Description
Somewhere in the Mariannas Friday 27 October 6:10 pm #32 Darling, I should have given you my advance address a little sooner - everyone else has received mail, and one or two as many as 7 or 8 letters. However, it won't be long before it catches up with me and meanwhile there's enough excitement and busyness to tide me over. I do miss it, tho, and hope there isn't much delay on your end. Have a feeling that it will be a week or so before I settle down again to the pleasant routine of writing you the fairly long letters I did from Hawaii. We get up very early here and I feel pretty tired (healthily so) by the end of the day. Nightly movies have recently been instated here and it's a temptation to go, but now is about the only time I have for letter writing and until I get thoroly caught up on sleep, which I'm beginning to be, I'll be going to bed before nine. This life could hardly be called a rugged one, though it's decidedly more so than that on Hawaii and has the one major inconvenience of no days off for reading and writing. Charley says he hasn't had one since August 1st. We had almost our first taste of the ravages of war on coming to this place. There's hardly a piece of building material on the island (so I am told) without bullet or shell-fragment holes in it - the stuff this office is constructed of is liberally sprinkled with them. We had an excellent overall introduction to all that this afternoon in being driven around for two or three hours. Have just digressed to read some descriptive material on the Marianna's generally and see if there weren't some things I could tell you without giving away just where I am. About all I can say is that it's a rather pretty, green place, hot and humid but not unbearably [pg 2] so; a little reminiscent of Hawaii in vegetation and general atmosphere, just enough warmer to be slightly uncomfortable. (Hawaii was that to many people but I think the climate there would suit you ideally and lack of emphatic seasonal differences.) My housing is a tent which I share with other guy. We sleep on army cots (tonight I get a mattress!) under mosquito netting; mosquitos are bothersome at night, tho practically nonexistent in daytime. Flies have been all but wiped out - a remarkable feat speaking well of sanitary facilities, which of course are camp style but were constructed and [pol?] (I refer not only to [?] but also to mess facilities, etc.) The only illness I am likely to contract, with chances on that about 50%, in denque (dengee) fever, painful but not dangerous - most of the men here have had it, but it's less widespread now than at first and doesn't repeat for at least 6 months. If I do get it it will lay me up for a week or ten days during the first two or three of which, surely, I won't be able to write - I'll try to get Charley to do so in that event. Much laughter of children, with a little yelling mixed in as tho an exciting game were in progress. The children here seem to be a happy lot and readily to organize themselves for play. They are supervised and provided with various playground activities. Aside from that, no preoccupation seems to divert so many of them (especially the little ones) as playing house with just a box and a few scraps of any old material. I wish you could see the tiniest running around with no clothes at all; the next size (2 or 3) with just a smock and no pants; girls of 4 or 5 toting their baby brothers or sisters around on their backs. Mothers breastfeeding wherever it's convenient. Lots of color [?]! Yes, I do have [?] idea. Yes might start buying up 10¢ kits if they’re on the market - up to 25 of them! Give Wendy a hug and a kiss - Love you W
