15 July 1943

Dearest Folks:

Another of those evenings that seem long and empty, but maybe it will shorten if I try to catch up on some letters.  Everyone seems to be taking great interest in the news and sticking around the radio to keep up with events.  The situation does seem pretty good, at least there is action to put some life in the pessimistic, such as myself perhaps.  Perhaps the war will terminate with a suddenness that will surprise a lot of us—some of the brass hats are even foreseeing a finish that they didn’t express last year, and when they begin to talk and think that way, it is something to really consider.  Anyway I have felt more encouragement than I have in a long time.  This whole discussion makes me think of a professor I had in sociology that said that the opinions and predictions of the public as a whole are many times more accurate than the experts and statistians.  I hope he wasn’t exercising his lungs.  I think it is nothing short of a miracle that the Russians have shown the world by holding the Germans, and it looks like they are going to do even more than that.  Occasionally I can’t help but imagine how I would act under fire and when I do.  I always think of the guys that are going down and who in the future will be probably little more than another number on the casualty list.  If, when I am a citizen and civilian again, I don’t add my little squeak, no matter how small it is, to try to avert future wars like this, then I and anyone has no right to be a citizen.  When you stop and retrospect and try to figure the situation out and relate it to what we think of as a civilized people, it all becomes very contrary to reason and senseless.  Perhaps these things are getting like a custom or an unbreakable habit.  Well I could go on for quite a few paragraphs in this manner, and at the same time get madder and madder but you might think I am developing into (a) pessimist or something like that—but that is far from the truth.  Everyone should practice more reason and rely less on his guts.  Maybe this letter does reflect a little of the bluer but if you stop to think about it, I don’t think that it does.  I believe that anyone that thinks about it becomes wiser for the better and to a better advantage than the one who forms his ideas from the surface.  Of course we have to be tough and relentless now, but the time that is spent creating the circumstances for these wars is many times more important than a year or two of fighting.  As I see it the whole world must be ready to adopt and draft a new set of laws regarding dependency and relationship that heretofore were based on conceptions of isolation and dominance.  I cannot honestly see how anyone can deny that.  Perhaps few will theoretically but practically, many.  My personal outlook is bright and I never for a minute feel that everything is dismal and hopeless.  I hope you will believe that.

Since I came back from pass I haven’t heard from Dick and I’m beginning to feel a little anxious, but then maybe he’s just more delinquent than anything else.  I wrote to him but as yet no answer.

The pictures I thought I’d stick in for the album.  The group one is in front of the ‘office’.  The Regimental CO is stepping out of the door.  It was posed—I think the ‘old man’ has a propensity for his picture being taken.

I don’t know how I’m going to get a start for this sheet but I guess I’ve said about enough anyway.  I think of how hot it must be at home, how it feels to get out in the sun awhile.  Here it is about the same all the time and the seasons don’t have the meaning that they do there.  I have to stop and remember just what season you are going through.  The climate is absolutely the best I ever ran into.  The evenings are perfect to sleep; the days never get too hot and there is very seldom any fog or any amount of rain to complain about.  Of course not all of the island is so lucky as we are.

Well, it’s about time for the last bugle and they might miss me at bed check.  So long for a while.

Love,