Friday Evening
Dear Mom + Dad,
Well here I am in a different part of Texas and almost out of the U.S. This town is right on the border of Mexico and we can go across for the sum of 8c from camp. I arrived here in El Paso after a all night train ride. I left Barkeley at 6 P.M. and pulled in here at 5:30 A.M. Pretty lousy time but then these troop trains are no express trains.
Incidentally my address is:
School for Medical Technicians
Company B, Barracks 25, Upper
Wm Beaumont General Hospital
El Paso, Texas
This place is my idea of what an army camp should be like. They are going to treat us like men instead of cattle. The place itself is beautiful but barren. A great hill rises above the camp which is made up of gravel and rock and it is really pretty. On the other side of our camp is a Army air field. On another the outskirts of El Paso. El Paso has a population of 100,000; 60% Mexican, 10% Negro + the rest whites. Juarez, in Mexico is right across the river from El Paso. We are allowed to go over there any time we want. - We are getting class A passes tomorrow. Anytime we’re not on duty we can go to town. On weeknights we have to be in a 11:30. In Saturday 2 A.M. Pretty nice? I guess we are going to have to study pretty hard here to get by. We go to school for two months and then are ready for duty in a hospital.
I’m completely satisfied with the set up here and I think I’m going to really like it.
I don’t get paid until the end of this month and then we get the back pay. Will you please send me $10 via air mail as soon as possible. I’ve borrowed some money and can hold out for awhile but I want to clear my debts. I was counting on getting paid and they crossed me up so I was cut short. I won’t let it happen again.
I’ll drop you another line tomorrow night or Sunday.
Love to All
Bob
Bob
1 comment:
I assume we will get a letter eventually where Poops visits Juarez. I am interested in his description of it in comparison to Juarez today. Juarez is often in todays news because it is overrun with a tremendous amount of violence from drug cartels. Here is one excerpt from an article about Juarez from the LA Times:
“The killings here are carried out in a style best described as baroque, with bodies hung headless from bridges, stuffed upside down in giant stew pots, lined up next to a school's playing field. Often, they are accompanied by taunting, handwritten messages, the hit man's equivalent of an end-zone dance.”
Ref: (http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-juarezkillings20-2008dec20,0,634780.story)
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