4 February 1945 - Holland

Sgt. Stanley W Safford 39539976

5^th Auxiliary Surgical Group

APO 339

c/o Post Master

New York  New York

Holland

4 February 1945

Dearest Mother:

Have here before me your most welcome letters of Dec 14, 30 and January 9, so you have an idea the way the mail had been arriving here recently.  Altho the other day we really had an abundance of mail for the month of December.  So far all that has arrived here recently has been Air and a couple V-Mail.

Yes I can well imagine the trouble which Jay is giving you now and of all the trouble in the future.  I very promptly answered him for the candied fruit and have sent him one of my recent pictures.

In Muriel’s letter which I received today she mentions George Ohashi as being in Los Angeles on business.  I was very much surprised to hear that.

I am certainly beginning to wonder just where the increased allotment has gone to for three months.  I am going to have to investigate a little.

You should never worry about the expense etc which I may go on gifts etc, as I enjoy doing it and I never go out my way to get things.  As a rule things are quite high and of no value so I choose to not bother.  I am in hopes of going to Brussels soon and you may get something from there.

In regards to your lace doilies mentioned in your letter of Dec 27.  They as well as the wooden shoes and little vases were all purchased in Bastogne, the little Belgian city so recently in the news.  The little soap shoes are some of my work, done in spare time.

I surely hope your glasses do you some good as evidently you are in need of something and I hope they are the answer to your problem.

Grace Safford, Jan 1945

All of your gifts sound very nice.

The lace handkerchief is not quite as nice as it could be.  The lace is just very poorly sewn on and would stand no wear at all.

Nelson owes me a letter as I wrote him last.  I am quite behind in all my mail as quite a bit of old mail has arrived recently.

I received your letter of Jan 1 with the 2 pictures and the 4 air mail stamps.  I really like the picture of you and appreciate your sending it.  I think the picture of Muriel and her friends is nice and Howard Kiel is a very nice looking fellow and I am looking forward to hearing from him.

In regards to the celebration you mentioned. We had a small one and that was about all.  I will tell you more later when my other news runs out.

We have done a little more moving here again and I am in a small room again which I enjoy very much as I have the privacy to write and have a restful mind.  We had to move after New Years and now again makes it two times so far this year in the same building.

I am now up to your letter of Jan 8 and will answer that one.

You have no reason to feel ashamed of not writing as I am quite tardy also with mine.

You have not yet acknowledged the receipt of my last two money orders.  I hope you have gotten them.

In answer to your question about me receiving all of your packages.  I have received all five of them and found them all in good order.  I have certainly enjoyed all of your nice long letters this season and enjoy going back over them before writing you today.

Christmas 1944: Earl Fickle, Muriel Safford, Carl Davis, Howard Kiel

Your mention of meeting people with war brings to my mind the thought that there are quite a few I would never have missed.  And there are a few of them I certainly will not miss if we were to part tomorrow.

Mrs. Miner mentioned Donald as being in bed but did not mention the cause.

One of the boys here knows just where the Lyons lodge is.  He says it is beautiful there.  His home is not far from Cour de Lain[1], Idaho.

No we do not have a chaplain and I feel as tho we are getting along without one.  I have seen some awful examples of chaplains over here.  Yes, we have the Engineers here.  They build all the bridges and other construction jobs.  Some of the 4^th Auxiliary boys were flown into Bastogne.  They received the Bronze Star.  One of the Majors of theirs is the brother of one of my Service School friends from Boston. He had a third III on the end of his name etc.  quite surprised to hear of his brother over here flying around.

I heard from Barbara Olmstead moving back East, didn’t help her much.

Well about all for now and more at a later time.

As always, all my love

Your son

Stanley

From the transcriber:

CODE: BOMBED(?)

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[1] Coeur d'Alene

Furlough September 1943

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…