March 26, 1944 Sunday

Dearest Bunny,

This has been a rather busy weekend. Haven’t enough time off to write the kind of a letter I want to—or planned to. Am taking an hour off and will rest and ramble at the same time. By the way, I love you extremely.

Last nite we finished work at 5, had a delightful beer party until 6. The company’s P.X. dividend pays for these affairs and our C.O., Lt. Browning, thinks they are a good thing for candidates. Big time in a little time idea, I guess. At six went back on guard for the rest of the evening. This morning we got to the Military store at 8 a.m. and spent the morning buying uniforms to the extent of $125.05. That is just a beginning, but I have enough insignia now to dazzle me. Have seven sets of gold bars in my locker now! Whee!

My bunk-mate Braley and I took our weekend between 12:30 and 3:00 to go to the village of West Point for a big meal and a ride in his car over Kentucky landscape. Found some very beautiful scenery. As the Symphony was playing the Beethoven concerto I was gazing at a breathtaking, broad, flat, settled Kentucky valley. Very effective. Needless to say, I thought about you and wished so much you were there. Thought of you hearing the music, did you?

On return I did some duties as first sergeant—which job I start tomorrow for three days. But the board has met now, so I don’t mind.

Oh, don’t worry about our work here, Bunny. Maybe I have overdrawn it. It isn’t easy, but nothing for you to be upset over. I really prefer this to basic training. They at least treat you like a man. Your letters are the best thing you could do for me here, and you are right in that I have everything I need. True, the uncertainty here is lousy psychology, but it is a deliberate part of our training. Battle is like that, and they want to find out who can work well in such an atmosphere. I think I have learned a lot from it.

This war is very much out of line with the work I want to do. Briefly, I want to work at something that finds truth and is based on that. Soldiering doesn’t do that, but this war is a very big reality and as such provides much solid experience from which a lot of truth might be learned. Also, by forcing you to face the most grim realities, it helps you to overcome the natural fear of many real things. You can’t fool yourself in war and live long. It can make you better able to adjust. Good adjustment is based on seeing things as they are. According to some articles I read, many of the psychological casualties of battle are among the ones who never settled in their own minds just why they were fighting, or had been satisfied with ideas they only half-believed until they saw action. As civilians, they might have gone on fooling themselves, but you see what happens when the chips are down. They find they are playing with real things that illusions cannot change.

The most solid attitude that I can take toward the war is that it is another struggle for power between nations. Completely apart from a consideration of doctrines. The men who make wars work for their country first, and a doctrine second. Each country wants to be “top dog.” What they will do when they are top dog is important but unpredictable. It is foolish for people to fight other people. But the war is on and somebody must become a top dog to end it. The top dog determines history to a large extent. Germany and Japan are trying to do this, and necessarily at the expense of us. I would rather have the course of history in the hands of people like me; if it cannot be a cooperative matter among all people. Ideally, I am for a world community. In view of reality, I am willing to fight to keep control of the course of history. As long as we are in control there is a chance that we can be smart enough to stop the dog fight and accomplish something worthwhile.

My watch says that’s all for now. Come up for breath, let me kiss you, say good nite, and to the devil with everybody but us. We’ll worry about them tomorrow. Meanwhile, you and I are the whole world.

I love you always,
Wallace