52 Ancestors: Favorite Place - 1945

My Favorite Place seems to depend on my mood and what I'm doing at the moment.  And right now I'm immersed in transcribing letters that my mom wrote to my dad while he was in basic training in 1945 so I'll say this is currently my Favorite Place in Time.

Gordon Levy, 1945

I have so many of the letters Mom wrote to Dad starting in the summer of 1944 when he went away to college at Stanford University.  She was about to enter her junior year in high school and even though I don't have the letters that he wrote back to her (she, apparently, didn't have the pack rat gene), I can tell that their priorities were a little different.  

From his Army records, I've learned that he entered into active service on June 16, 1945 and separated on December 1, 1946 - more on that in later entries.

After nearly a one year gap in letters (did he lose the packrat gene for awhile?), she's back at it in September, 1945 when Dad was at Keesler Field, Mississippi.  I've surmised that he didn't like it so much there but I'm sure he was happy to hear from her every day.  She talked about what was going on at school - this person went out with that person, I made the square dance team, the football team won 7-0 - and added every. single. detail. about every one of her classes every day.  I've learned that she nearly failed Physics the first quarter of her senior year (she ended up with a B!), loved Trig, and also took Civics, English, and P.E.  She "scolded" Dad when she didn't receive a letter from him and longed for him to come home.  She shared her feelings about her friends, some of whom were boys, and I'll just leave it at that - some things are best left unshared.  At one point she talked about a dog named Butch who sat at her feet while she typed - could this be him?

Geraldine Martin, 1945

As I was preparing for this post, I pulled out the letters I'd stashed away that Dad wrote to my grandparents (remember, they were the King and Queen of packratting) while he was away at school and then in the military.  In just a few short minutes I've learned a lot more about his experiences so now that I'm finished transcribing Mom's letters, it's time to get started on his parents' letters.  

A few things stick out from the first few letters.

Upon his arrival at Keesler Field on June 28, 1945, he wrote to his parents:

Dearest Mom & Pop:

Well, well, well!!  Outside of the heat, this place isn’t as bad as everyone said.  But of course we just got here last night and haven’t seen anymore than our own barracks.  They don’t seem to know what to do with us yet so we just sit and wait.  Out of my two weeks of “battle” service, I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said we’ve sat & waited 13 of them.  Now I see why they call it a standing army.

From what I can gather, by listening to a million different guys who don’t know a thing but think they know it all, I think we’ll be in basic training for 35 days and have to stay on the post the first month.  After that almost everyone becomes an aviation mechanic.  But with something like 40,000 men here, there’ll have to be some other jobs open.  No one knows the actual story.

And then on July 1, he wrote:

We get up at the bright hour of 5 in the morning (3 o’clock your time) and get off about 5:30 at nite.  Our basic consists of from 30 to 60 phases of training (30-60 days) and we begin #1 tomorrow.  A five day bivouac in the hills comes in the twenties.  Then you either get classified or continue in advanced basic.  Nobody knows how we’ll be classified, but I do know that some will be sent to OCS (I think) and some are made pre-aviation cadets.  Others are made gunners, mechanics, etc.  Um-m how I would like OCS – now I see why everyone wants to be an officer.  We will be temporarily classified within two weeks after we take more tests.

Our class is still scattered through a bunch of barracks waiting to be put together.  Some of us are with a bunch of draftees from NY (over 30 yrs. old) who have the same training we have and will probably get pretty good jobs.  They are the “work or fight” bunch – mostly married and fathers.  I’d rather be with young fellows – I think we will.  A pre-aviation cadet is in charge of us, a private, so it’s not like being bossed by a sergeant.  There are about 60 in a class – two classes go through together.

This is going to be an interesting project so I'm off to tackle those now.  I'll report back when I've come up for air!