Transcription of Document FFDoc-0677.pdf

Wed. 10 May '44 9:10 P.M.

Dear Dot.

It's lights out in 20 minutes; but I guess I can start this long delayed letter anyhow & see how far I can get with it.

I guess it's no surprise to you that my address hasn't been very stable of late. I'd begun to think, before we got here, that the Gov't was giving us a free Orientation tour of the East & MidWest. But from the looks of things now, I'll be here for a rather extended period of 4 to 6 mos if things go all right.

I'm taking a course in carrier & repeater telephone work. It looks interesting; and it has evidence of being practical - so that it would, perhaps, afford me a rather good job in civil life if I didn't go back to school, or at least provide a summer job in the event I did. Right now I'm on common-battery switchboard circuits, having finished common-battery subset & line circuits. Some of my other courses will be Power Equipment Maintenance, Central Office Installation; C.O. Maintenance; Facsimile Equip. Maint. (on photo & record recorders), etc. In all, it appears at present to be a pretty good overall course in telephone & particularly switch board circuits. I feel, too, that this is a better thing than I was doing in Baltimore. You know, they have an O.C.S. here at Monmouth, and you should see how the C.S drips down thru the ranks. The make a half-assed attempt to work this like an Infantry outfit & don't succeed very well.But I really can't gripe, I know.

The chow here is not the finest I've had in the Army (Crowder's was), but it is substantial. They seem prone to French toast around here, for some reason or other.

New York, of course, is only about an hour & ten minutes away. I'm on the AM shift now (we get up at 4:30, first class at 6:30 - change to P.M. every other month) & can manage to get home by 8:30 Sat nites when we're not restricted. So, as you can see, that's not bad at all.

There's going to be hell raised here tonite (it goes on every night for that matter). Some of the boys are out to town. We live on the top floor, so have ventilators in the ceiling. There's a bunk under every ventilator opening. So the comics right now are busy filling G.I. contraceptives (if you'll pardon my saying it - there's no other way of putting it) with 2 quarts of water each & arranging booby traps in the ventilators; so that when the selected men get into bed, down comes a half gallon of water on them! They've fixed up 2 so far. During a "dry run", one of them went off, so it was a rather wet run. You should see the bed - it's soaking!

Well, Dot, can't think of any more to say, & there's a lot I have to do yet, so I'll close for present. Be good, & be cheerful.

Love, Frank