Gas Chamber

Ralph’s letter of April 11, 1943 starts with a lament. “I’m fit as a fiddle but a little tired. We’ve had a pretty hard schedule lately. I was on guard duty for the first time Monday night, and only got about 4 hours sleep. Then Tuesday night we had a night problem and didn’t get in ‘til 12:30.”

He goes on to tell the story of his experience going through the gas chamber, always a pretty traumatic exercise for trainees. “Thursday we went through the gas chamber. They have a tight building and fill it full of tear gas. We went in with our gas masks on, then they took us one at a time to the end opposite the door and made us take off the gas masks and walk to the door and outside. From the minute the masks came off you couldn’t see a thing. If you got off the course and couldn’t find the door they’d lead you out. Boy does that stuff ever burn your eyes! You never saw so many men crying at once in your life. It looked like a bunch of women at a funeral. The Lieut. Said if any of us had lost our best girl now was the time to take a good cry over it, because no one would know the difference. We had to march 3 or 4 miles to the gas chamber and then back.”

They had a full day the next day as well with an 18 mile hike with full field packs. Ralph took it in stride. “I didn’t mind that a bit though. We strung out in two columns, one on each side of the road, with about 10 yards between each man, and then just moseyed along real slow, and looked at the scenery. I didn’t get a bit tired until after we got back.”
Though there were times when he didn’t think much of Texas, Ralph spoke of its beauty this day. “The scenery down here is getting awfully pretty. Almost all the trees are clear out in leaf, and there are all kinds of the prettiest flowers growing everywhere. I saw whole fields full of bluebonnets. That’s Texas’ state flower, and they surely are beautiful and smell wonderful.”

The weather is another story. Ralph complains of the heat, saying that it is already as hot there as it would be the 4th of July back home. He sweats all day long. Apparently in response to a question from his mother, he goes on to explain that, thankfully, they don’t have to do their own laundry. They have $1.50 a month taken from their pay to have the laundry done, but they can send as much as they want. He also explains that the 15th of the month, they will switch to wearing their khaki (summer) uniforms. “The wool O.D.s are really hot this time of year.”