A Soldier’s Letter
After my dad passed, I inherited a few boxes of cards and letters from the days of old. There must be hundreds of these cards and letters inside these boxes, so I started pulling a few out to see if there was anything that grabbed me. Actually, there was a lot. I discovered how my grandmother was the hub of the neighborhood and that everyone wrote to her as she would write to them. I read the whisperings of what it was like in the war. So far, the ones I have read were tame. I am guessing that the soldiers, the same kids these mothers saw learning to ride their bikes, skinning their knees and just growing up, were trying to spare the moms the real truth of war. I am looking forward to diving in further.
One of the first few letters I discovered was a response to a letter that my dad’s sister Ethelyn had sent asking what he thought about leaving Texas after the war. In my family, they kept copies of just about every letter they sent out. I don’t think they realized how valuable these are to me now.
January 9, 1945
Dear Eth,
Leaving Texas was something that I did not mind doing. The camp was good – not too bad anyway. The procedure of walking up the gang plank was done when very few people were around. There was a band playing at the dock and the Red Cross women were passing out donuts and coffee. We were carrying so much equipment that our main problem was making sure that we didn’t fall into the drink. We were so loaded down. I was tired and interested only in getting rid of the 100 lbs. plus that was flattening my arches.
Now that I am here, I’m not particularly afraid of anything – one thing that I figure might cause me some trouble is landmines. Booby traps too.
Sometimes things are very quiet. War isn’t like a Hollywood movie. Now that I have seen a little of what it is like, I’ve never seen a movie that was anything like it. News reels are of course accurate and the only thing that really shows what is going on. People in the States are under the impression that it is one great big mass of soldiers butting heads with another mass equally as large all the time. The paper plays it up as walls of men, etc. Nothing is further from the real picture.
Hope you are all ok. Be good and good luck.
Bud (Fred A. Garvey, Jr., Army, 103rd Infantry)
I am looking forward to getting inside the heads of those living during a challenging era. I hope you will please click the Subscribe button to hear more stories like the one above or one of the other stories that I post in What’s For Ginner. Let your friends know too. Subscribers make a blog do well. I would appreciate it.
Jean Ginner, Out!