March 31, 1953

(received and posted out of order)

Dear Mom and Dad

I received your letter last night.  I got 6 letters all together.  Was glad to get them.

Sunday night after I wrote you I went to the service club and ate in the cafeteria.  Got a good meal. 

I found out that you will have to stay in the East Garrison guest house.  I tried to call but couldn’t get anybody.  I found out that I have to get a form signed by my Btry Commander though.  I am having a guy get me one tonight.  You can only stay there for three days..  Let me know as soon as you can the approx date you will be here.  If you get here during the week you could stay here and then I would get a pass on Sat and we could go some place else.

 

I think Richard Jacques is at Camp Chaffee, Arkansas.  He may be put in the infantry or artillery.  He may be lucky to get something better.  Nice he is close to home.

I had classes all day yesterday and another hour of bayonet training.

We had a Btry complaint session last night with our Btry Commander.  Did I tell you he is just 24 years old.  2^nd Lt.  He is pretty good and plenty smart.  He said we will have a party before long and have steaks and beer. 

We went to the field again today for class.  We always eat noon out.  If it is cold we have coffee in the morning once in a while, when it is hot we have orangeade or lemonade in the afternoon.

I am mailing something home to you all for Easter.  Hope you like it.  I didn’t get to go to church last night because of the meeting. 

I got you letter awhile ago and the newspaper.  Didn’t know you put my picture in the paper.  I was sure surprised.

To bad about Sad Sack, I hated to hear about him.

We got paid tonight, I got $74.  You should get the allotment check before long.  Jan should pay you what she always does, regardless of what the check is.  It will be either $40.00 or $51.30.  When we get paid we line up in alphabetical order and walk in the orderly room.  The 1^st Sergeant has us sign our name.  Then one of the officers sits at a desk in another office.  We walk up, salute and say “Sir, Pvt. McAnally reporting for pay.”  He counts outs the money.  I pick it up and count it and then walk out.

We have to salute all the officers on the base if they are walking or in cars.

Did I tell you they play bugle calls at different times of the day.  All the cars stop at 5pm.  They call this retreat.  I saw Donald tonight.  He said he didn’t think Betty was coming out.

I enjoy getting the packages you sent.   Seems like the last package I got was on Thurs.  I will let you know when I get the next one.  I am fixed up on shaving lotion and tooth paste.

Well not much more to say, I will close now and write again.  I can never think of all I want to say.  I always think of it after I write.

Love, Ted

 A personal comment from Me

If you have been following this blog you may have noticed that the last two entries are out of order.  The last one was Dated 31 March and the one before that April 8, Easter.  Although Dad wrote them in order they were not postmarked correctly and received out of order by my grandparents.  Either the US Post Office lost them in the mail or the Army messed up.  Either way that is the way Dad filed them.

After the last blog entry dated the 31^st I thought that this might be a good time to stop and provide some explanations as to who, what, where, when, and maybe how.  I think I will start doing that after every month to cut down on some confusion, you, the reader, might have. 

For instance Dad wrote about Camp Crowder.  Camp Crowder was a staging and processing Camp that was used for those who were drafted in the Midwest.  It is about a three hour drive from Kansas City and is nestled near Joplin, Carthage, and Springfield, Missouri.  Ft. Riley is in Kansas and home to the Big Red One Division.  Ft. Leonard Wood is between Rolla and Springfield, Missouri and was a major basic training facility.  Camp Chaffee was also a basic training facility.  Crowder and Chaffee have been turned over to their respective states and used as training facilities for national guard units.  I have spent short tours of duty in all the places Dad mentions except for Camp Roberts which is close to San Francisco.

Jan was my mother and she must have done something to irritate Dad but what it was she did exactly I don’t know and have never asked.  Why they were divorced one can only speculate and again I have never asked.  My mother as of the present is still alive and has her wits but I don’t think it prudent for me to ask her what was going on back then.

Most of the guys Dad mentions are unknown to me.  He writes about a Keith Underwood several times, but I never heard him mentioned any other time while I was growing up.  He makes a passing reference to “Jim” whom I did know well and was like a best friend to Dad for many years after the war.  The guy named Arkie (which one time in Dad’s letters was called Archie) was a friend of his from Arkansas that had moved to Kansas City and they hung around the Bars together.  The Bar where Arkie met “Jan” is no longer there.  I did meet Arkie a couple of times, but from what I heard later he was not the type of guy Dad would want me to be around.  A fellow name Richard Jacques was the son of friends of the family and Donald, the one who had to go home because his father-in-law died and later recycled was a boyhood friend of his.  Betty was Don’s wife.  I never met or heard about them after Dad returned.

Sad Sack was my dog that got ran over by the school bus driver one morning while all of us kids were waiting to get picked up and taken to school.

Dad was a Christian Scientist so that is what CS stands for and my grandmother use to send him pieces of paper with CS information on them to help him through some of his hard times, especially when he had his lingering cold.  Mr. Clark was the CS representative at Camp Roberts and ministered to those of his denomination.

One thing I have noticed is that the training in 1953 was very similar to the training I went through in 1968. We had plenty of GI parties, doubled timed a lot, pulled KP, changed floors in the barracks now and then, had many classes, ate K-rations, but they were C-rations by 1968, spent many hours on the rifle range but did qualify with M-14’s and not M1’s. The procedure they used to pay us was identical and lasted well in to my own National Guard tenure.  I was a pay officer more than once.  I had a “Negro” drill sergeant in Ft. Benning, who for some reason made me guard a tree once also.  Some things never change. es you send.  Seems like the last package I got was on Thurs.  I will let you know when I get the next one.  I am fixed up on shaving lotion and tooth paste.

Well not much more to say, I will close now and write again.  I can never think of all I want to say.  I always think of it after I write.

Love, Ted