Monday · Feb. 1, 1943
Ten years have passed.
Unshaven, in a slit trench, at the front.
Feb 1, 1943
My Darling Wife:
Ten years have passed since I wrote to you last. Life has changed and the routine is slightly different.
I have not washed or shaved in over a week. What camoflage! The dirt between the hairs of my beard furnish excellent camoflage. My hair is dirty.
My new pal is a slit trench—a little hole in the ground about 4 feet deep that I can lie down in. Our daily routine has changed in other respects. We eat before daylight and after dark. After we eat in the morning we stay near our little holes and when Jerry presents his complements …
… he finds us in our holes. They are very comforting, as long as we are in the holes, the chances of injury are slight.
For the first few days we didn’t get any sleep but now I am making up for it. The reason I don’t bathe is that we barely have enough for drinking purposes and don’t have enough to shave or wash. I look pretty rugged honey.
Yesterday we received our first mail and we can now send out mail. I got a letter asking why I didn’t pay that freight bill to the Finance Officer. If I remember correctly you paid the bill and I am therefore going to ignore the letter. I hope you got the money order [I sent?]
Tell mother that the scarf & sweater stay on me most of the time—and they are swell. I started to take those vitamin pills today so I ought to come out O.K. Also acknowledge mother’s letter to me of Jan 4th. I just finished the P. nuts & mints Carl & Margy sent me—however one damn thing did happen. Some S of a B took my [O.D.?] overcoat in the pocket of which I had that new lighter you sent me. It sure gripes me. It’s a very valuable thing over here—and the overcoat was pretty good too.
I don’t know how long this is going to last. The last report via radio—B.B.C.—reported the 8th Army 30 miles in Tunisia.
It’s almost too dark to write but I’ll try to write a little more—mainly about how I have felt these past few days. I have done more praying than ever before and you and Linda have become ever so precious to me—that all I want is to get home to you safe & sound. God willing, I will be back to you and I hope it will be soon. I love you dearest with all my heart and think of you constantly.
Goodnight sweetheart
All my love
Your
John
About this letter
Four pages in pencil, ten days after his last letter. “Ten years” is his joke about the gap.
“JERRY PRESENTS HIS COMPLEMENTS”Jerry was the soldiers’ name for the Germans. Their planes came over by day, so the men ate before daylight and after dark and stayed near their slit trenches.
A POSSIBLE GAPPage 2 ends with the money order and page 3 jumps to John’s mother. A page may be missing, or he simply changed subjects.
READING CLOSELY
“I have done more praying than ever before and you and Linda have become ever so precious to me.” His first letter from the front, the day before the Feb. 2 letter from his dugout.
A slit trench was a narrow foxhole, here about 4 feet deep.
O.D. is olive drab, the color of the Army wool overcoat.
“Camoflage” and “complements” are his spellings.
The Big Picture
Surrender at Stalingrad
On Jan. 31 the German commander at Stalingrad, Friedrich Paulus, surrendered. Hitler had made him a field marshal the day before. The last Germans in the city gave up on Feb. 2. About 91,000 starving, sick and wounded men were taken prisoner.
Stalingrad is generally seen as the turning point of the war in Europe.
In Tunisia the Germans kept pushing. On Jan. 30 and 31 they took Faïd Pass, a key gap in the mountains.
Where he was
Central Tunisia, at the front. He later recalled his 3rd Battalion on a blocking mission in the Ousseltia Valley; the 16th Infantry took over the north end of that line from the French on Jan. 28 and 29.
In this letter. His BBC report ran a little ahead of events: Eighth Army patrols, chasing Rommel west from Tripoli, were reaching the Tunisian border at the end of January.