Dec. 10, 1943
Dear Folks:
I suppose I better write you a few words. My back-mail is beginning to dribble in now. I got a letter from Dort addressed to here too. I also have one from Mother. Say Ma I wouldn’t work too hard taking care of that baby. If it gets too much for you just tell Pug so. Looks like you will have enough meat for the winter.
This town here is awful small. You would be surprised at what the stores don’t have. I don’t mind the town being small. But it is hardly a place to do Christmas shopping. I have Sunday off this week. Next week I have Sat. off. That’s Dec. 18 I think, and maybe that’s too late. But I think I will go down to New Orleans then. If not I will just have to send some money. You may get some stuff late. I think I may be able to fix Jim up with a knife or something.
They don’t worry about us working too hard when we get shots. Which reminds me, I got another one a couple days ago.
Now I’ll answer Dort’s questions, if any. I haven’t seen any snakes yet. Sorry Dort that fellow from Calif. is married. He’s been married a couple years. He is one of the 2 other boys who has gone to pre-flight and all the way through with me and is left in single engine. He was left at Baton Rouge. The other one is down here and has the same instructor as I. The other boy in that picture was with me in Basic and Advanced. In Basic he had the other ornery instructor. (There were only 2 ornery ones, I had one and he had the other). In Advanced he had the same instructor as I did too. So we know pretty well how well the other can fly. Yes, I got a letter from Bouwkamp the other day.
What a place. It gets foggy every night and doesn’t clear off until about noon every day. So there hasn’t been any flying in the mornings yet. I only have 4 hrs. so far because the last 2 days they have been letting the morning bunch have the planes in the afternoon so they can catch up on time. I did a couple loops and slow rolls and barrel rolls already. The fastest I went so far is 400 M.P.H. This old baby goes so fast that 2 fellows have got lost already. They both landed up in Miss. somewhere. One had to stay overnight. The other one got a clearance and took off again after refueling. He got in after dark last night. They will be monkeying around and first thing you know you are out of sight of the field or anything familiar. If they would use their heads they would be alright though. Any time I get lost, I am going to head either West or straight South. If I went West I would hit the Miss. River and then I could follow that down to Baton Rouge and then across to here. If I went South I would hit the Gulf soon. Then I could follow the coast line until I got to 2 big lakes which are just south of here by the Gulf. Of course when a storm closes in, that’s another thing.
All of these instructors who have been in combat think a lot of this ship. They say that a man in this plane has the odds all in his favor. The point is: This plane can go higher than any other plane. So we can just fly along up there and when we see some Jap planes a couple thousand feet below we can dive down at them and cut loose with our guns and then climb right back up where they can’t touch us. It looks to me like there won’t be any Germans for me to fight. But we have a long ways to go to lick the Japs. So far all we’ve done is take back a few scattered islands that don’t mean much anyway.
I shot some skeet today. I only got 11 out of 25 which isn’t so hot. But it’s still better than most of the fellows are doing.
I hope you are all over your colds now. Say Dad how do you like working up there? I’ll bet Jim would like it here. They tell me there is a lot of quail around here.
Be good everybody.
Yours truly,
Alva
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