15 February 1944

October 3, 1943

Sgt Stanley W Safford 39539976

5^th Auxiliary Surgical Group

Dodd Field

Ft Sam Houston

Texas

October 3, 1943

My Dear Mother:

Here it is again Sunday and another letter to you.  For the first time in quite awhile the sun has come up in the morning nice and bright.

Will the story is now that the First Auxiliary Surgical Group was flown over to England when they went over.  I am still waiting for a letter from the boy that I knew in the group.

Last evening the clerk in HdQ and myself went up town and he bought a couple things to take home with him when he goes this coming Monday night.  He is going to be there in LA because his aunt lives there in Hollywood.  He is the one who is Jewish and has only been here in this country about four or five years.  Don’t be surprised if he calls you up, he mentioned doing so.  He bought a couple of those hand painted wooden trays and also a couple day hand painted piggy banks which were both exceptionally pretty especially the bright colors on the trays.  I think that I will send Ann Reid next door a little bank for I think that she would like one of them although they have to be broken when you wish to get the money out of them but they are so inexpensive.  While down there I also bought a couple of those very beautiful feather picture cards which I am going to enclose one of in this letter.  You will like them. I am going to get some more and have you keep them for me. So that someday I may frame them.

Well Major Skinner kept his promise this time as you have noticed by this time by the return address.

The clipping which you enclosed in your last letter about the heat in L.A. was a nice one, but I believe that it was about Thursday that I heard they were having a heat wave in L.A.

 I wish that I had had a lot more time at home when I could have enjoyed my phonograph and the records which I have and also those which you brought while I have been gone, and I could have had a lot more time for the garden also.

I received a card from Jay the other day and it was one of Luccas(?) so evidently he had eaten there for he spoke of not having the same waitress and of also having more olives.

The ointment is spelled Whitfeilds[1] I believe but I will get the correct spelling later.  Also I will get those things sent to Aunt Nina (Blue glass) before long.

I did accomplish the writing of twelve letters this last week-end and still have a few more to write although nothing urgent.  I will write Cousin Gertrude in the next couple days since I received a letter from her before I came home so it is about time that I write her one.

If you get a box of wild pecans one of these days don’t be surprised for one of these days I am going out down along the creek and gather a few.  They are just beginning to ripen and they should be very good for the wild ones always have a task which is entirely different.

The trees around here are now beginning to look as tho winter were really coming because they have shed all their small leaves and all that is left is the large one.  And the lawns around the large homes are beginning to become covered with them.  No longer is the Crape Myrtle in bloom and they are also beginning to look quite ragged.

I went down also yesterday and looked for some more elephants for Aunt Maibelle but they had none which were different than what I had already sent her. SO I will look somewhere else and try and find some that are different but not too expensive.  Could you sometime when down in Chinatown get a hold of a small package of Jessamine tea and sent it to me.  I was telling Mrs. Tedesco about it and she said that she had never tasted any of it.  What brought the subject up was she asked me if I liked hot tea and I told her yes.  She then said that she was going to have me and a couple others over some rainy afternoon for tea.

The picture of her in the blazer which I sent you, are very poor of her.  But you know what some of these amateur photographers are.  While on the subject she has a very pretty set of Blue Glass wine bottle and glasses which she bought down at the same place which those of mine came from.  She also has a wonderful lace table clot which is very old which she used at one of the buffet suppers I went to.

Well the afternoon drags on and I shall soon run out of news.  Major Kuhns was just in and is on his way out to pick up his father who has never had a plane ride out, at the airport for when he heard of the baby’s arrival he decided to fly down.

Give my regards to Aunt Nina and I will close now with lots of love,

Your son,

Stanley

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitfield%27s_ointment

September 26, 1943

Cpl Stanley W Safford

5^th Auxiliary Surgical Group

Dodd Field

Ft Sam Houston

Texas

September 26, 1943

My dear Mother

Received your letter yesterday and as you guessed I was quite overjoyed at receiving it.  Mail s one of the things that I always look forward to with great anxiety and then after I get it I always feel quite happy for awhile especially after a letter from you.

You mentioned the expense of my trip.  Well it did not cost me so much as I thought it would and the expense was and is a small matter when it comes to my being able to be home with you.  You will never know how much it meant to me to be able to be home with you for even so short a time.

