November 13, 1942

November 13, 42

We got up this morning on the run and finished on the run, heard lectures this morning then went right after lunch on a nice long hike to heaven knows where out North somewhere and circled around and came in from the West but surprise of surprise you can’t guess who we heard lecture today: Lew Ayres; and he was wearing corporal stripes and he gave a lecture that would outshine three fourths of the commissioned officers I have heard speak and he sure shows signs of being very well educaed, good English, manners, personality, pleasing smile and all the other things that go to make up a very nice person and he sure is a very active person. I would sure like to know him, he gave a lecture on the hospital ward, the adjourning rooms personnel and other part of the hospital.
The clothes we were issued consist of 2 pairs dress pants, 2 dress shirts, the same of the sun tan shirts and trousers, 2 pairs shoes, 1 rain coat, 1 overcoat, 1 dress coat, 1 black and 2 tan trio – 3 pairs socks white, 3 tan pairs, 3 each underwear. Then we have 2 tan caps and 1 wool dress cap, the garrison cap as it is called. We have to buy later (the one with the beak on it) also the heavy belt. Then we have what they call a field jacket of a padding in the middle, lined and both zipper and buttons up the front. Then of course a pair of wool gloves which sure come in handy. Then they say we have some wool ones on the way which might come in handy. Then we have two --- of a loose type of work clothes which we wear all the time unless on special occasions. The sun tans air for summer.
I just now heard that Warren won the election in California. The papers that we have here, even the Dallas and Fort Worth papers, are very dull. One headline and that is about all but we do not have time to read them any how so it does not make much much difference out here in the sticks.
Yes, Melton Stumfield was pcpt at Fort MacArthur for two weeks. There he was going to be sent to air corps field somewhere. There is no no one here that I can know very well but there are some that I know by sight. But there is not to awfully many that I would care to know too well and besides I do not think it would pay to know too many because your ‘chances’ are well not be sent (?) the same please when we leave here.

The Bn you were wondering is Bn, stands for Battalion. We are known here as M.R.T.C.Medical Replacement Training Center.
Any questions I have not answered in this letter, I will answer the next; if I don’t get this mailed I will never get it to you.

Goodbye for now, mother
Your son Stanley

PS: Received your letter today and Marshall’s. He talks about where he* is, what will he think of where I am.
Full address
US Army
Company A “-62” Medical Training Battalion - only it is abbreviated on envelope
Camp Barkeley
Texas

*Note from the transcriber: Marshall was an Asian-American neighbor whose family had been sent away to the camps. Marshall would eventually join the military also and be trained at BYU in languages.

November 12, 1942

Received Miss Moshers letter this noon but did not get a chance to read it for we were kept on the run until this evening. We got up to a very cold morning and had to put our overcoats ob and wear them to classes which made it quite uncomfortable plus the windy tents and they are so large that there is no possible way to keeping them warm, one of them blew down the other evening and what a mess this was. We also went to a lecture in the auditorium and heard a lecture on the German invasion of Poland, Denmark and Norway and it was quite interesting. We also went to the lecture on gas masks and more bandaging and then some more marching. Then I played a game of volley ball afterwards had a lot of fun…
… The dust was bad again today and everyone complained of it and the wind was hot and dry and the food was some what better. I have not had kitchen duty as yet but some of the others have. But I do not think it would be so bad.
Our training here will enable us to be what they call medical soldiers and company in the field they are on boats. They are in hospitals, field bases and in schools for the teaching of new students. In other words we are sent all over the US and even foreign places when we are through here. The only ones that they leave here are the ones they can use here which us few and the ones they train for officers. It is only for the later that I would care to stay here then it would be a chance for advancement which if I get it I will not turn down.
The camp here is about eleven miles from Abilene and there are no colored boys in this camp that I know of(f), There is one large groups of Infantry here, we can hear them practicing.

