of a fighting machine. There is no way to resist it,
no matter how gentle and peace loving you may have been. One can see
this demonstrated in every phase of camp life. The mess hall is a good
example. There, I suddenly find myself devouring my food wolfishly
with no thought of Emily Post and no accompanying conversation. The
only thought is to satisfy an animal hunger. But this is running into a
boring bit of philosophy.
What I was trying to say is that your letters help me remember that
civilization still exists. (Hope you dont mind if I finish on the back of
the sheet. I am all out of paper.)
Have just had an interview with the company commander and I think
I am coming back east to school. At least he said I would be going in the
near future. If I do it will be to Fort Knox, Kentucky. If I come through
Pottsville I will give you a wave. Of course, I want to go. It is a radio school,
and radio is the one thing this outfit has to offer that I really like.
But I hope they pay me before I go. I have drawn less than $:c from
Uncle Sam since I came into the Army. I have not had a payday since
the April pay. Of course, I have had to cash a couple of checks, but if I
should leave now I would not have time to get money back, and I only
have a few dollars left.
Love,
Leland
:c Dearest Letty
h
3-1st_pages:Layout 1 7/21/11 11:30 AM Page 10