Thursday · Dec. 10, 1942
The mail was just a rumor.
None came in today.
Dec, 10, 1942
My Darling Wife
The mail was just a rumor—none came in today. However we were reliably informed that [5000?] bags were involved in sinkings and that takes care of a portion of our mail & packages.
Our daily newspaper came out today quoting an American commentator in which the commentator described where our division had landed. That being the case you probably have known for some time just where I am—that is, the general area.
It relieved me considerably to hear that the news had been broadcast for …
A page is missing after this one.
… today we received our money back for telegrams—the telegraph company finally admitted they couldn’t take them—there were too many.
Air-mail stamps have finally arrived at the A.P.O. We have an order in for quite a few and I hope we get them for my stock is beginning to get low. The men haven’t been able to buy air-mail stamps for some time now. It would be nice if you could enclose a few air-mail stamps in your letters from time to time so that I’ll be always able to send them (the letters) air-mail
Tomorrow night the officers are going to have another party at the cinema but it doesn’t look like they will get many more nurses than they got last time. Further, it is getting more difficult to …
… buy good liquor, so it means we will have to go back to beer.
They have me on a special bn. detail again—which means I get the ass worked off me. I have to work for Bn all day and do my company work on the side.
Without letters from you it gets rather difficult to write a very long letter every day—so you’ll have to excuse them if they seem short—or talk about trivial things.
Well honey, will close—repeating as I have every day that I love you more than anything else in the world.
Goodnight sweetheart
All my love
Your John
About this letter
A month after the landings in North Africa, John hears that mail bags went down with sunken ships, and that the American papers have finally said where his division landed.
A MISSING PAGEPage 1 ends mid-sentence (“the news had been broadcast for …”) and the next scan does not pick it up, so at least one page is missing.
THE TELEGRAMThe telegram he mentions in his Nov. 24 and Dec. 2 letters never went. The telegraph company refunded the money: there were too many.
READING CLOSELY
“Without letters from you it gets rather difficult to write a very long letter every day—so you’ll have to excuse them if they seem short—or talk about trivial things.” John had not had a letter from his wife, Ginny, in weeks. Hers finally started arriving Dec. 13.
[5000?] bags: the number is hard to read.
Officers paid for their own telegrams home; the refund came weeks later.
A “special bn. detail” put him on battalion work on top of his company duties.
The Big Picture
The race for Tunis stalls
The Germans won the race to Tunisia. By the end of November about 15,000 German troops and 100 tanks were there. The Allies got within about 12 miles of Tunis before they were stopped.
In early December German tanks struck back at Tebourba, west of Tunis, and pushed the Allies back. Then the winter rains turned the roads to mud.
At home, rationing (limits on how much of something each family could buy) was spreading: coffee from Nov. 29, gasoline nationwide from Dec. 1.
Where he was
In camp outside Oran, Algeria, with I Company, 3rd Battalion, 16th Infantry. The fighting in Algeria was over; the 1st Division stayed behind to guard the area and train while other Allied troops raced east into Tunisia.
In this letter. The lost mail bags fit the news: November 1942 was the worst month of the war for Allied shipping, with more than 100 ships sunk.