November 11, 1942

Dear Mother,
I sure hope you will excuse me for not writing you before this but I and we all here have been extremely busy here since I last wrote you and the adverse weather conditions have not helped it any.
It was quite muddy as yet Monday but we still went on our regular duties and Monday morning it was the coldest I have seen it here yet and I do mean cold. It was extremely sharp cutting cold coming from North and it lasted all day. We marched about two miles over to our auditorium where we heard the chaplain, the commanding general of Camp Barkeley etc. There we had pictures etc. We then marched back and had lunch. After that we went to lectures in tents (large tents with benches): one on bandages, gasses etc. Then when we finished dinner we assembled in the mess hall for War bonds information and were asked how much we wished to have taken from our pay. And I am going to wait awhile before I have them take anything from my pay and see how things come out then I can tell more about it.
I have not spent much as yet and probably will not unless something --- comes up.
Then yesterday we got up at 6:15, had a part of what they call breakfast here, and it is not much, more about it later, we there again went to our classes and had more lectures on bandages, gasses etc proper ways of addressing officers etc, we then came back to lunch to which again was not lunch, we then went on a two and a half mile march, rested 15 minutes then marched back.
There was one platoon ahead of us and I believe two behind us, I am in second platoon.
There was also an ambulance which drove up and down the columns and when it got back it had 10 or 12 in it, and that was only a 5 mile march. What will it be when we take our twelve mile march one way and the same distance back the next day, we are going to make a camp there and stay one night.
I am not looking forward to that with any great expectation.
The road along the march is about like the rest of the land here but the south side of the road and the camp seems to be a much better type land and it improves as we go South-West and we even find a few small secret pines or cedars around here and there. I could not tell for sure because I did not get close enough to them but the soil is still the same old clay, I have a couple small pieces of it which I will send you sometime for you to get a look at the wonderful clay here.
The night before last we were called into the mess hall for a picture or something and just before we left for our tents a wind came up and in increased in its fierceness until the air was full of dust and particles of sand soil, pieces of wood and can lids from the garbage pails and blew the big pails over and before I could get to the tent I had my eyes filled with dirt, my clothes all dirty and when about part way someone ran into me and we both fell down, who he was or what became of him I do not know but he sure made a noise, when I got to the tent it was just a flapping in the wind and I thought for sure it would lift itself from the ground and the air was sure full of dust so that you could hardly see and everything was just thick with dust I had so much dust in my nose and there was so much in the air that I did not sleep to(o) well.
Then last night I had guard duty (the entries south half of the battalion and it was a lot of territory to cover. The others only had about one fourth as much. I watched from 6:30 -8:30 and the later hour was plenty dark and all the ditches to skip and holes to watch out for because a person could sure hurt themselves if they were to fall into them because the ground is not level one foot square in any place because when it rains it gets well slushed around and when it dries in the awful wind it leaves it quite rough and it also was a little cold but I was sure thankful that it was not later. Before guard duty we were paraded before a lieutenant and he walked up and down the rows looking each man up and down the front and back and he leaves nothing overlooked, believe me, it is quite an occasion, the show and all.

November 5, 1942

Pvt Stanley Safford
US Army
Co A “-62” Med Tng Bn
Camp Barkeley
Texas

Nov 5, 1942

Dear Mother,

Arrived here safe and sound last evening about 12:00 o’clock after one of the most awful trips I think I have ever made and across some of the most awful looking country in the US, I think. Before and after we left Phoenix there were some very nice looking country with very nice looking ranches of maise, kafir corn, peanuts, cotton and 2 or 3 other things I had never seen before. The cotton is sure pretty. We crossed New Mexico in the dark and I don’t think we missed very much if it was any thing like the other desert. We came through El Paso about 5o’clock yesterday morning. I looked out my birth window and it is a pretty good sized town, larger than I expected.

The train stopped for any freight, passengers and other types of trains on the tracks, so we were therefore late to pick up the Texas & Pacific diner that was waiting for us. We then only had two meals yesterday but what we had was very good except the eggs.

