Oct. 21, 1943
Dear Folks:
I guess Mother must have had a birthday yesterday. I’ll wish you a happy birthday even if it is sort of late. We got down here to the island last Monday morning. I flew Tues. and Wed. and had today off. Except I had to help roll the targets until noon. You see we fly 2 days and have the third day off. They usually put us on some work detail on our day off.
This afternoon we went fishing and swimming. I don’t mean everybody had today off. They alternate so they can get along with less planes. See?
Three of us got a boat and rod and reel. But we didn’t catch anything. The swimming was okay except the water tasted salty.
I haven’t been doing so good down here. Yesterday morning I went out and got 68 out of 100 which is good shooting. Then we went up for our record mission and I got 10 and on my next one I got 25 which is poor. I have to get 30% to qualify as expert. I will have to average 16 on my aerial gunnery and I’ll be lucky to do this.
This is sort of a vacation down here. We fly for an hour then lay around for an hour. This goes on from 8 A.M. until 6 P.M. We have our evenings all to ourselves. The mosquitos are bad. We have a contraption over our beds. It is a frame with mosquito netting on it and we drop these over our beds at night.
There is a nice sea breeze flowing most of the time. This makes it hard landing and taking off because there is most always a pretty stiff cross-wind to content with.
Say Jim did all right getting two pheasants like that. I guess I should have him down here doing my shooting for me.
Well I guess I’ve about run out of news for now.
Yours truly,
Alva
Ancestors Across the Ages 