Description
207 Navy #3247 (Mil. Govt) FPO San Francisco Thurs 26 April 1945 10 pm My dearest darling Tonight was to be all yours, but Brownie needed company and that shot the evening. Brownie - Ensign William Carl Brown, commissioned from the ranks in which he enlisted as a CB 3 years ago - is a big overgrown boy of 35 from Texas who lives in the next Quonset section to ours. He is one of two men who have been singled out by the colonel for extreme criticism: I can't say more now, but Brownie's a man who should be operating in some really big enterprise (like construction of the B-29 fields here) instead of in this “chickenshit affair” as he calls it. He's been in the construction business all his life (in jobs up to $1200 a month) had his own business twice and can't conceive of anything that's not on a large scale. Has worked since he was a young lad - though he went back to finish college in his middle twenties - and is [pg 2] naive and sentimental. As a construction boss his superior is respected by all his men. Tonight he had me looking through a scrapbook of his days as a Navy chief and containing pictures of his family - simple, homely Texas people…like the little boy that he essentially is, he needs affection and attention, drinks too much on a station like this. (Got involved in a fight the night our officer's club opened here, but was exonerated for not having started it.) He is generous, really knows how to get things done; has accomplished more work for the school then anyone else; when I admired some workmanship of his Japanese office boy, “Junior”, he promptly had Junior made me the same thing to send you (which I will in a day or two - a bamboo product entirely designed and executed by Junior - who's about 16-in what I thought was excellent taste)-and tonight Brownie suddenly thought of something he’d bought in the last few days [pg 3] without really needing it for himself; he brought it out: “Has your wife got one of these? Please send this to her with my compliments!” So I will. If you will keep and use it for the duration, I'll swap it for mine later, because mine would be more appropriate to you and this one perfectly suitable to me. (I love being mysterious about all these small presinks.) Darling, I did so much want to write you a long letter tonight, but Brownie was feeling low and I drank with him instead. Now I'm really ready to hit the sack. I love you! Warren P.S. -the enclosure a salt spoon is just as a curiosity. You can probably finish cleaning it up with a nail file. I picked it up somewhere on the island and couple of months ago.
