October 20, 1944: War is Hell, But I'm Fine

Letter from Opa to Grandmother October 20, 1944

October 20, 1944

My little Darling,

Today, I received two letters from you; one of them was written Wednesday and the other one on October 4; it had only now been forwarded from Leavenworth. In that letter, you wrote about the hard time you had getting back to Lawrence from Leavenworth. That was certainly too bad; you were lucky to get a hotel room at all in Leavenworth. I bet you didn't sleep much that night.

What is the "Milk of Magnesia?" Something you can't write about? By the way, remind me that I tell you two good stories next time I see you.

This has been another pretty hard day. According to some so-called authority, we are going to have our first parade tomorrow, so they really had us drilling. Personally, I don't believe in that parade yet, it may just have been a trick to get us to work a little harder. Nevertheless, we drilled for three hours in close formation with rides In my estimation, we look just like what we are: a pitiful bunch of ignorant rookies. (I hope we are so bad the decide to fire us.)

Also today, we saw two series of films, one was on sex hygiene. It was fair, not as good as some we have seen. The main purpose was to show us the proper use of various prophylactic kits; they illustrated how the rubber should be put on to prevent infection and similar stuff in which I would probably have been interested two or three years ago.

The other show was extremely gory and left absolutely nothing to the imagination: a show on First Aid. We saw jaws that had just been broken or shot off, with blood running out of the opening where formerly a mouth had been; chest holes, where the air went through at every breathing; belly holes, with guts sticking out four or five inches; legs lying one place, a stump of man several feet away, blood squirting out of the wound. There were two guys who passed out, just seeing the picture; several got sick. It didn't affect me in the least. I feel very sorry for these kids, for they are going to have a tough time when they will see these things first-handed on the battlefield. I only keep asking myself: why would they show us Signal Corps guys this kind of pictures, and give us this type of training, unless they planned to send us into combat zones?

Well, after these shows, we needed some relaxation; so, they first took us on a three-mile hike, part in double time, and then topped of the afternoon by an hour of extensive "physical conditioning." We dragged our bones home after having loaded our muscles on a truck, ate supper and, since this is Friday, scrubbed the barracks, polished the brass, cleaned the windows, cleaned the rifles, oiled them,...... till at nine o'clock we were "free for the evening." Yup, our uncle sure keeps our lives from being dull.

Honestly, though, it isn't bad, especially not for me. I have the great advantage over most of the other guys that the majority of those jobs are not new to me. Many of the boys are now passing through a stage of homesickness, and the rest of us are kept busy giving some maternal (or at least paternal) consolation.

One boy (not in our regiment, but also a basic) went AWOL for two days, but decided to come back. The poor kid was put before a court-martial and confined to six months of hard labor and forfeiture of his pay. I think that was a terrible punishment for the kid. The Army needs some social reform. (Or maybe the world needs social reform so that it will no longer need armies.) 

Well I have griped enough. Why don't you come down, sneak into the barracks, and stay in my bunk with me?

Auf Wiedersehen,

Tom.

Oof. Opa puts on a good face- and I don’t doubt he’s better off than many of these young army boys, but I thought it was interesting that he signed the letter Auf wiedersehen. I may be reading too much into it but, he may have been a little homesick.

There’s so much in this letter. I think I’ll work backward. Opa’s line about the world needing social reform so that it will no longer need armies. I hear echoes of his pacifist Quaker past in that line. It’s long in his past, but the longing for that world likely never left Opa. I long for it too, but the older I get the more impossible it feels. Even if we somehow gain world peace- it feels inevitable that humanity will repeat history. 

Opa’s reflection that many of the boys are homesick made me think about how he has been away from home since 1938 - six years have gone by since he saw his mother, more since he saw his sister. He hasn't seen his father in five years. He may not feel the fresh twinge of homesickness, but by now I think he must hold a reservoir of grief deep inside. To access that grief would be too much. So he separates himself from the homesick boys, even offering consolation. Did he ever get to grieve?

The story about the gory movies and intense physical activity afterwards made me think of something my sister, Jessa, says. We sort of tease her about it even though we shouldn’t- she’s a nervous system expert and somatic experiencing therapist. She’ll often quip “from a nervous system perspective…” and say how something makes sense or was helpful, or unhelpful "from a nervous system perspective." Opa's group transition from gory videos to physical activity was indeed helpful from a nervous system perspective. The phrase “walk it off” isn’t completely wrong (brief caveat to say that not acknowledging the hurt and minimizing the impact is not the part that’s right- it’s the instinct to physically move through/with emotional pain in order to process it). Running and jumping may have helped those soldiers process the gory scenes. I doubt that's what the instructors had in mind, but maybe there was some wisdom in the order of events. 

Milk of magnesia helps alleviate constipation. I think Grandmother always had some tendency towards that. TMI but when you take care of your Grandmother for a couple years, you learn a lot! She had a sensitivity to some foods, especially chocolate- that particular thing made her say "I don't know what sin I committed in a previous life to deserve that." Grandmother really liked her sweets. All 5 feet tall, 90 pounds of her. I wonder if she hadn't figured out her chocolate allergy yet.