Tuesday
Dear Mom + Dad,
Your letter received today and thus I shall answer it. I’ll probably stop somewhere in the middle of it to go eat supper. Then by the time I get it finished it will be about 10 P.M. as I intend to go to the show. I hope you don’t mind.
I haven’t been doing much of anything lately except staying in. I haven’t been out of camp at all since Saturday night. I’m trying to conserve and just go out Saturday nights as the financial situation is horrible. I’ve been spending quite a lot of time in our recreation building. It is a peach. Radio with victrola attachment plus record, nice easy chairs, ping pong table + all kinds of games plus writing tables. I spend a few hours over there every night enjoying myself.
I don’t have to study quite so hard as I thought I would but we have an awful lot of material thrown at us in a short time. The first test we had was very simple. Here’s one that will give you a laugh. I’m taking arithmetic as a course and it is about equivalent to the stuff I taught my sixth grade kids. I got a sheet of problems today and finished them so fast that I had to show them to the instructor as he didn’t believe I was finished. I don’t know why I have to suffer such agonies of taking a course I used to teach do you?
I’m not sure about getting a rating on getting out of here as they don’t give them here. The best they can do is recommend one and then the next camp, which will probably be the unit you’re permanently hooked up with, has to give it. If you happen to get a lousy company commander he won’t give it to you, if you get a good one you might. It is hard to figure the army’s way of doing things. Then too there is another angle to the thing. It is not the fellows with ability (9 times out of 10) who get the ratings, but the ones who are the best apple polishers. If you saw some of the corporals + sergeants you would know why I say this.
There are also two types of officers commissioned officers + non commissioned. The comms are usually doc’s + dentists who receive their commission from the president. The non comms (corp sergeants first class privates) getting their ratings through the company commander. I doubt very much if I will become a commissioned officer (2nd 1st lieutenant, major, colonel, general) but I have a good chance of making the non com group. I feel I have the abilities but it is a question if I will be noticed or not.
That gas rationing is sure the nuts. I can’t see how it is going to work. It is going to tie up practically all the automobiles in the east, and probably cause bootlegging. You might just as well have no gas as have 3 gallons a week. I heard on the radio to that is not a consideration of supply (we have plenty) but one of transportation. They claim it would take only 35 more tank cars a day to give the eastern coast all the gas it needs. Then too it is a shame that the eastern people have to suffer and the people here can get all they want. Gas is 11c a gallon here and it is high test to boot.
Tell brother to drop me a line and let me hear about his new kid. How does he like being a papa?
I got a letter from Harold Bookbinder and he is driving a tank. I can’t picture him doing that at all.
I’ll write again soon
Love to All
Bob
Bob
P.S. In my address you can abbreviate Med. Dept. Sch of Tech to M.D.S.T. and Wm Beaumont General Hospital to W.B.G.H. Be sure and put Barracks 25 Upper. You last letter had WBCA I couldn’t figure out what it was.
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