Dear Arnold,
Although this typewriter is broken, in that the lines do not
space correctly, I am not going to delay this letter any longer.
There is nothing new here in the way of big items, however, a few
little things have happened. By now you must have received at least
one or if I remember correctly it should be two. I am glad that
you like your set up so well. I see by your address that you have
moved. How do you like your new lodgings? We take some hikes here
too, in fact one every week. They aren't nearly as interesting as
yours, all we see are jungle
went on I missed because of work. They hiked up a jungle trail to
a river. There were remains of the Japs along the trail, bones,
clothes, and shoes. Lt Gassner picked up one of the shoes to
examine it and the foot bones still in it. One of the other Officers
from Ritchie, who is in another division went on a three day hike
up to one of the trail blocks. He said the terrain was extremely
rough, up and down, dense jungle, and dangerous swamps. Coming back
he said they kept meeting natives boys who are used as carriers.
All the English they knew was "hello Joe." As my friend
neared the perimeter and the end of his journey, he met one last
native. He decided to beat him to the punch by greeting him first.
As the native approached within talking distance, my friend smiled,
and said "hello JOE." The native smiled back and answered, "how
do you do sir."
You are probably wondering what I meant in the first part of
the above paragraph by receiving one or two, one or two what? I
meant one or at least two of my letters by now. I might explain at
this time that although the spacing is broken on the typewriter, all
those typographical errors are not due to a broken typewriter, al-
though I wish I could say they were. Now that I have cleared up
these points, I shall proceed. Today we were presented with a
baby bat. We had a bit of trouble with him at first. We put him
a small can that some peanuts had come in, and he got some of the
salt that was left on his tail. He because very agitated and we
finally fixed him up by giving him a bath. We then decided to adopt
him as our mascot, and after a lengthy discussion, decided that
the way we would feed him was to tie a string around his neck and
have one of the enlisted men swing him around so he could catch
insects on the fly. Imagine being told to take a bat out for an
airing! Another per we have is a little tree frog. Every night
just after we turn out the light and crawl in our sacks, he beings
to bark. Yes, I said bark! These frogs sound just like a little
fox terrier with a lusty voice. Gas ( Lt Gassner) clapped his
hands and shouted "Shut up." This startled the frog and he did
as he had been bidden, but only for a short time. Soon he regained
his confidence, and first gave little short bark. Nothing hap-
pended, so after a few minutes he gave a couple of more experimental
barks. He waited a few seconds and then opened up. He has become
very impertinent, and now will not shut up no
threaten, curse, or shout orders at him. My other tent mate took
a flash light and tried to find him last night, but the little
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devil hid, and soon as Bach stopped searching for him, he started
up again. We took the philosophy that it was just another jungle
noise among the manny Jungle noises, and went to sleep. It is
amazing what noise one of these small creatures make. They are
only about the size of a baby toad, but the first night you hear
one you think some kind of jungle wild dog is barking not far
from your tent.
It has almost been confirmed that I am not going to stay with
this outfit, Lt Gassner outranks me by a number of months. Some
of my fellow classmates ended up in Army Headqtrs, and some we
haven't heard from might well be in Theater Hdqs [arrow] such is fate. We now be-
lievethat a mistake was made in our shipment, and we went to the
wrong place. This sure is a hell of a time to find out.
[arrow] censored by LJNevis
I guess Dad wrote you that he asked
knew where APO 37 was?
From the South Pacific, as he had been wounded. The fellow replied,
"Do I know where APO37 is, Hell I was in it."If you don't know
where I am ask Dad to tell you. The reason I didn't mention this
fellows name is that it might be against security regulations to
tell anyone where it [circled, arrow] APO37 is. The censor might take his name down and
turn him in. In fact the censor is probably having a hemmorage now
reading this, if he does. However I don't think he can cut it
out, let me know if he does.
I said let me know if the censor cut out any of the above para-
graph out. Well this is about all the prittle-prattle I have
to tell you. Write soon.
love,
[signed] Leonard
