March 14

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First page of letter

 New Guinea
March 14, 1944

Dear Eva,

Thanks for your letter of February 26, which makes it the fourth one I have received from you. It was a good idea to type the V-letters because the typing is more legible than handwriting, moreover you can get more gossip in this limited writing space of the V-mail stationery than otherwise.

Your description of your new job is very vague, so I still don’t quite know what it is. As far as I could make out, you are engaged in semi-clerical and medical work; it seems like a stuffy job to me.

There isn’t anything new I could tell you. I haven’t seen any action as yet, but I hope I will in the near future; it’s still the old routine. The opinion of the fellows is that we’ll never see action. I remember, back in California, almost everyone of this outfit was dead sure that we’d never go overseas. They were wrong then and I hope they are wrong again.

Have you heard any news from Washington in regards to admitting you into the Army Nurse Corps?

Please tell Paul that the reason for my not writing him is that there is nothing new to tell except what he reads in the family’s letters and that I have to keep personal opinions about things to myself, lest I be known as antagonist. (Don’t I sound tough today, by cracky? It’s just a touch of New Guinea Blues.) You can let him read my letters though. Tell him that I’m deteriorating mentally and ask him what can be done about it. I have a math book and that keeps my brain from failing. Routine work and day-dreaming (anticipating thoughts of going back, planning a future, etc.) has a dulling effect on me. I wish you would send me a book or something like it which has math problems, quizzes, etc. in it. I guess Paul can advise you on that if he is well enough. I was thinking of playing chess, but there is no one here to play with; to play chess with myself doesn’t seem very interesting. I guess you know now what my state of mind is and I hope you can give me some advice. Thank you.

Well that’s about all I got to tell you at present.

Let me know how Paul is getting along. Give my best regards to him and your friends.

Love,
Harry

P.S. Please send me also a good map of the world; I think bookstores have some kind of an atlas for sale which is quite inexpensive. I think I have one among my things at Hilda’s but it’ll be too much work digging it out.

P.P.S. In case you have to show this letter to the post office in order to mail me what I want, here is my order:

1. one or two books
2. a map or an atlas

Wrap the package well because it has a long way to go. Thank you!

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 We saw an example of a V-mail from Harry in the February 3 post. The National WWII Museum in New Orleans has an interesting article on V-mail.

Apparently V-mail did not speed up receipt of letters – on the last page you can see that it was processed in San Francisco more than a month after it was written.

last page of letter

We learn from this letter that Eva applied to join the Army Nurse Corps. In the March 7 post Harry talked about her considering a job with Standard Oil. Clearly she wanted to get away and abroad as soon as possible.

20-year old Harry was no different than 92-year old Harry: ever curious, devouring books and newspapers, keeping his mind sharp playing games. This letter echoes one written by Paul at the same age during World War I where he complains of boredom and lack of reading material.