Well, Happy and Safe

Dated May 26, 1943; postmarked the same day from Camp Wheeler.

Dear Bib,

My training here is drawing to a close and I’m still feeling fine. I hope you all are feeling good too.

Boy, it rained cats and dogs here for a couple of days and we were out all day both of those days. We were out in the field setting up radio nets and communicating with each other. I didn’t go out with the boys, though. Instead, I stayed at the radio school with my radio and kept dry. It was a lot of fun and I’m glad we will do that every day for our remaining week and a half here.

Bob Hope and his gang were here last night, but we couldn’t see him and, although I tried, I couldn’t pick him up over my radio. We stayed out until 11:30 last night. Did you hear his broadcast?

We have until 1:30 today off so I’m loafing around writing letters.

Our sergeant just came around with a list of names for us to sign. It is for the cigarettes we were supposed to get for firing on the range. I am supposed to get a half-carton this morning.

We have four more hours of code today and I hope to pass sixteen words a minute today. Sixteen words a minute may not sound fast to you, but you ought to turn on the radio home to short wave and listen to some code for a little while. It usually comes over at about 14 or 15 words a minute.

Right now, everybody is either cleaning their rifle or washing clothes. We can’t send any more clothes to the laundry because we’re so near to the end of our stay here, so we have to do our own laundry.

Bib, I don’t know if I told you before or not, but send me The Lantern every week. I’d like to know a little of what’s going on back home from other sources besides your letters.

How do you like the envelope this letter came in? I made up about ten different drawings on the envelopes.

Next week, we go on our twenty-four and thirty-six hour problems and I think we will all enjoy those. We get soaking wet here, slop around in the mud, get sand in our drinking water, fall in brooks and get our rifles rusty and filthy, but when we get back to the barracks, we pass it on as just a lot of fun. The morale here is about as high as it could be.

Well it’s time to scrub floors again, so I’ll close now.

Your loving frater,

Babe

PDF: Bob Hope came to perform, but Babe Didn’t Get to See Him