T/4 Stanley W Safford 39539976
5th Auxiliary Surgical Group
APO 339
c/o Post Master
New York
New York
Somewhere in England – 1 August 1944
Dearest Mother
After a very long silence I will once
again take my pen in hand and start again my letters to you and I hope that I
may continue them as in the past.
We had a very beautiful and
interesting trip from Fort Sam Houston to our Port. I had a chance to see some of the country
which I have always wanted to see. Had
the chance to see a couple of very beautiful Southern homes from the distance,
and always looked forward to see and actually receive some of the wonderful
Southern hospitality.
Our group really enjoyed the trip and
all of us had a nice vacation and I even played a couple games of Five Hundred, and you very likely
remember the last time I, or we played.
On our trip over I had a job as
Sergeant Major and I have just now become rested up enough to enjoy the country
here which is indeed very attractive and as beautiful as anything I have yet
seen in my travels during the army. And
most of my stations in the past have been none too attractive as far as
landscape features were concerned. Texas
was very attractive at certain times of the year but the predominant part of
the year the weather and the landscape were none too attractive.
On our way to our destination
here saw some very beautiful large homes
of the period of 2, 3 and 4 hundred years ago, but a large percentage of the
people and the property here shows definite signs of a war being on somewhere
much closer to them here than it ever was at home in the states. And yet in
practically every home regardless of how small and poor they will always have a
few very attractive and beautiful flowers growing along besides the vegetables.
Their climbing roses are extremely beautiful and much more fragrant than ours
at home, and they are certainly profuse growers and are now in full bloom. The Rhododendrons here are regular trees and
they have beautiful Holly. Also some
very fragrant Erica. There are some
beautiful specimens of Birch and Horse Chestnut which are like the ones at the
Kings Road estate (Mrs. Vosberg) and there are wild raspberries by the acre,
all over everything and are soon going to be ripe and then I will really be
walking in the woods as often as possible.
I am very seriously contemplating obtaining a bicycle and using it for seeing
the country and doing things in my spare time, which I hope to have a little
bit of in the future.
I will have to adapt myself to(o),although
it really is not to(o) hard(to) understand if a person puts their mind to it.
The accent is not as strange to me as
I thought it would be, although some find it quite difficult to understand/
Some distance from here there is a
very beautiful mere (lake) and across from that are the typical pastoral
rolling knolls with sheep and caule(?) graying and in the distance the church
steeple without which no scene here is complete.
Yesterday Sunday we could hear the
bells tolling and that was all we needed to complete the scene of tranquil
beauty. I am going to try some sketching
again and see what I can do with them.
So some day you may see some of my masterpieces.
I heard from Margaret Ashley,
received your last letter regarding them on the day after hers which was about
four weeks ago.
Well enough for now and more later.
As ever,
Love, Your son
See new address
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