We traveled under army orders under a very nice lieutenant who had two aides. Also on the same train in 4 or 5 cars in the rear were colored boys. When we were switching for the diner we backed up along side of them and low and behold if I didn’t know two or three. Went to McKinley and Jefferson with them and they were quite pleased that I spoke to them and they then introduced me to two or three of their friends out the car window.

We then went on until we came to Sweetwater when we then put on an O P engine then switched around North of Sweetwater and came up to Abeline which I didn’t see much of(f), where very large army trucks picked us up and drove like mad around corners, over ditches etc until we came into the quarantine section of Camp Barkeley which is a large tent section, the largest I have ever seen. The tents hold six beds. To give you an idea of their size, on one side they go up a slope and disappear over the edge and they wind up for probably a distance of 1 ½ miles in each of the other three directions and beyond them on the barracks etc as far as the eye can see, of course remember it was 12:00 o’clock and it had been raining sometimes during the day for the ground was quite moist and in some places quite muddy as well as strictly and vol.(?)
I thought for sure that we never would get to bed because the seargents corporals etc were cursing and plowing through amusing(?) and one of the nastiest cold cutting winds coming from the north I had ever seen, then towards morning it came from the south and it was just as cold.

Then we got up this morning at 6 o’clock and the sky was the blackest I had ever seen a sky and we prepared for a downpour but it never came. We had a breakfast(s) that I thought would kill me. Two hot cakes about 1 inch thick that you couldn’t cut with a fork and 1 very good piece of bacon and that was it. Then we went in to be placed in our final groups and then we had to turn in our blankets which had been issued for the other tents and changed tents to the new one which I am now in.
It also has six beds around the side and a stone in the center which is about 1 ½ feet tall and all about the same in width and we are to(o) burn coal in it and we have it all fixed this evening.

I understand from the scores that I received on my tests at the Fort that it will qual(l)ify me for officers training after I have been in the army 4 months which I am sure glad to see after seeing what officers are treated like here. Their tents have floors in them and desks etc. Also I do not wish to hang with rabble t(o) long for a person comes in contact with some none to(o) desirable characters here. I sure feel sorry for some of the fellows here that cannot even make a bed and have no more idea of nice things or the finer things of life than a wild animal and their table manners are something awful. Some roll their bread up in a roll and hold it in one hand and shovel the food on their fork with it etc.

They do more reaching here than I have ever seen before.

We have just had evening meal, ham, macaroni, salad of lettuce, potatoes, corn, bread and a finish of pumpkin pie. There were only two or three of them that was any good and I haven’t seen any milk since I have been here.

There are supposed to be approximately ?5,000 here in this camp. They of course are not all in the medical branch.
We, after we finish our course of from 2 to 8 weeks, are then sent to hospitals all over the country but none that I know of or have heard of in California so I do not think that I will be home very soon at least not for a few weeks. How many I do not know and will not know until probably the night before.

I may get a 10 or 12 hour leave when perhaps then I will spend it in Abeline. It is eleven miles away and very small at that. Of course Texas has not many towns of any size. We are quarantined here in our section for the next two weeks.
How did you like your trip to the desert? I thought about you quite often.
Could you by any chance get me a small sheep skin, brown shoe polish and a soft cloth or two? They have the polish here but nothing else. I did get myself some more ink today. I may send home a couple things later because I want to carry my dress shoes in my case.

The flashlight Miss Mosher gave me sure has come in handy a couple of times, and the stationary case has sure helped me out a lot, in fact the whole case has come in handy. It may be a little nuisance but it is sure worth it.

Do you think that I could get a bible about half the size the one I have now?
And I want you to look around and see what kind of a camera I might be able to get or get for me if I am unable to. There is a few pictures that I would like to have. How are Boots’ little rabbits and have you received Marshall’s address. I would like to have written to him in Arizona.

With Love,
Don’t worry.

Stanley

November 3, 1942

Dear Mother
Sure wish you had been home last night when I called because may not get to see you to(o) soon again.
We left the Fort at about 3:30 PM yesterday.

