Wednesday · Dec. 23, 1942
Note sarcasm.
Her Dec. 1 letter took three weeks.
Dec 23, 1942
My Darling Wife
Your letter of Dec 1, mailed Dec 3 (Note sarcasm) arrived last night late. You said you received 4 letters written on the voyage to Africa & after landing. I can’t understand why you didn’t get your letters before the office got its letter. Yours were sent before I got around to writing to them.
You must not be reading the right papers. The New York papers contained reports stating where the division had landed, and mentioning officers & men receiving medals for action here. If you still don’t know …
… where I am, go down to the L.A. City Public Library on 5th Street and read the file books of the N.Y. papers.
I’m afraid I can’t agree with Ren Lawson’s opinion of the future. Where there is anything doing, I’ll probably be there.
As to our being able to buy a car and drive home.—Now aren’t you forgetting that there will not be any cars to buy. They haven’t been for a long time and it will take months after the war is over to get production going again.
I also received a letter from your mother mailed Nov 17. She gave me a little news of the family and wished me a Merry …
… Xmas & a happy New Year.
As yet those packages have not come—just maybe they will get here before Xmas. There is a rumor that Turkeys will get here sometime between Xmas & New Years—Better late than never. Now if they’ll only send some beef. Incidentally people over here hardly know what beef is. The Germans took almost all of it—as they did other things.
Today it is raining and not too pleasant outside. In fact it is very cold. Our bar and dining room is decorated for Xmas and the band is learning Xmas songs.—but Friday will still be a work day for most of us here and I am …
… going to miss being with you and Linda especially on that day. I love you both with all my heart—and I hope that you felt my thoughts were with you on Xmas—as they are at all times
Goodnight sweetheart
All my love
Your John
About this letter
Mail is finally moving both ways. John answers his wife’s Dec. 1 letter, tells her how to find out where he is, and throws cold water on her plan to buy a car and drive home.
WHERE IS HE?Censorship kept him from naming the place, so he points her to the New York papers on file at the Los Angeles Public Library.
READING CLOSELY
“I love you both with all my heart—and I hope that you felt my thoughts were with you on Xmas—as they are at all times” The first of two letters he wrote home that day.
Friday was Christmas Day.
Ren Lawson had just left Glendale for a job with the City of L.A.
Car factories had switched to war production; no new cars were built for civilians from 1942 to 1945.
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. No cars to buy after the war: American auto plants had built no civilian cars since February 1942. They were making tanks and planes.