Almost Christmas, 1942.
WWII training in Nowhere, Missouri.

Dec 19, 1942.

Dearest Ruth:

Thanks a lot for your letter, got it just before chow tonight. I did not get to read till afterwards cause I was really hungry. The Miami gang < guys who trained together there the month before > all had another shot just before dinner < immunizations >. This makes 9 now. It makes a person a little dizzy for a couple of hours so it was very little we had for dinner.

We really have a swell Captain in this Co., he came around right afterwards and told us we could go to a show this afternoon in place of school. The King of Kings is on for 3 days here at the field house. The only thing none of us like about it is we have only wooden benches to sit on and they get plenty hard hard to sit on for 2½ hours.

Have now gone to school 8 days. We have nothing but open classes, so there is no studying to do after school. It’s all military secrets we are not even supposed to mention anything about it to other boys at the barracks. I could now tell you exactly what you would hear from a plane coming over Sioux Falls wanting to make a landing but I guess it’s best not to. You would maybe land it right in the middle of your tree garden or over in our chicken yard.

The best I can do describing our schooling is like playing Dominoes only it’s done by head and chest phone and the fellow you play with is across the street telling you what ones to use. It’s really great to be in the Army playing games 8 hours daily. Most of us don’t seem to think we are even earning our meals after 5 weeks of this.

I think I could best you in a game even if you are the best bowler, you are doing all right with that left of yours.

You should see all the Xmas packages we have here. We have an 8 ft square in the corner of our barracks with a pile about 4 ft high. No one is allowed open their packages before Xmas Eve, so there will really be some time here then. A few have tried and got caught. That means a day of K. P.

By the way, you were mentioning about that in the last letter I got. I haven’t been on K. P. yet, but after being here 2 weeks everyone gets 1 day. Every 2 weeks they are picked by alphabet, that way everyone gets a fair chance. By the way I forgot to thank you for the snapshots. The one I have in my billfold and the other is hidden in the footlocker. that’s the one on the fireplace. < T. K. built a brick fireplace out in the yard at mom’s house. > The boys say they would really like to have something like that to back up to and make hotdogs in the moonlight. That’s something we don’t have here at Crowder.

It’s been cloudy and raw ever since I came here and we wear our raincoats most of the time back and forth to school. We also had a blackout here the same night as home. They fired 3 shots from the cannon, by the last shot everything here was dark.

The boys here thought it was funny, but us from Miami were used to that every night so we thought it was just to have lights in the evening. Here we can stay outside every night till 11 o’clock but there is nothing to go to outside the camp. The towns around here are only small ones and everything is so high < expensive > it’s terrible. We can get the same things at the P. X. for almost half. Homes around here look like the ones in Arkansas. That house of your Uncle Charley’s would be a mansion here so you can imagine what these would be.

All of us were really disgusted when we came here after being in Florida and then landing out here in the sticks, but the boys here are all swell fellows and we have lots of fun together the best we all know how. So I suppose a couple of months here will pass by too. From here it will either be back to Tampa or Fort Lewis Wash. The ones that finished school when we got here went to Fla. and the ones before that went to Wash. It seems to be every other shift that go to the opposite direction. I would like to go to Wash. from here then I would be only 30 miles from Harold < his brother > and the rest of our relations out there.

From there it’s an A. P. O. in about 6 weeks. I am going to try to get a few days off before leaving here but at the present time it’s impossible cause so many have gone over the hill lately < AWOL >. 2 were brought back yesterday and they will be in the guard house 6 months at least. Every day the Captain warns us that it’s best to stick around through the Holidays. After that he will try his best for all and he is a man that don’t say much but he has served 27 years so he really knows the ropes.

Well I guess I must quit for tonight. Have ½ hour before bedtime. I am going over to the P. X. for a malted milk first, so Good Night and lots of love, Thorgel.

Merry Xmas to all and don’t eat too much candy and nuts.