Thursday · Feb. 4, 1943
Won’t I be a beauty.
A shave with one cup of water, and a full report on the rations.
Feb. 4, 1943
My Darling Wife
Just a short line to let you know I’m still O.K. The same routine as I described a few days ago continues. I finally got a shave yesterday—using one cup of water. I have had about 3 qts of water this last week because I lost one of my two canteens.
Today we got 6 packs of cigarettes, matches, 3 rolls of lifesavers, 6 sticks of gum. Pretty nice to us out here in the holes.
Tomorrow I’m going to get a haircut—not over 3/4” long anywhere. Won’t I be a …
… beauty. I have a pretty good moustache. It looks pretty good with a dark background—I can’t wash my face very well. I have been washing my teeth and taking care of my teeth to the best of my ability. (Boom. Boom) My hole went down another foot yesterday and I’m starting to tunnel in. If I’m here long enough I’ll dig out a room down under.
We are expecting a good meal tonight and are waiting for it to get dark now so we can get our chow. Spam, potatoes, coffee—biscuits. I don’t know whether you have ever eaten biscuits like we have been getting, but they are pretty …
… rugged. The “C” ration for one meal consists of two cans. One can has candy—4 pieces of hard candy (1 oz), 3 lumps of sugar ([1½ oz?]), 1/4 oz of powdered coffee, and 2½ oz of biscuits. The other can has stew or hash or meat & beans. We usually have that when we can’t get cooked meals. As an alternative we get a “D” ration chocolate bar—fortified with vitamins. It takes ½ hour to eat and is rather satisfying. We usually get 2 cooked meals when the position is stabilized—breakfast—powdered eggs, bacon, biscuit coffee. Supper—stew biscuits coffee. At least it keeps us going.
How are you doing honey? I hope O.K. I know now why Guth & Kuesmiller haven’t been writing. It is difficult & not too certain of getting through, at any rate. I [illegible] to write at every opportunity and I hope you get the ones I write. Honey I long to hold you in my arms again and be your husband—and the lover.
It’s too dark to write so will close
All my love
Your John
About this letter
Four pages in pencil, three days after his first letter from the front.
(BOOM. BOOM)His own sound effect, dropped into the middle of a sentence about brushing his teeth. Artillery was firing as he wrote.
THE RATIONSHe spells out the C ration (two cans a meal) and the D ration chocolate bar. Cooked meals came only when the line was quiet.
READING CLOSELY
“Honey I long to hold you in my arms again and be your husband—and the lover.” Written at dusk, waiting for dark so the meal could be brought up.
The weights over “hard candy” and “sugar” are his own small notes above the line.
Guth and Kuesmiller were friends already at the front; Gil Guth is the “Gil” of his January letters.
He crossed out “Supper” and wrote it again.
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, where the 16th Infantry held the north end of the line.
In this letter. His D ration bar was a Hershey emergency ration. The Army asked that it taste only “a little better than a boiled potato,” so men would save it for emergencies.