August 17, 1942 - Dear Audrey

Jan Palson

17 Aug 2026 — 7 min read

..."Hello it’s me".

Don't panic. The green ink will be back. He's got this new job that gives him time to miss Mom but not to retrieve the bottle left in the barracks. Having books would help although they do keep him quite busy. Just laundry sounds like an ordeal. Yes, Mr. Antheil - what to do? Four Roses is another whiskey brand. I can confirm I never had it in my oatmeal. I will verify with my siblings. Maybe we should have....

Original Letter

Transcript follows.

Transcript

For some context, War Updates follow the transcript. It includes the front pages of The Daily Evening Item from Lynn, Massachusetts (local to Fort Ruckman) and Mom's local Connecticut paper the Hartford Courant for additional news, plus the Women's Page so you're up on the latest recipes and styles, especially hats!

Research, learn, and support this work. Go to: Newspapers.com

August 17, 1942

Bat H - 9^th C.A., Fort Ruckman

Dear Audrey:

(No more ink in the pen and I can’t get over to the barracks to get some because we can’t leave these phones so I’ll have to finish this letter in pencil. Aren’t you getting sick of that green ink? I have a half of a bottle left too) I’ve borrowed the other fellows pen so now we can continue. I don’t like to write a letter in pencil. Well now that I’ve broken the ice this way, I don’t know what to say. It is always hard to start a letter. Sometimes I sit for a long time trying to think of something sensible to say and then get mad with myself and start off simply, Hello it’s me”. All I can think of is that Sunday has slipped by and I am glad. It brings me closer to you. The time might not drag so if I could only be sure of when I’ll be seeing you again. Everything around here is so indefinite. If they aren’t changing things around, we are expecting them to. Once again I hear the pass list has been changed and I hope my position on it has remained the same. I have a pass coming up this Thurs. if it hasn’t been changed and I want to see you so much. My intentions have been to save this one and take two days and then be able to really see you but I am getting real lonesome for you. With this new job I have plenty of time to just sit and think and most of it I use thinking of you. I went on at four o’clock this morning (what happens to me shouldn’t happen to a dog) and all I’ve done is sit here and think how wonderful you are. This can’t be so bad for these other married fellows because they don’t have such a nice wife as I do. So nice and soft and understanding too. Before I got this new job and was regular duty, I could go on a twenty-four hour pass feeling that if I wanted to take the chance I had all the following night to get back in. That is twenty-four hours officially and thirty-six unofficially if the occasion warranted it and seeing you was an occasion enough for me. Now I have to go duty at a certain time and so I have to be back at that time or suffer the consequences which can be hard.

Right now I am willing to suffer whatever consequences they can think of in order to see you for a little while. I love you and miss you so very much. (I guess I sound like a Boy Scout away at camp for the first time in his life). By Thurs. morning I hope my common sense has pushed this (I was going to say sudden desire to see you, but that would be wrong – quite wrong. This feeling is with me all of the time only most of the time I have control of it) push it aside so that I will feel up to waiting another ten days before seeing you. That will be around the end of the month. But it would be so nice to see you this week even if it is only for a few hours. I get use to one thing and then they change me. Just as I was getting use to a shovel – just getting the feel and swing of it and what happens. Now I sit down with earphones pressed to my ear, pushing a pencil. My back aches from so much unaccustomed sitting and my ears are sore from the earphones pushing against them. As soon as I get use to this, and oh yes, the g.d. hours, I wonder what they will find for me. It is a soft job. I’ll admit that it is one of the softest jobs on the fort, but I’m wondering if it won’t get monotonous after the newness has worn off. I could do some good reading if I could get some good books. We don’t have the library over here that we had at Banks. What a guy! Here there is a war on and he talks of libraries. What a large washing I did yesterday. Sun tans, fatigues, underwear, socks. The sun tans and fatigues came out all right but the rest is disappointing. The underwear have stains that won’t come out and they don’t look any too white and no matter how hard I scrub them. There are rust, moldy, grass, oil and pool chalk stains on them. Not on all of them but there is something on each one. And the socks. (Here we go into a discussion on how to wash socks. The correct method would be just the opposite from the method I use because I don’t have very good luck) I scrub like the devil and then when they dry out they are not soft like I expect them to be but stiff. I only wear them one day and so they can’t be dirty and so I think it’s because I don’t rinse them enough but I always try to. There Mr. Antheil, that’s my problem. What you suggest I do? Leave her and take my sixteen children with me.

But where can I go with no money and no friends? Besides I love my wife and if she didn’t beat me so much we could be such a lovely couple. When she gets mad I can’t do anything with her because she is so much larger than I. She tips the scales at 221 lbs. and has a kick like a mule. Do you think she still loves me? Do you think she is bringing up the children right by letting them have Four Roses on their oatmeal in the morning? I think it is too expensive and try to get her to buy Old Quaker but she always has her own way. Well writing you has pepped me up a little when I started this I was feeling pretty low and was beginning to feel sorry for myself. I was wondering why I didn’t jump the fence and go down and spend a couple of weeks with you. A couple of weeks would be wonderful with you. I wouldn’t ask for anything better than that. Wait a minute, if I start writing like that again I will begin to feel like that and that will never do. It is pretty near time for me to go off duty and I’ve spent half of the shift writing to you. Which means two hours and that is too long to spend hunched over writing to any girl. Especially one who is going to beat her husband and feed her kids whiskey for breakfast. It is raining today and I’m glad I got my clothes in last night. Oh, what troubles I have. No one else would have thought of that. Well darling, I’ll close now and go to breakfast. I love you very much and am hoping to see you soon.

Lots of love,

Leonard

Who's George Antheil - He wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper advice column titled "Boy Advises Girl". The relationship and lovelorn column ran continuously in various U.S. newspapers from 1937 through 1945. But more, he was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author, and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the sounds – musical, industrial, and mechanical – of the early 20th century. There's more on Wikipedia.

FUN FACT: In 1941, George Antheil and the actress Hedy Lamar developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used a code (stored on a punched paper tape) to synchronize frequency changes, referred to as frequency hopping, between the transmitter and receiver. It is one of the spread spectrum techniques that became widely used in modern telecommunications. This work led to their induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.