Cpl
Stanley W Safford
5th
Auxiliary Surgical Group
Dodd
Field
Ft
Sam Houston
Texas
July
11, 1943
My
dear Mother
I
am writing you today from the office when it is quiet and perhaps a little
cooler than my tent.
Last
evening I went into town to take some cleaning and laundry in also to eat in
town for a change and just as I was going into (the) cleaners it started to
sprinkle very large drops of rain and it was still doing such as I came out of
the café but soon stopped and did not rain again until after I got home. I came down to the office here and read a
very little then went to bed but awoke this morning about seven o’clock to find
it raining and blowing in quite hard so I got up and let the curtains of the
tent down and returned to bed and slept until about eleven o’clock when I woke
up, got dressed and ready for dinner.
After that I came down here and have written one letter to Esther.
Yes,
I can well understand her story. It is
the same old in-law story. Too bad that
she can’t move out and live by themselves, but then who would stay with her
mother?
What
does the dark of the Moon have to do with the frogs being caught or not?
How
has the weather been in LA recently? Thanks a lot for the suggestion of the
OD. I was going to bring a pair of them
with me and I will, when I come, because August will be much cooler. The temperature reached 110° here one day
last week and 103° a couple other days and that starts out about eight o’clock and
cools off about eight in the evening, if it were not for that we would not be
able to sleep.
The
cookies arrived here in very good condition and they were certainly very good,
Just finished them a day or so ago.
Everything else of that type has always lasted and been in good
condition upon its arrival here.
I
would sure have liked to have been there to go out to Susanna to help pick
apricots, for I always liked to do that.
You
once asked about if we in the Medical corps ever carried guns. We do only on some occasions in the actual
battle area. But we have never been
trained with them here. In fact I have
never seen one even except at the pay table and he is always an MP which they
borrow from the MP Battalion here on the post.
Well,
I guess my OCS application is finally on its way. It seemed to take it long enough to get away
from this outfit and I am trying to study all kinds of things that they may ask
me before the board which I hope will not call me for awhile because I want to
study some more before going before them and as you know I want to go so badly.
Have
you heard from the Prentice outfit as yet? Or do they think that you are going
to forget it?
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I
was to Mrs Tedesco’s house the other evening with John Langstadt and Gladys
Hitchcock and her sister were there.
She is the other lady in the picture that I sent home with the four of
us in it if you remember.
Mrs.
Tedesco served sandwiches and a very nice buffet luncheon, it all made, also included
were or was a very delicious salad and a punch made up of pineapple orange and
grapefruit juice which was very good.
Her father you know, is a retired Colonel who used to be Flight Surgeon
for the United States Air Forces with an office in Washington
DC. If he were still in now he would be
a Major General which the man who he picked to succeed him is now. He is quite a person, active and gets around quite
a bit. The reason for his breakdown
(cause of retirement), the doctors told him, was overactiveness and
overwork. He spent several years in the Philippines’
and Hawaii.
Enclosed
you will find he picture which you sent me some time ago of the family. If you want me to have it you may put it away
for me. I am going to send some more
home also at a later date. Also I will
send home some more old letters which you may put away for me.
It
is about time that I sent you were wanting some more Mexican candy. When I am up ton again I will, when I see
some, send you a box of it since you like it.
I am quite fond of it myself.
They
have gotten the new school building here at Dodd Field completed finally and the Sgt Ryan that I have spoken of is down there, while I remain up
here in the office up to my neck in work. Capt Skinner told me that that down
there would be my job, when the building was completed. But he won’t be back
for five or six weeks yet and I understand that he may leave here yet with the
other two that are thinking of going to Brentwood, Long Island with Col.
Hill. I would like to go if they go
because it would give me a chance to see some more country as well as a change
in jobs, but there is always OCS that I may work for and stand a chance of
getting it. As you well know the demand for officers is much smaller now than
it was previously so they are cutting down the quotas everywhere.
I
took time out to go down to the new school building where Sgt Ryan is reading
and he was telling me the great big news that everything is and how he can not
get supplies and how the officers expect so much whenever they have a class and
how impractical and unbearable they are, but he need not tell me about it
because I deal with them all day. And I
get as tired of tem as I ever got of anything.
There is only about one or two of them that are real gentlemen here
since Captain Skinner left. The rest of them are a lot of people who never
amounted to anything or were never anybody in civilian life and now they are
made a captain or major and are really supposed to be somebody and they lose no
time in telling you so either.
One
of them asked me if I had any matches that he could use. I told him no, that I did not and he came
back with the remark that:”Your training
has been sadly neglected. You should
always have matches for the officers.”
I told him since I didn’t smoke it was not necessary to carry them.
And
you mentioned once that perhaps those got ratings who deserved them. Well that works only about 1/3 of the
time. It works the same in the enlisted
men as the officers. Somebody who never
was any good or never amounted to anything usually gets them and they are just
the ones who should not be non-commissioned officers (according to the looks) I
as well as a lot of others get disgusted with the whole affair. There are others here who are corporals who
have had nowhere near the training that I have had and then come out and tell
you that they got theirs by working nowhere near as hard. Or they ask you why you are not any higher in
rank and some of the dopes that they expect you to work with.
There
was a couple others here that were very much disappointed about the furloughs. One was a driver who, they tell him they were
going to let two drivers go on furlough at one time but they changed their
minds the last minute and are only letting one go. He is also moved up to August then the Jew
Major that I have here tells me in one breath that it is alright with him that
I go and in the next breath tells the lieutenant not to let me go. The lieutenant told me that he would like to
let me go only the major told him different. So here I remain until approx. the
15th of August. My furlough
will be fifteen days when I do get it and then again in October I will be due another
fifteen days, maybe. Well that is the way it goes in the army.
Well,
my Dear Mother, I shall close now and will write again soon. Don’t worry and take care of yourself.
Lots of love from your son,
Stanley
