Dear folks:
I’ve been wanting to sit down and write you a long letter, and until tonight something else seemed to take up my time. Perhaps tonight I can do it. What occupies my time mostly in the evenings is going to the show or reading. And when I do this, the first thing I know I’m behind several days in my letters or have little time to write anything more than a line or two. By taking advantage of the library on pass days and drawing books from the traveling library I manage to keep plenty to read on hand. I just finished a J. Hilton book tonight “And Now Goodbye”, a story of an English preacher and his inner urges. The Reader’s Digest is dissolved in short order but there is always some one who wants it next. The libraries are very limited in their law books and I have read all of them. I had intended to ask you to send me a couple but that is now impossible, or at least involves too much red tape to attempt.
I can never write a letter without recalling some of the beauty of the islands or their difference from the states. I wish I was in a better position to describe it more fully and let you know actually where I have been and what there is here, but I guess that will have to wait and for the time being be satisfied with generalities. Maybe I go a little off the deep end on the subject, but I don’t think so—it makes me realize this is just a sample of the world. What is over the next horizon? Although the sunsets perhaps aren’t congruous with the descriptions the travel bureau puts out, many of them are really stirring sight to see and the sunrises aren’t far behind, in their own right. The cloud formations near the mountains put the final touch to them. Maybe it’s the proximity of the old and new that is appealing. In many places what the people did a hundred or so years ago is still carried on, while on the other hand some of the places you go take you back to the hometown main street. At our weekly battery get together the highlight of the program was a talk on the islands by a Scotsman who came here a long time ago and who since then has visited most of the South Seas. He was a very good orator but aside from that he points out legends and places to visit, supplemented with technicolor pictures. Sometimes I get an uncontrollable urge to take off after the war and just start wandering and go in any direction I feel like. I could really discourse along here all night if I didn’t have to worry about the scissors. As far as I know none of your letters are censored, at least nothing has ever been deleted.
By the time you read this what you wanted should be on the way unless I can’t finveigle these oriental storekeepers to get sufficiently interested in my case. Whenever you ask information from one of them, nine times out of ten, are ‘no got’ and offer no suggestions or show a substitute.
When I get down to the final analysis perhaps I haven’t written any more than I usually do, but it is really hard to put together a newsy letter. Practically everything I do is GI and on the other hand everything GI in letters is verboten. My mail situation is pretty good all told, and I don’t go very many days without something from somebody. Had a letter from Gram today, says many foodstuffs are getting scarce but that otherwise everything is jake. I better write Katie tonight and thank them for the pictures and the gifts. I’ve really extended a sensible limit already so I’m going to stop and wait until I get another (letter) of yours to answer. And there’s no better way to end it than by repeating there’s no place like home.
Love,
