Homesick (58)

Mail is the lifeline for many soldiers, a reminder that home is only an envelope away.


21 Feb. '45
Beloved,
     Today was the day - three packages!  One in a coffee can and one in a square tin from you and [one] the cheese!  But what cheese!  It smelled distinctly loud and moldy.  The four round balls of it were almost examples of Einsteins relativity theory in arrested form!  I read one time of that theory that if a cannon ball would travel with the speed of light, it would be a disk instead of a sphere.  Well, these cheeses were almost flat.  I pulled away the damp moldy package and peeled away the paper and put them in cellophane.  One I cut in half and tried.  It was a bit on the sharp side but O.K. though I suspect the flavor was not originally that intended by the manufacturer.  [Maj.?] Hi [Armstrong] and [Maj.? Ed] Niemeyer tried some too but not [Maj. Francis] Sparky [Adams]!  He shied away and practically brayed at it.  Tonight Hi plans to hide the parings under someones bed.  No doubt I'll be credited with the prank.  Your tin boxes were rusted and the paper moldy in spots but things inside were in good shape.  Golly, I almost cried when I opened the small box of pine needles, the tiny cones and kinnikinnik [a ground cover plant that grows wild in the mountains of Colorado; it has shiny green leaves with red berries during the winter and was always used by Gene and Beth for Christmas decorations].  They are still so fragrant.  It reminded me about the poem about a bit of ground where a soldier was buried in some forgotten corner of the world that "Is forever England"

["The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke, written in 1914:

                                                       If I should die, think only this of me:
                                                            That there's some corner of a foreign field
                                                       That is forever England.  There shall be
                                                            In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
                                                       A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
                                                            Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
                                                       A body of England's, breathing English air,
                                                            Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.

                                                       And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
                                                            A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
                                                       Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
                                                            Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
                                                       And laughter learnt of friends; and gentleness,
                                                            In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.]

Not a bit of the shaving lotion leaked out.  The shrimp and ice cream mix will be swell.  Please thank Mrs. Jamieson for me.  The pipe tobacco is O.K. and now I have enough Kleenex to have another cold!  Which I don't expect to contract for a long time.


Closeup of a carabao

     This evening I took a half hour stroll (carrying my helmet and trusty .45 as per regulations) out across the little creek and up to the rice fields on the other side.  I passed quite a few F.'s [Filipinos] on their way to town.  Some were riding in with a few carabao in tow.  One youngster passed on his horse - an 8 year old pony not quite so thin as most.  All the ponies are a sort of dun color and are branded on the near hip.  I saw one branded with what appeared to be APO!  The sunset was rather pretty.  There appeared to be quite a lot of smoke in the air.  Probably from burning straw stacks.  However we saw two batches of Liberators [heavy bombers] on their way today to make trouble for the Nips.  Maybe they have something to do with it.

Rice stacks near Guimba

     My day was as usual, except that I performed the first vaginal examination I've done since I've joined the army.  This 47 year old lady is the aunt of a very cute and rather shy nurse on my ward.  I found a fair sized fibroid tumor [a benign tumor of the uterus].  She needs to be operated upon, but I don't know if we can do it here or not.  She and her niece both want it done.  The nurse (whose name I admit I haven't asked) says menopause is usually from 45 to 50 over here.  Nurses before the war received P8 to P10 [$4 to $8] a day for private duty, 12 hours, and P6 for 8 hour general duty.  Hospital rooms run about the same as ours.  She worked at the Lying In [maternity] hospital in a large city.  Under the Japs their pay was P25 but what money [Japanese Invasion Money, sometimes called "Mickey Mouse Money" by the Filipinos].