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289 Sunday 7/29 12:15 pm Darling It's another hot, sultry day and having been a little short on sleep for three nights running I'll probably have to interrupt this with a nap, but I'm in the mood for writing and could have gone on to thirty pages (not all on the same subject, however!) this morning. This morning I received #339 (the one previous to that which I just answered), an envelope of Time clippings and the July 2 Life; read the articles on Guam (excellent) and Burl Ives (who I'm sorry didn't come out here with “This is the Army”) in the Officers’ Club to a back drop of reminiscences by Reifsnider and van Koughnet, who (with Harper, Reddish and Mook) are all that remain of the original group that crossed from Saipan to Tinian a year ago today. That was a magnificent spread on the B 29 airfield - I was a little surprised to see a panoramic and large-scale photograph [pg 2] like that in print, but I suppose there is little to fear by now and perhaps some propaganda value to gain from it. It was, of course, a familiar subject to me; I have driven a jeep under the wing of a B-29 that was parked on such an apron. I didn't finish about yesterday: after leaving Slicer and his doctor, I stopped in the hospital's officers’ quarters to look up Rein, whom I hadn't seen in sometime, and to kid him about Dickie's icebox episode. (In asking where he was, I mentioned to another doctor on his word that I was looking for him to beat him up, and explained why, whereupon the doctor exclaimed, ‘Oh, you’re the one - it was your house?’ and burst out laughing. Rein had described the incident to several of his colleagues) Rein and I talked a little and he showed the snapshots of his family in the house which they occupied until recently; then Wally [pg 3] Teed, his roommate and E.E.N. and T. specialist, took me down to his examining room and took a look at my E.E.N. and T. His verdict: I do not have any polyps and my sinuses, etc., are healthy; probably I have a ‘mild allergy’ to tobacco. I asked him if everyone did not have such a mild allergy, tobacco being toxic, and he replied by defining an allergy as an abnormal susceptibility to irritation. He added that allergies, of course, involved a quantitative aspect, and it was up to me as to how much I felt it worthwhile to cut down. And there I left it, satisfied as to his diagnosis and relieved that no surgical or other treatment is called for. Here it is one o'clock and Tel has left for school after dropping in to discuss the Scout setup with Arthur, and I haven't had my nap yet. Since it's Sunday and I'm sleepier than ever, I think [pg 4] I'll take a quick one anyway. 9:30 pm And so I did. But I made up for it - we didn't get back from school till chow time, 5:45. Not that it was a very exhausting afternoon (tho I did want to get back early and write some more; and tonight after supper I was too tired to do other than read a little): we tried out the new projector that Tel brought from Saipan on his “material raid” with a preview of Memphis Belle, a full color picture about the B-17 of that name and its mission over Wilhelmshaven - Japanese sound throughout. We also tried some 15-min. broadcast records that had been used on the saipan Tokyo - [pg 5] beamed radio: Japanese and Hawaiian music with Japanese announcing. On my table is a copy of “The Razor's Edge” by Maugham (do I recall your mention of having read it?). I swiped it - borrowed it, rather - from HQ the other night when I was on duty and opened it idly, quickly becoming engrossed in it. Will begin it when I've finished “Precious Bane.” Wasn't that a fantastic accident at the Empire State Building? There has been lots of interesting news lately - Churchill's overthrow, the Potsdam Declaration (which I haven't yet seen but have heard summarized), Japan's rejection of its terms. Still it was encouraging even to get such a forthright reaction. Goodnight, darling, I wish I were going to bed with you now. I shall dream instead. Warren