I have me amazed to write several letters in the last couple days and have quite a few more to write and then will be caught up with my letter writing and then can start answering them.

I want you to charge me for the telephone calls which I made and I will and intend paying you for them.  You also ask if you may send anything? I can not think of anything and besides you have done so much for me right now.  You are very likely still tired from all the work you done for me when I was home.

The day after my return we went on a hike out in the country and it did not tire me at all.  Then yesterday we marched up to the main post where they had a very interesting airplane exhibit for the purpose of airplane recognition and they really had some very fast as well as pretty airplanes and some of them really had the speed.  One of them dived down from an altitude of about 7000 feet to about 50 feet off the ground and then headed straight again.  They told us that almost ten percent of our ships brought down in the Pacific area were brought down from our own guns on land due to the great resemblance of the Jap ships to our own.  That is quite a high percentage.  They are also putting a blue circle around the entire insignia on our military planes in place of the red now on them since the red resembles the Jap so closely.

One of these days soon I am going to send home the Reader’s Digest which I have accumulated here on to you where you may read them and put them away for me.  I have just received the October issue and there are a couple very good articles in it already of what I have read and it has a very pretty Autumn cover on it. 

I have not seen Mrs. Tedesco as yet but will see her tomorrow.  She went to Fort Worth on the day that I arrived.  I hope that she likes the book ends.

It has been trying to rain all day here and has finally started.  I am very glad to have the rain since things really have needed it for some time.  Everything is so dusty out in the country.  The trees here have already begun to turn then leaves blown and they have begun to fall.  Things have really changed from hot summer to cool fall here in the very short time that I was home.  But we may still have some real warm weather after this spell of rain is over.

Mrs. Tedesco’s father says that they are going to have an early winter this year and a cold one.

We have had our afternoon meal already and it consisted of potato salad which was very good for a change but nothing like yours, cold sliced meat, cheese and hot chocolate and cookies.  Rather filling but we don’t need too much where we are not doing anything on a Sunday.

In my absence they brought back all the boys from the hospital which were on detached service so our company is quite full now but they well weed out a few more bad ones and then before we leave they will take something more out in the way of excess technicians which we have a few extra.  They are also beginning to place us all in groups or Surgical Teams and I hope that we will get a chance to do some actual work together before we go into action.  Did I tell you that the First Auxiliary had already arrived in England.  Which, of course, is one more sign towards is going to the Pacific since they already have three in Europe and Sicily and none so far in the Pacific area.  They have, in London, counting the First Aux., two such groups.  Rather indicatory of the future battle trends or where they expect to need them.

We now have 33 of our total of 132 officers needed.  This is not as fast as the First Aux. was in getting theirs.  Of course they take their sweet time about things of this type and they may do with us what they have done with the one in Sicily.  They have broken it in half and made two separate groups out of it.

My clerk is going on his furlough the fifth of October so I expect to be rather busy at that time but none of this work will interfere with me letter writing which I shall do a little more of from now on. I will have more time with winter coming to do such things.

Cpl Moore is back from the hospital now and his appendectomy is or was all right so he of course is very glad to be back after such a long time in a GI Hospital and I don’t blame him there one bit for they are a mess.

Sgt Ryan went up and specialled (?) his case for a week or so after his operation and the hospital seemed quite glad to have him do it.  They are very short of help especially good help.  And yet they do not seem to make any extra effort to get good help when the occasion arises for them to do so.  They have a lot of hopes running around there with four or five stripes on their arms that I had as students at the Service School and they were sure my prize students then.

I went to church this morning and the Lt. Col. Chaplain gave an interesting type of talk sermon which was very good and he also said that this was his last Sunday here and that he was going to be transferred to the head of a large section of churches etc.  He has always been a very good chaplain and yet he is no well bred high class type of person either.  He uses words such as “ain’t” and a few other of that same type. But they all come and go and there is also politics in their branch also, and they have to be just as crud as any others in the Army elsewhere.

Well the day drags on and I am beginning to run out of things to write about so will draw this letter to a close and will write again soon.

They operated on some digs here while I was gone and Sgt Ryan has them to take care of.  And I like to tell him that he is a fine male nurse now and if only his friends could see him now.

Always lots of love from your son,

Stanley