Letter #9 April 15, 1943

April 15, 1943
Thursday eve.
Tootsie Wuggles;
You certainly are a bust little letter writer, one every day since they started. I like to hear from you but don't make it a burden. I have a little time tonight and will at least start this letter. It kind of sounds like I may have to work Sunday and if so I probably won't have time to write.
We didn't go to the rifle range today and I was rather disappointed. There is an outfit here that has received shipping orders and have never learned to fire the carbine, it is a new weapon just come to the army , so they wanted the range to give those boys a little training on it before they are shipped.
We continued with our study and dry run practice with the revolver. Dry run practice is aiming and firing without any shells. That is the army way of teaching us to handle guns. We first learn to disassemble and reassemble the gun we are studying and then taught to hold and sight them correctly and then the proper way of squeezing the trigger instead of just pulling it. It gets rather tedious but I believe it does a lot of good at that.
For a couple of hours today we practiced advancing and falling behind stones, trees or otherr shelter as though we were under enemy fire. You know what I mean I guess, you have seen pictures of it in the movies. You ought to have seen me running a few steps and falling, getting up and running and falling with a rifle in my hands. I skinned my knees a little but otherwise came out O.K. It was fun believe it or not. We even look the part of combat soldiers, you see they require us to wear helmets all the time on duty in this division. I have a white mark on both sides of my face where the chin strap keeps me from tanning. It forms a very patriotic V on my face. They also allow no uniform caps like you wanted me to get, no belts over the coat and don't want you to have any civilian shoes, but some of the boys wear civilian shoes off duty and nothing is said but none of the others either on or off the post.
If they don't change the schedule on us I will maybe get a chance to do some driving tomorrow, probably a heavy truck and I guess next week I will receive machine gun instruction. I can hardly wait to get on the range with one of those babys. Things are begining to get interesting and I imagine it will be more and more so as we advance in our training. The days really go fast we are so busy and most of it is interesting to me.
During a break this afternoon I was watching a few of the boys pulling stumps out of the parade ground with a tank, medium size, boy are they powerful. They hook on to a stump 2 feet in diameter and just tear them out of the ground without any apparent effort. I could sure plow the garden in no time with that baby but I am afraid I might do more damage than good. They weigh about 40 tons and cut tracks in hard ground. They sure are some buggy.
There is an airfield at South Camp Polk and we see quite a few combat planes of the new type fly over, and some of them just miss the trees so we get a good look at them. Yhey go so damn fast they are nearly out of sight by the time you hear them and that is no shit.
A young fellow, Harold Marshall from Pennsylvania, and an older fellow, Leo Marks and I have become cronies by mutual consent. Marshall is 18 years old and just from military school. Marks is 30 years old and was a school teacher, not married but wanting to be as soon as this army business is over. You see I can't even get away from school teachers in the army.
We just got a call to go to quartermaster and be issued field equipment so I will have to finish this some other time.
Well that didn't take so long, They issued us gas masks and haversacks, looks like something like an overnight hike or something in the offing.
You mentioned something about some pictures of the house, Whenever you have a good one or so I would like to have one, no hurry. You say you are sweet and I am begining to believe you are.
I had a very nice dream about you last night but it wasn't nearly as satisfactory as being with you would have been. They must keep us pretty well salted because I haven't had any trouble about getting excited at all and you know that would be very unusual for me. Getting nearly three weeks since I saw you. I love you. This is as near to a love letter as I have ever written. I will have to copy a few paragraphs from from some of the letters the boys show me, but I guess it wouldn't sound much like me. Just let it go that I love you as much if not more than ever.
Your loving husband,
Norm