Hello bodacious and beloved...
Murray was getting over a cold
... My mistake was in getting some exercise or, to avoid all
euphemism, in doing some work. I have told you about our rather strange tunnel
into the hut. From time to time snow drifts into the entrance, making passage a
major problem ... So on my day off I finally decided to take remedial action,
i.e., grab a shovel.
I dug for a solid six hours and when I was through I had
constructed a lovely labyrinth with secret passages and, really, a trap door.
It was the most fun I have had with snow since we last did Carr Street. All who
beheld, wondered. The only trouble was that I sat in the snow myself and
marvelled at the ice caves of APO 726. And verily, I say unto you, the cold I
contracted was heavier than the bomb load of a B-29.
Gene ministered to me most touchingly, little lover. When I
refused to get up for chow call he broke out a can of mushroom soup and heated
it in his mess kit. He tells me it tasted good. ...
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| Big Ass Chess |
... There are eight entries in what is known officially as
the APO 726 Big Ass Chess Tournament. So far I have played Ross, 110% Johnson,
and Jay-Bird Berry. We play two games each and are awarded ten points for each
win, five for a draw or a stalemate and nothing for a loss. ... There is a
$3.00 big ass prize (official nomenclature) and if I capture it I will buy you
a doll to go with the shuffleboard ping-pong trophies.
Big Smitty, who had the collection of phonograph records in
our hut, finally got his furlough orders yesterday and will be down in Seattle
in a few days, the fortunate individual. Yesterday he took his Courtesy Board
test, and passed. This test is a neat little indignity inflicted on all
outgoing army personnel from this post because too many of them got in trouble
on their return to the states by forgetting to [censored]. Now we all have to
pass an exam in military courtesy before we can leave the island.
For that matter we are due to have classes in military
courtesy right in the area. It seems that one of our local characters, a
large-featured ox named Howard, who wanders around drawing pubic hairs on
pin-up pictures, breezed by [censored] without saluting and, it is said, when
called back by the offended dignitary, explained "ACS men don't salute
their officers." Result: classes on courtesy and more memos on the
bulletin boards. We are all supposed to read our field manuals on courtesy,
too.
Personally, I’d rather read Vanity Fair, into which I have
gone a cold-fogged two-hundred odd pages. If I remember right, Nunny, you were
not impressed by it; but I'm not sure I remember right. I find it charming. It
is particularly interesting because it covers the same period, and the same
social strata, in England as War and Peace did in Russia. ...
The local library has received a large shipment of books
from the states, and in looking them over I was surprised to find all of the
early Hemingway stuff, which is practically unobtainable: In Our Time, Torrents
of Spring, and Winner Take Nothing. I am pleased at the prospect. There are
also a couple of the histories of Alaska that I have been hunting for.
I have also acquired a haircut, the first since the GI
massacre of Station Two. The new one eliminated some of the more startling
inequalities perpetrated by the Moldovian madman and might even meet you with approval.
In the barber chair I read an article by Henry Pringle [biographer of Theodore
Roosevelt and William Howard Taft and former journalism professor at Columbia
University] on U.S. education. Pringle quotes, in apparent dismay, the answer
of a college freshman to a test question on what was the major contribution of
Teddy Roosevelt to the United States: "a large collection of animal
heads." Another answer, held to be wrong, was that the traditional U.S.
policy in China was "to get as much as we could for as little as
possible." Which is a rather good description of the Open Door diplomacy.
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| Churchill, FDR, Stalin, etc., at the Yalta Conference. Credit: Wikipedia |
Yesterday I heard part but not all of the President's report
on the Crimea Conference. It seemed to me to be a sweet and reasonable
statement of the case for pure power politics. Since the only alternative to a
world run by the three big powers is a world fought over by them, there is no
choice but to support the Administration's policy. But as long as the Big Three
retain individual sovereignty and independent economic interests, the
possibility, or rather the probability, of a bigger and better war in another
fifteen or twenty years is unpleasantly apparent. ...
My darling, my darling. When I woke this morning and looked
at your pictures on each side of the bed I was able to think, "Less than
two months." In fact, on the pink slip on the right of my bed I crossed
out 60 and announced to the uncaring, solidly-slumbering multitude:
"Fifty-nine days, five nine. I say again fifty-nine more days." In
less than 1 month I put in my papers applying for a furlough. Take good care of
yourself, my most adorable one.
Your everloving, undeserving,
M
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