February 27, 1944 Sunday

February 27, 1944 Sunday

Dear Honey,

This has been a good weekend in all respects and I am very glad to top it off by having time left to write to you. Yesterday the tension ran pretty high as I was on table waiter and so had very little time to set up my usual field display for inspection. I came thru the inspection without a gig, tho. Even babied my cosmolined rifle by it. It should be the toughest inspection circumstance I’ll come across.

Last night Tom and Herm Schofield and I went bowling – with the big balls and little squat pins. That’s all they play here. It was fun. This morning I slept, and went with Frankie Brown for breakfast at the Service Club. We virtuously headed for church, but Frank got the wrong hour, so we played pool instead. Frankie was well kidded over it, because he just gave a speech in TT on the value of church attendance in the army. If I haven’t mentioned Frankie (known as “Red Hot Frankie”) he is an innocent appearing boy who wants to teach in a small high school. He is very cheerful and very young acting. Hasn’t got a vice, but we all treat him as tho he was a Romeo, and he pretends to act the part, too. He sings us all to sleep over the P.A. system to the orderly room when he’s on C.O. [or C.C.] “No Love” is his best song. We all “swoon” over his singing, as over “Swoonatra” himself.

Saw the “Bridge of San Luis Rey” this afternoon. And was very pleased with it. I liked the book, too, tho I never did figure why the people got killed. One simple way out is to say that the bridge was just too damn old.

Heard about the rest of your trip last night. It was quite successful, don’t you think? Your doctor obviously has plenty on the ball, and from all I can see, is just about right. When he spoke of the responsibility and confinement of marriage as against the freedom of not being married, I see his point very well. It is just why there is so very little we can do as long as we cannot actually be together. If we should marry and live apart you would be much more subject to the unnatural strains than you are. Also you would sacrifice a great deal of freedom. In tactics they would say that you would lose maneuverability. You would have fewer possible paths of escape, or here, adjustment.

All married folks lose maneuverability, and that is very good if they are in the path they want to be when they are married. You don’t have to shift around if you are on the right road. Of course, we have already talked about that being one of the things we have to consider – getting bogged down before we get on the path we want to be on. At the present time, it is quite important that we retain as much freedom of movement as possible because we’ve got some big jumps to make before we can really settle down. See what I’m talking about, Bunny? The damned army’s got me so I can’t think in terms other than military ones.

Before this we have talked in a little different terms about the possibility of being married and still being able to live in circumstances not exactly as Emily Post prescribes. Of being un-established tho married. I still think we can do this is we are reasonable. It is what we’ll have to do if I am to study some more after we are married, and that’s what we plan. Most married people lose maneuverability because of a natural urge to settle down as quickly and as completely as possible. They decide it just isn’t worth the effort to be anything more than Mr. and Mrs. Jones. The second reason is that the expenses of most marriages make it impossible for them to save money for anything except family expenses. They get in a vicious circle financially.

What we plan at first then, is a marriage without losing maneuverability. This is because we want lives that are richer and more purposeful than many. We can do so many more things we want to if we are still relatively free, and can lay the groundwork for a more meaningful future. To retain this freedom of movement we must be willing to invest the effort necessary to maintain it. That isn’t hard because it’s what we both want. And we must keep in a position where we can save money, or rather make more than our running expenses. That last is the toughest part. We are doing it now. We could do it if we were married, but otherwise as we are (even more than we are saving now). If I were stationed somewhere where you could be near, we might do it. Particularly if you were to work some of the time. If we had just a room or two, you might be able to do that. Pat’s wife is working in Louisville, I hear, just to keep busy while he is away.

Oh, we can do that all right; it never looked so simple before. By all means, let’s get married!

It is understandable that you should feel a little doubtful or maybe fearful about having children. Inevitable, I guess. But we will be all over that before we have any, don’t you worry. Things always look scary before they happen, and then easy when you know about them. We will know all about this, too. When they told us about tank firing, I swore I could never do it. But it’s really very easy. Bet having children is the same way. When you think how widespread the practice is, you can see that there can’t be too much to it or the custom would die out!

We don’t want to over-estimate the handicap that unplanned children might be. After all, as long as we can save enough for one semester of study, I can probably get a teaching job that would serve as a starting point on the right road. If I get a 2nd Lieutenant’s pay we could live O.K., and of course the elapsed time before the baby was born would be more than likely to take us beyond the date that the expenses would be just out of reach. And personally, the day can’t be too soon for me. I must have a mother instinct or something. My heart melts every time I see a baby at the service club. Just a matter of what nice things come first, I guess. If we can delay children until we have had the many other desirable experiences we want, that’s O.K., too.

