August 26, 1943

Dear Mom, Pop, Avis, Shirley and Marie

My instructor took us all out for dinner today. I believe that he is the only one out of the whole crew on the field that did this. He's a grand guy. It was too bad that I didn't start out with him. I don't believe that I would have had trouble, He's a very easy going guy. This is very rare as far as instructors go here at Basic. He stayed with us a couple of hours and shot the breeze like any regular guy would. This was the first class that he's had. He only lost one man. This wouldn't have happened, but the kid had over 70 gigs and during my phase of training if we got more then seventy we'd be eliminated. The kid had more hours on the ramp than the air.

My instructor leaves for home tomorrow. That means we won't see him again.

Did I tell you I took single engine training? This by the way doesn't mean I'll get it but you usually get what you ask for.

We had out intramural today. Our squadron won first prize. It's an air show put on by the three different squadrons. It's then judged by the higher ups. All they do is give the squadron a plaque to hang up in the flight room.

We don't know exactly where we are going, but Tony and I will end up in Mission Texas. It's somewhere down by the Gulf coast near the Mexican border.

The Advance school in Lubox has only washed out one man in the history of the school but we've broken all records as far as washouts are concerned the the schools that we've attended so far. There's no reason we can't do it in Advance.

We had a gas alarm this afternoon, It lasted two hours. All this time we were supposed to be wasting gas masks and it's hotter than hell. We have a heel of a tactical officer that runs around peeking in the window to see if we have them on. He made some of the boys take their masked off and is they weren't sweating he gigged them. Matter of fact he gigged the whole barracks next to us because none of them were sweating after the gas alert was over. It's pretty rough when you get hell for not sweating and then during an inspection if you sweat and your clothes get wrinkled you got gigged for sweating. You just can't win. I'm not kicking, I haven't been on the ramp yet.

I've got better than 90 hours in a 450 horsepower engine. In civilian life this costs about $25 an hour.

I got a letter from Charlie. He and Fred are other getting into this outfit. It'll be a good deal for them. They'll go through as student officers. No drill or PT or any of the stuff that we go through. He said if they got any time off he and Fred were coming down to see me. I hope so. Their outfit is moving to Kentucky.

Love and Kisses

Advance.....Ahhhhh