Sunday · Dec. 20, 1942
My new job.
A little more dangerous, and all on his own.
Dec 20, 1942
My Darling Wife
Still no more mail.
However I ran into a former classmate of mine in town last night. I went to town with 2 other officers and we sat and drank wine all night—till it closed at that awful late hour of 10 P.M. They had a dance orchestra playing American jazz. The place was full of officers; a few nurses and a handful of French girls the air corps picked up somewhere. The officer I met was in my R.O.T.C. class at U.C.L.A. He is now a postal officer at an A.P.O. He told me that our mail goes out each day via plane and gets to the …
… states pronto. I hope so. You will be getting lots of mail from me in that case, because I send out my letter a day.
I have been reading manuals covering my new job. I think I will like it. If anything it is a little more dangerous than my former job, but I’m more or less on my own and I think I can take care of myself. The job is one in which I have to think up things to do—that is, everything I do is on my own. Good work will show up and it means a lot to be able to do something in this army and have something to show for it.
The weather has been grand, the scenery at our new location is beautiful—and I wish I were …
… home, damn it. It’s awfully hard to be half way around the world from the ones you love—and my heart is definitely with you.
Give my little princess a kiss from her Daddy and tell her I love her too. Nothing more to write about so will close
All my love
Your John.
About this letter
One day into the new job, John runs into a classmate from UCLA ROTC, now an Army postal officer, who promises that the mail goes out by plane every day.
THE A.P.O.Army Post Office. Soldiers’ mail went through numbered A.P.O.s, which kept their locations secret.
READING CLOSELY
“If anything it is a little more dangerous than my former job, but I’m more or less on my own and I think I can take care of myself.” Three months later, he and a reporter, a photographer and a platoon leader picked their way through a minefield into Gafsa, Tunisia.
“The scenery at our new location is beautiful”: the battalion had moved to the coast.
Places closed at 10 P.M., the “awful late hour” he jokes about.
The Big Picture
Eyes and ears
Every battalion and regiment had an S-2: the staff officer in charge of intelligence. His job was to find out what the enemy had, where it was, and what it might do next.
Near Tunis, the Allies tried one more push before winter. On the night of Dec. 22, British Guards and a battalion of the 1st Division’s 18th Infantry attacked Longstop Hill in heavy rain.
In Russia, Germany called off its drive to rescue the army trapped at Stalingrad on Dec. 23.
Where he was
Near Oran, Algeria, now on the 3rd Battalion staff as intelligence officer (S-2). The 1st Division was still training around Oran while British, American and French troops held a line in the hills west of Tunis, more than 500 miles to the east.
In this letter. Years later he remembered the battalion living in the old French barracks on the hill above Oran’s harbor.