USO, Field Inspection and Truck Driving School

Ralph writes March 14th on USO stationary of his first weekend pass in Austin, Texas. “…it sure is swell to get away from that place (Camp Swift) for awhile.” At several different points in the letter, he reports the economics of the weekend.
$.80 round-trip bus fare
$.50 a bed & place to shave in auditorium rented by American Legion
$.40 breakfast: 2 eggs (good ones), big slab of ham, 2 pieces toast, 3 slices
bread, jelly, and coffee

After securing a bed for the night, Ralph and two of his buddies went to a show and then to a dance at the USO. “When you come in the door here one of the senior hostesses meets you and frisks you for a bottle. They slap you everyplace you might have one, and even look under your hat. They’re awfully strict about bringing any liquor in here, and that’s the way it ought to be.” Ralph goes on to write that they have a fine facility and that the staff is willing to help you find out anything you want to know. As for the dance, he reports that they had a nice big dance floor and nice hostesses. “The only trouble was that there were either too many soldiers or too few girls. You could only dance about a dozen steps ‘til some one cut in, and it was so crowded you could only turn round and round in one place.”

After shaving and cleaning up on Sunday morning, Ralph had breakfast (“the first good meal I’ve had since I left home”) and then went to church at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church. “It surely was swell to go to church again.” He sent a card with a picture of the church that he was given and the program to Margie. Church would continue to be a key theme in Ralph’s letters as long as he was at Camp Swift. Later, there would be fewer opportunities to attend services.

Continuing in the letter of March 14th 1943, Ralph writes of his first full field equipment inspection. The picture above shows what it would have been like, though this is not one of Ralph’s photos, but one found on the Internet. Apparently, Ralph took no pictures during his training in the U.S. Here’s Ralph’s account of the inspection. “We had to make up a full pack and march out to a big open space and put up our tents and display the rest of our equipment in front of it. That stuff had to be displayed a certain way, according to a diagram in our manual. We had to memorize that diagram, because we weren’t allowed to use it out in the field. I passed all right, but I found out later that I had several things in the right place by pure accident. I was sure glad when it was over.”

He goes on to write about having started truck driver school the Monday before. The training is added to his already busy days, meeting from 6:30 to 8 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings. Though he complains about the loss of more of his free time, he clearly sees the advantage of becoming a truck driver. “Darn this idea of hiking around over the country, and breaking your back, and maybe your neck, too building bridges and digging trenches and fox holes when you can sit on your hind end in a truck and let some one else do the work.”