A Farm Kid Joins the Marines
Dear Ma and Pa,
I am well. Hope you are. Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before all of the places are filled.
I was restless at first because you get to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m. But I am getting so I like to sleep late… Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot, shine some things and have some warm up exercise. There ain’t no hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing to do before breakfast.
If your old enough to be a man you have to shave, but even that is not so bad, there’s warm water. Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food, but tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by a couple of city boys that live on coffee. Their food, plus yours, will hold you until noon when you get fed again. It’s no wonder these city boys can’t walk much.
We go on “route marches,” which the platoon sergeant says are forced walks to harden us and get us conditioned. If he thinks so, it’s really not my place to tell him different. A “route march” is about as far as it to our mailbox at home. The city guys get bad blisters on their feet and then we all have to ride back in the trucks.
The Sergeant is like a school teacher. He nags a lot. The Captain is like the school board telling the Sergeants what to do. Majors and Colonels just ride around and frown,but they don’t bother you none.
This next will kill Walt and Elmer with lots a laughing. I keep getting medals for shooting. I don’t know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and it don’t move, and it ain’t even shooting at you like the Higgett boys do at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don’t even load your own cartridges, they come in boxes…
Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. You get to wrestle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, they break real easy. It ain’t like fighting with that ole bull at home. I’m about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from over in Silver Lake. I only beat him once… He joined up the same time as me, but I’m only 5’6″ and 130 pounds and he’s 6’9″ and near 300 pounds dry.
Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before all the other fellers get onto this setup and come stampeding in.
Your loving daughter, Alice
(Thanks to Uncle Fred for passing this along. I thought it was cute enough to share, and was too tired to come up with anything myself tonight after a full day of doing inductive Bible studies, study questions, synopsis posts and prayer journals…)
