April 4, 1944 Tuesday

Dear Marjorie,

Your package came today, and everything was in fine condition. Thank you very much. Don’t know how all those notes got into my trousers. Don’t remember putting them there. Made me feel at home, tho.

I really goofed off on a tactics exam this morning. Didn’t know a thing on it! We’ll see how far my guessing ability takes me. Drove home the fact that there are still 3 very full weeks before we graduate, and that tactics will require study the same as anything else.

Today we had our first experience on the school’s big “Haskard Map.” A gigantic landscape to run tactical problems on. Something like inside the perisphere. You look down on the map from upstairs. As the instructor talks, assistants, unseen under the board, run tanks around on the map with magnets I guess, and make puffs of smoke and sound effects and such. Extremely realistic and perfect to practice tactics on. We each have a desk, binoculars, a map of the board itself, oral order blanks and radio net hook-ups so we can act as platoons on the same net and give orders as we watch our own tanks moving along below us.

Will lock the door after the horse is stolen and study tonite, and maybe even write a letter home. I feel very lax because I haven’t written home in over a week.

Gee, I love you Honey, more than you can ever guess.
All yours,
Wallace



April 4, 1944 Tuesday
Dear folks,

You must think I have forgotten you-all. I definitely haven’t, and I hang my head in mortal shame for not writing. Haven’t been busier than usual, but the time when I usually write (Sunday p.m.) has been taken up the last two weeks and there never seems to be a good substitute time.

We went to be measured for uniforms a week ago, and I went to Louisville this last weekend. All is well here. I am swimming thru tactics and feeling like Eisenhower. The instructors do not agree with me on that score, however, and I am getting my lowest grades to date. Much fun, tho, like playing cowboys or chess. A little of each, I guess.

Those pictures of Carlton were great. Laura sent me some of her masterpieces, too. She’s really good.

Doesn’t spring ever come in New Hampshire? Every letter I get warns me not to believe any reports I have about good weather there.

Will write more next Sunday. Happy Easter to everybody.
Love, Wallace