Thursday, March 11, 1943

Dearest Mom:

I have been getting your letters right regularly and they are as welcome as the flowers in May.

As yet, I haven’t gotten any of the things that you are sending me or rather that you have sent me. I guess packages travel slower than letters and you sent it (the letter) air mail anyway.

I send you the stuff I do not need back to you as soon as I see it. Mom, I am always in such a hurry around here that I may forget to thank you for things but please bear in mind that I am very thankful to you for everything that you do for me. I like this army life fine because I can see the comparison between this and the life of a draftee, but Mom, honest, it ain’t like home at all.

It is not what I had expected by a long shot. I would not advise anyone who did not have to, to join up. You have to give up a lot of things that you never think of until you lose them.

I have to do it so I may as well make the best of it. I think I have as good a thing as the army offers.

Mom, your boy is still doing alright. You remember the test I mentioned having in Miami? Well that was a test to determine what we knew and how much we were to take here. I made good on it, I am in the group that was separated from the others, we will be the first group to leave here. I am in the top sixty. Just where I do not know, but I am in the group anyway.

Bob and I are separated a little now, he did not get in this group and he has had some college work. We are in the barracks now and we are not in the same one.

Mother, the box came today and I will return everything but the apron, I like that very much. It will come in very handy, we are about 50 or 75 feet from the shower room and toilets and I have to carry all my shaving and bathing equipment with us when we go over there every time.

The gloves are really o.k. but I am going to send them because they are a little too small and I believe the worst of the bad weather is over up here and we are not our in the open much, but if you can find a nice pair of rabbit skin (tan) get them and I will have them for next year when I’ll really be a full-fledged cadet. Gloves will probably be hard to find by then any way.

I am going to return the shoe shine kit and the cigarette case.

Mother, I know you are thinking that I am hard to please and ungrateful and all that by the way I am always returning things but I just don’t want you to put out money if I don’t really need the things.

Mother, conditions are always changing and I think I need something, by the time I can write you and you send it, I probably have gotten over the need. Try to bear with me on some of this stuff and try not to think I am trying to impose on you, that is exactly what I am trying not to do.

Mother, I don’t know whether I mentioned this point or not but I am in the group that will leave for Pre-Flight first. I am in the top third of all the boys here.

Mother, I have started classes now and am taking mathematics, Radio Code, English and Geography. It is all really interesting work.

By the way, there was a notice put on the board the other day saying that we had proven ourselves to be soldiers and gentlemen and that there was no further restriction on us dating the girls of the University.

That is good news anyway. Our commanding Officer has heaped compliments on us about the way we have conducted ourselves and our manners.

All the people around here have noticed it and have commented on it. They seem taken back with me.

Mom, I hate to break off like this but I am over at the library and out of paper. I wrote to Charlie. I will mail the things to you just as soon as I get out again. About Saturday I guess. Tell pop I appreciate his letter and I’ll write him soon.

Love,

Roy