The Honorable John and Film Developing (64)

The 92nd Evacuation Hospital is once again close to the front lines.


14 March '45
Dear Folks [Beth's sister and brother-in-law, Mary X and John],
     Now I'm at a new place.  We are something like the old gambling houses (and such) of frontier days - following the crowd.  Our set of school buildings isn't as large this time, but good enough.  We aren't busy as yet, but no doubt will be.

Headquarters for the 92nd Evacuation Hospital in Agoo, Philippines

     The knife you sent me certainly takes a fine edge.  I spent about an hour on it, and it is very nearly razor sharp.  But I hope I won't have to use it on a Jap.  I did "spill" Jap blood you know - technically that is!  On our first campaign I amputated a Jap's leg.
     John, I've discovered that I can use regular 35 mm film in my camera by covering the "window" on the back and winding the film on a bare spool.  The resulting negative is 2 mm less wide, is the only difference.  My film is perforated only at intervals, and along only one side.  Buy counting "clicks" I can space the frames properly.  And the best of it is my tent mate has several hundred feet of the film!  I've started developing my own film, too.  Beth is sending me some DK20 [a high contrast film developer for black and white film].  I can use x-ray hypo [hypo sulfate, used as a fixer in film processing] .  Thanks a lot for the booklet!  It looks good.
     Love, Eugene

14 March '45
Dear Folks [Mary X and John],
     This is a continuation - I didn't get to tell you all I wanted!
     Beth may have written you that I went to see the sights in a city [Manila, but the censors wouldn't let him write that].  It was something to see large modern buildings burned and blasted to pieces.  We went thru a hotel [see post #63] where I'm certain Uncle John must have stayed at one time (or its predecessor) ["Uncle John" was the paternal uncle of Gene's brother-in-law John, the Honorable John W. Barrett, a larger-than-life diplomat and Dartmouth grad, who was the Minister to Siam under President Cleveland (when the little prince, Chulalongkorn, in The King and I was king), and a war correspondent and advisor to Admiral Dewey during the Spanish-American War in the Philippines; he later was involved in South American relations under President Theodore Roosevelt and served as the first Director-General of the Pan-American Union; he attended Beth and Gene's wedding in 1937 and died a year later].  The Japs had used it as a strong point, so you can imagine what it looked like.  I took 3 rolls of color.  Hope they turn out well.  ...

Gene on an overturned tank on the road to Manila

    Jack [the son of Mary X and John], in a box I'm sending Beth, there is a large numeral "3" on fabric from the tail of a Jap 2 motor fighter-bomber.  Also, a large thin metal plate [from an anti aircraft gun] with some ack-ack projectile plotting data on it, that I picked up along the waterfront.
     They were still gathering Jap bodies!  What a mess.  ...
     Love, Eugene

March 15, 1945  No wards assigned to me.  Little work.

March 16, 1945 
     Not busy as yet.  When the push up the coast for San Fernando starts, we will be.  Planes of all sorts go over every day.  Later we may move there.
     I'm developing my own [black and white] film now.

March 17, 1945  To Aringay, 10 km up the coast to see the sights.  The troops are 2 miles beyond.

What was happening just beyond Aringay:

YANKS WITHIN GUN RANGE OF BAGUIO, LUZON: 33rd Division Tightens Squeeze on Former Summer Capitol
     Manila, March 17 - (A.P.) - The Thirty-third division has rolled its heavy artillery to within eight miles of Baguio and can drop shells into the former Philippine commonwealth's summer capitol.
     The Thirty-third - a former Illinois national guard division - has tightened its nutcracker by pushing toward the famed mountain city from both west and south.
     Gen. Douglas MacArthur's communiqué reports that the Thirty-second division is probing the mountains from the southeast.
    ...  Installations around Baguio, Lieut. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita's headquarters, have been bombed and shelled heavily.  As yet the city has been spared.
     The advance of the Thirty-third has been slow - thirteen miles in a month - but the methodical gain has been made thru difficult mountain terrain filled with Japanese ambush parties.  The going has been made more difficult by the systematic blowing up of bridges although the 300-foot steel and concrete Aringay span was captured by a surprise night move.  ...