October 30, 1943

Sat. Oct. 30, 1943

Dear Mother & All:-

I received your letter several days ago and as you know I was glad to hear from you. I didn't have time then to write to you so I'll do it this evening. I wrote to Freddie it will be two weeks ago tomorrow. I also sent him a folder of this camp but so far I never did hear from him. I guess maybe he is too busy to write. I sent Henry & Leona a folder to. Did they ever get it? So John Lee wants to get Freddie back. I guess he finds out he can't along so good without him. He should have thought of that sooner. I guess Clara is back from her trip by now. How did she like it?

I got a letter from Dora and she tells me she went to work over at Western. She is a inspector and is to start out at 55 cents a hour. I guess nearly everyone in Staunton works over there. Has she been up to see you lately?

I done real well out on the rifle range when we were firing our M-1 rifles. I tied with another fellow for first place in my platoon which has 60 men. I was about 4th in my company. Out of a possible score of 210 I made a score of 186. The highest score made was 191. So I became an Expert. That wasn't so bad was it figuring I never did shoot a gun much before. Out of my Company which has about 180 men there was only 28 of us to be Experts. We are suppose to get some kind of a metal if the government still issues them. From the picture in the book the metals look real nice. Hope I get one. Monday we are going out to the range again to shoot another rifle for record. it is called a "Carbine Rifle." It is small and light. It weighs only 5 lbs. and is about a yard long. Its barrel is only 18 inches long. It isn't as accurate a gun as our M-1's as it has no windage or elevation adjustments. Hope I can do as well with it as I did with the other rifle.

Most of the fellows went away on week end passes. I never have left the camp yet. I couldn't very well anyhow this week if I would have wanted to as I have guard duty tomorrow evening. That will be my second time since I've been here. My hands got alright again. They didn't bother me so awful much. Next time I'll try and let some one else do all the dish washing.

I guess you have a lot of work cleaning up the yard and lot after the frost. We don't have any leaves to fall here as the trees are nearly all pine trees. It gets down to about 45 degrees here at nights. We put up our stoves several days ago and had a fire in it about 2 nights now. We haven't had any rain now for a while.

Well I have 5 weeks of my basic training in now with 12 more weeks to go. I should get a T/4 or T/5 rating when I'm thru as this is a special training course I'm taking. We are in the communication section and it is up to us fellows to wire up telephones so that messages can be sent. I got in this as I had some experience with wire work at the mine. As I told Freddie in the letter I wrote him before he left that the more you tell them about the experience you had the better chance you have of getting something a little better.

Well I told you all I know so I'll close and hope to hear from you real soon. I got a card from H. Kuehner Thursday.

Gus


Dad writes that "John Lee wants to get Freddie back." John Lee was a partner at Martin Lee Ice & Coal Co. Henry & Leona are Dad's brother Henry and his wife Leona, who lived in Staunton. Dad closes this letter by telling his mother about the card he received from Harry Kuehner, the Chief of the Staunton Volunteer Fire Department.