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Show 8153 WW WHU MTVM THE PAPERS OF PRIVATE PURKEY Dear Ma Well I have done a lot of kidding and squawkvig in my letters but I gess that is all over now. After what them double crossing Japs did there is no longer no funny side to this training and all I want to do is get a crack at them. All the boys feel the same way. Up to the time they heard about them Japs stabbing stab-bing Uncle Sam in the back under a flag of truce I gess they all felt the same as me that the war was too far away to bother much and that this army training was a pain in the neck. But it woke us all up like no bugle ever did. I kind of felt that nobody wood ever tackle this country on account of we got two big oceans to depend on and all that and I gess I never sweated in a manoover without saying say-ing to myself this is the bunk as Hitler wood be crazy to get more trouble on his hands. I never thought that Japan would be even crazier. I hated the hikes, I hated the drills and inspeckshuns and 1 could not bathe a new crop of corns without burning up inside. But all of a sudden sud-den I feel different. Even my bunions bun-ions seem patriotic now. It's the same way all through my outfit. Jeeps who have been squawking squawk-ing eight hours a day look like they become fighting men over night. They know it is not all a lot of foolishness fool-ishness no more and any boy in camp will attack a tank single handed hand-ed now if you just tell him there is a Japanese doll inside. As for me personally ma I got a clear picture of what the country is up against for the first time and I wonder now that I did not get the right slant long before this. I gess it was just because I got snatched so sudden from all the comforts of civilun life that I didn't see straight. I was soar over giving up a box 6pring mattress, a personal alarm clock and the right to do what I pleased. But Emperor Hotsy-Togo or whatever you call him woke me up like nobody's business. I am so soar now that I am sorry I ever applauded Japanese tightrope walkers. This war has all of a sudden become be-come a great exciting show, ma. It don't seem Just like a optical allusion al-lusion no more. All the tanks don't seem like they was just a few things being demonstrated by a auto salesman. sales-man. My rifle witch has just seemed something I wood like to have carried car-ried for me by a caddy has all of a sudden become my BUDDY! It's real and human. And my uniform even when it is wet and wrinkled now looks like the grandest uniform anybody could ever climb into. What has come over me I don't know for sure but I credit the Mikadoo with an assist. I gess you will have to forget about me being home for Christmas. But I know what kind of a mother you are and I gess you feel just like I do about what has happened. I have done a lot of wise cracking about being leased or lent but I don't care where they use me now. so long as it is where I can take a sock at the world's worst enemies Df today, the double-talk nations witch jab a knife in your kidney while asking what you want for Christmas. Well, I must close now. Do not worry. Everything will come out all right with the old Stars and Stripes on top. Your loving son, Oscar. P. S. I serpose pop is trying to get into the army again now. Tell him to forget it and stay home and look out for you as I will do enough Bghting for all three of us. THOUGHT ON FOOD It is the sad, unlucky fate Of some to have a diet; Each time they hear a friend's lost weight They ask him how, and try it. And yet, however fond and fair Their hopes at the beginning. They almost always find that they're More thinned against than thinning. thin-ning. Richard Armour. "Remember back before social security when people thought the way to be sure of a good living in their old age was to raise a lot of grateful sons and daughters?" asks Merrill Chilcote. DESERT SONG In Cunningham, Said Nazis, running, There's less of ham. And more of cunning. Richard Armour. The time to anticipate a war these days is when the peace conversations reach a height. . "Up to Pearl Harbor," said Elmer rwitchell today, "I never thought Drson Welles' famous broadcast would be topped in my lifetime." |