Got into town about 6:15PM. They had reserved space in the Harvey restaurant there, we had a delicious meal of ham, potatoes, salad, roll etc. When I got out I stood in line for a telephone. When I could not get you at either phone I therefore had to give up the booth, we were due to assemble for the train at 7:30 but did not get it then we stood around and like to have frozen until 10:30 when it finally came. We are on a car of about 1900 make a Pullman. One of your customers is porter on this car. I have the lower birth, so I could therefore look out the window at the various stops. We are traveling under blackout regulations. We are pulling onto another siding as we have done all night and morning. We got into India at 4:45 this morning, left 5:15. we had breakfast at 1:00 and we have had 3-5 sidings and we just went through Butram and we have the great Salt Sea on our left and it is 8:15 so we have made just simply wonderful time. There are about 15 cars on the train and about 500 or 600 men. The entire train is army some are going as far as Virginia, Missouri, one or two to Indiana and then the group to Texas where I am going, then somewhere else in Texas then some of them went to Utah and various others in California and Oregon. We are now stopped at a place called Niland. To(o) bad I do not have Marshall’s address and I could drop him a line when going through Arizona he would probably be quite surprised to hear from me down here. There will probably be a lot of others the same. There is more dirt and dust in this car than I have ever seen before. When I woke up this morning everything was covered with dust and just lay anything down and it will become covered with dust. The porter does not seem to be able to find a table for me to write on so I am writing on my knees. They have told them that they could gamble if they did not gamble with paper money so they are sure going to it and getting their dollar bills changed and throwing them away.
I am getting rather sleepy and tired so will dose for now. More later.

11:00 AM
We have passed over the Colorado River which we could see winding its way in the distance on the banks in the old territorial prison which is

now ruins and behind it the famous Boot Hill Cemetery.

They were out of water in the lavatory at Yuma and what a place to be out of water. I understand that my time heading is about 1 hr behind Arizona time off to the side of the tracks I can see the giant irrigation projects in the middle of the seemingly endless desert, time to eat lunch, more later.
It is now after lunch. We had delicious roast beef, beets, macaroni soup, salad and ice cream. Here and there along the way we see nice green patches of alfalfa and I just saw a nice ripe field of maise. It is very pretty. The beautiful hills in the distance melt into the flat desert land. I am also seeing here and there a little more frequently the giant Arizona cactus. They are very pretty against the background of musty grey to deep purple mountains. I now have a tablet to write on. We just went through a place called Fullers Point, a few Mexicans, a small school and a horse or two, we are now on the desert again. These small villages always have a few tamarrack trees around. They are sure pretty even though they are grey and dusty.
From the looks of things I guess when it rains it really rains from the looks of some of the gullies and stumps along the tracks.

Last Sunday evening at the Fort had a very good program although I enjoyed Susanne Foster more than any. She sang five numbers among them was “Ah Sweet Mystery of Life”. They also had Dinah Shore and the man who played Jules Later (?) in Tobacco Road.
It was very hard to sleep at the Fort because of the fog horns in the bay.
I never saw so much actually as there was at the harbor, there were dozens of ships under construction.
The dust is so thick on the table that a person could write your name in it in just the short time it has been up.
You should see the lovely tags we have hanging around our necks, two identically the same from some reason.
We have two pairs of army shoes and I have not counted the others on full yet there is one rain coat one overcoat etc. I had better bring this letter to an end so that I can mail it at the next stop if we can get off. Take good care of yourself and see about that arm. Say hello to Muriel for me.
Goodbye for now
Stanley.

