June 10, 1944 Saturday

Dearest Honey,

You don’t know how happy I am to report that I have paid one week’s rent on a room in Abilene for you and me! Actually, it isn’t completely settled but it can be planned on. Lt. Kurtz, of Class 61, is moving out of his room to an apartment right after our Division problem. He is going to see that we get his present place by paying a week’s rent for the room for us when he tells his landlady he’s leaving. I have given him the money and it looks like a sure thing.

I did what I said I wouldn’t, and took the room without seeing it. Now before you hit me, remember that the situation here is getting so that there just are no places left. You don’t get a chance to choose between two places. With this room, which Kurtz says is light and O.K., we can live very reasonably until we can find a better place. It is better than the hotel plan, and maybe even better than I have expected it to be. The bathroom is downstairs and no cooking. That is bad, but as they say, we’ll have a beach-head to work from. The room is $8.00 a week, which is high but the lowest I have seen for Abilene. When we find an apartment, it will be $45 a month. Now we won’t be rushed to find an apartment, tho, and can enjoy life while waiting. Double bed and other furniture. Easy walk to center of Abilene. Many chances to ride to Barkeley.

I have told you, haven’t I, that the whole division will be in the field on a test all next week. We get back Saturday, the 17th. Then I’ll go in to see how our place is, and if it is still ours. If you get here any time after then, things will be fine. Don’t expect to hear from me next week. I’ll be out in the woods with the biggest outfit I’ve ever seen. Won’t have a platoon, I guess, just do odd jobs and watch the anti-tank gun platoon. I will have that when we get back, I hear. Certainly getting away from my specialized field—tank platoon leading! Very all around, you see. Now I’ll be shooting at tanks for awhile.

This afternoon I sent a telegram to you. Don’t know as it was really necessary. The main thing now is for you to let me know when you plan to arrive, so that I can meet you and have things kind of prepared. Unless I hear that you have set out before next Sunday, I will wire or phone again any new developments then. Really not much to coordinate on. You come down, I meet you. You look after getting here, I’ll look after the Abilene end and meet you at the train. If I can’t meet you, you go to the Hotel Wooten, still, unless I send you the street address of our room; then, of course, go there. Do think I can meet you, tho, almost any time from the 18th on.

Seems as tho I’m always saying goodby to you! Very likely I won’t be able to write until a week from today. It’s as always, tho, they can’t disconnect us completely. I’ll be thinking of you all the time. I like to so much. We have the nicest conversations sometimes—out in the wilderness at night, or anywhere. Very much like our real talks, too. Maybe that’s why we find it so easy when we are together. I don’t know, tho. The way we get together after being apart is just one of those things I can’t explain at all. It’s there, that’s all we know. It’s remarkable. I don’t believe in people being made for each other. There’s nothing to it at all. Naturally. That only makes us more of a paradox, tho. Don’t know why I keep trying to reason things out when everything is so unreasonable. There must be a reason, somewhere, why you and I are different from you and anybody else or me and anybody else. The difference is so big to me, and it is because “I love you.” That describes it perfectly, but does not explain it. Guess the reason isn’t too important, anyway. Just I love you is enough.

And I do, always,
Wallace