A couple of times you have mentioned not knowing just what to do about your contract for next year. I understand that you can break a teaching contract without too much friction as a rule. Now it will not be before April 1st that we can make any definite plans of our own, since I don’t have enough free time at present even to say “I do.” This is a long week-end and I have had exactly 24 hours since last duty, including sleep. We get no off-duty during the week, you see? Until we can make plans I’d go on planning to finish at K.T.C. and teach at Westmoreland. Unless you want to take a whirl at teaching somewhere else for a change, or even if you want to get a job out of teaching completely. You could probably do this easily in Keene. Do exactly as you wish as far as that goes. Be as radical as you want to be. I love it. I would finish at K.T.C., tho, of it is at all possible. We could study together later, but education is a bad thing to put off at all unless it is absolutely necessary. It easily becomes one of those things that are constantly planned and never get done.

If I do not get a commission, I feel we had best get married as soon as we can get you and me and a minister together, but not try to live together until the war is over. Reasons are financial. If I do, we should get married and live together at the first opportunity we see where we could save some money over expenses. Until we know which is coming, let’s go on as we are, except that you should take any job that you want that will still let you get your degree.

Thanks a lot for your nice Wednesday letter. I love you so much, Bunny, and I am sure tonite that we are doing very, very well now and that the future looks real bright.

Yours forever,
Wallace


February 27, 1944 Sunday

Dear folks,

How’s youse all been? This last week for me was a good one to get thru. Busiest week we’ve had, but things went O.K. Ah, the weather here! We gave up wearing jackets this week and go around in our shirtsleeves. Just like Junior Prom weather.

In your last letter you said something about my not giving the homey details about tanks. I didn’t because I wasn’t sure you understood them enough to see what I meant. Since you have been studying about tanks enough to call a throat mike a lip mike, I will gladly carry on—

Tanks come in two sizes – big and little. A little one is like a bathtub on a tractor. The tub is upside down and has a few holes in the top about the size of Ma’s leg. A big tank is much the same, except that it is like 2 bathtubs; one right side up, the other overturned upon it. To get in, you first put on a football helmet and snap a throat mike around your neck. Then you back off and with a running start scamper up over the front end of the bathtub. Much the same way we used to climb up those big boulders in Lebanon. Then you jump down whichever hole is the one you want. This was at first awkward for even snake-hipped me, but soon you learn to put your arms over your head and sort of screw yourself in. Once inside (this is purely hypothetical for you, Ma – everything after going thru the hole) you sit down on a little stool that you can make go up and down to any height – even high enough to have your head stick out the hole if you want – like a very small barber chair. After you have done a lot of little things like fastening your safety belt and your telephone wires – one to your helmet and one to the throat mike, you press in on the buttons against your neck and report “Driver ready” or “Bog ready” or whatever you are.

You close the cover on the hole over your head and things look dark for a while until your eyes get used to it. Then you can look into the periscope that sticks down from the cover and see what is out front – it is like watching a movie and seems very far away and unrelated to you. When you get the two big motors going and a couple of auxiliary gadgets, you’d swear you couldn’t hear anybody. In fact you can barely hear yourself. But a voice comes thru the ear phones in your helmet and is quite clear. When you get going for a while you just hang on and try to relate the dips and bumps you feel to what you see in the periscope, but you can’t very well. You go over land that would seem impossible for anything, but after you see where you can go you feel as tho there was nothing that could stop you. Makes you feel very powerful and you look forward to big dips because you know you can come out all right.

You don’t move around much once you get seated, there are too many wheels, and buttons and triggers and sights all around you. When you start to shoot you start working all of them and are so busy you don’t think of anything else but where the bullets are landing.

After the motors are stopped, you unhook all the wires and belts and pop up thru the hole again and back to the front of the tank. Things seem awfully quiet when you first get out, and pretty inactive. Even the truck you ride home in sounds like an old Model T.

A few of the U.N.H. men still wish they had gone to Benning, but personally I get a real thrill out of tanks and find nothing to complain about in them. You’ve got a lot more between you and whoever you’re shooting at, and can send out a whole lot more fire power, than a rifle man can.

Yours, with love,
Wallace