Postcard dated Nov 3, 1942

Dear Mother,
Just crossed the Colorado River. What a mess and what a mess the country is around here.
Some of the most desolate I have seen but not as bad as back aways. It is a little better because of the irrigation ditches. Here and there they are all muddy.
Also some new kind of date polim(?)
Two day lights have now passed us going that way.
Love,
Stanley

Postcard Dated Nov 2-42

Mother
Called home.
Grandpa answered.
On way through Depot to Abilena, Texas.
Medical Replacement Corps.
Reason do not know.
I will write.
Stanley

November 1, 1942

Pvt Stanley W Safford
No39539970 Company A
Fort McArthur
San Pedro California

To Mrs W. A Safford
1146 E 75th Street
Los Angeles
California

November 1, 1942

Dear Mother,
Arrived about 10:30 yesterday morning after walking about 1 mile from the car (Red Car). Took a physical exam. given our blankets & shirts then we made our beds. the beds are two high. above me is a boy who I knew quite well in high school, he is going to be here two weeks so they him today he will either be sent to the Santa Ana or San Antonio Air base for training in the Air Corps. One of my friends is going the same place, because they enlisted in it prior to being drafted.
You would not recognize me with my new hair cut, they are all quite short.
We had lunch then 3 ½ hours later had dinner. Yesterday neither was very good. There was enough of it only not quite good quality meat evoking the thing had some delicious buttermilk we then had tests which lasted 3 ½ hours. Radio operators, mechanical and general questions then we were given a lecture on insurance and I took out a $10,000 dollar policy which should be mailed to you soon. Please check and see if your middle name is correct, also when were you born. then we had interviews. After that we went to bed which was 12:00 clock last night, I did not sleep but about 3 hours last night then got up at 5;30 this morning, went to breakfast and was not very hungry then were issued clothes and sent my others home which you should get fairly soon. And what a load of new clothes. I will tell you later what all we have when we get them all.
We are called on a loud speaker system in the barracks which are down along the water front and we sure can smell fish at night. My bed is by a window which looks out upon the hill above and the original Fort and officers homes.
We had our vaccinations this morning and my arms are still fairly sore.
The watch sure comes in handy. I broke my dark glasses some how so could you get me another pair and send them to me later. I will let you know.
Please do not spend too much time on the junk in my room just shove it in a drawer or box and I will try to sort it when I come home sometime.
We had a fairly good meal today, asparagus, sweet potatoes, gravy, lemonade, bread, and ice cream in a small package.
I am trying to write this letter in a half setting, half laying position on my bed because there is another one above it. I expect to hear this afternoon what when and where I am going to do or be, we may have tomorrow. Please do not worry. Say hello to Daddy Muriel. Will write soon as I can
Love Stanley (W Safford - formality)

Legacy

The past couple of years we have experienced something rather unique.
Bruce’s uncle Stanley died and Bruce has been serving as Administrator of his estate.
We almost didn’t know there was an estate and that is a whole story by itself but serendipity lined things up so we were able to discover a treasure trove of family documents, photos, letters and artifacts that we are grateful to have been able to recover.
Bruce’s uncle lived in Los Angeles. He was 84y old, never married and was definitely a pack rat.

One treasure I want to share is the near 180 letters he wrote his mother during the time he was in the service between November 1942 and August 1945.

I have made phone calls to several places including to the Legacy Project http://www.warletters.com/mission/index.html
Andy was very nice and suggested reading the whole lot of them and finding one letter that was more outstanding than the rest and posting it to their site.
That is how I learned a little more about the man behind the boxes of things we had brought back from Los Angeles.

I discovered someone who must not have been very happy and had learned to keep to ‘safe’ subjects in his letters although at times the wall does come down but he would not let the guards down long.
Maybe I can start typing the letters here… one at a time… create a webpage for him in his memory before we ship the whole thing to Fort Sam Houston where they will keep his letters in the museum. Odd to think a person’s things could end up in a museum… and the only reason we are opting for Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, TX rather than Los Angeles is that Stanley was part of that first group of trained technicians that came out of Brooke General Hospital, now the Brooke Army Medical Center.

He later became a landscaper and would have rather been in the Fort’s green houses than doing what they had him trained and training others to do but he was there for more than 18 months and tells his experience through his letters.

I would like to eventually publish the whole thing and so reserve the right to do this.
The timing may not be right and there may be more psychology involved here than little ole me can handle. When the time is right, maybe… we’ll see… right now… the tedious task of transcribing is daunting and I am not looking forward to it…
So here goes nothing…