Still in Arkansas

June 2, 1943 finds Ralph still in Arkansas, though now writing from Hazen. With the flood waters receding, he is anxious to return to the relative comfort of Camp Swift. However, he takes a moment to reflect on the way his view of this area has changed.

"Everyone is getting fed up with the whole thing. As far as I am concerned, if we had our barracks and showers, etc. up here I wouldn't mind staying. Oh yes, and mail, too. The most of the other outfits have sent their boys' mail up here, but I guess the 147th has forgotten us."

"When I came through here in February on the way to Camp Swift I thought this was the most desolate Godforsaken place I had ever seen. Now, in the summer time it looks entirely different. Everything is green with cotton, corn, oats, and rice growing everywhere. They are cutting oats around here now. Most of the rice fields are flooded, but they flood them on purpose. They make ditches and ridges in all kinds of curlyque patterns all over the field, then pump water into them 'til the ground is all covered with water."

"This vicinity is great for hunting and fishing. Hundreds of thousands of tons of fish are trapped and sold here along the White River every year."

"The main reason I wouldn't mind staying here is the people. They have the Texas people beat forty ways from Sunday when it comes to friendliness, hospitality, and trying to show you a good time, and for the ones who are interested, there are scads of the prettiest girls you ever saw and the friendliest. Most of the boys are taking advantage of the situation at every opportunity, but I'm saving all my loving for the sweetest girl in the world who's waiting back there in Columbus. I get so lonesome for her I can hardly stand it sometimes, and not being able to hear from her and the rest of you makes it worse yet."

"I'm sorry I haven't written more regular, but I just didn't have time. I'm usually busy through the day and we can't write after dark for we don't have any lights."

"Our bunch has been doing nothing but run motor boats and haul rocks for the last week or more. It takes about all of us, though, for there has to be a gang at the rock quarry at Little Rock to load the trucks and another one at this end to unload them, and it takes a bood many to run the motor boats and dive the trucks."

"Last week we were hauling rocks for a few days on the Arkansas River levee below Pine Bluff. They hauled day and night. I went down Sat. morning, loaded rock 'til about 3 o'clock, then another fellow and I got a truck and drove it the rest of the afternoon and all night. We got back into camp at 6:45 Sun. morning. I hadn't been in bed an hour when they announced that we could have the day off and go to town and stay 'til 10:30 that night. So I piled out of bed and got ready and went to town. Villars and another boy and I went to Little Rock. They took us out to Hazen in trucks and we could go anywhere we wanted to from there. I guess I forgot to mention that we moved to a new location last week. It's about 15 miles from the main highway and about half of it is mud road, and we've been having a lot of rain lately. So about the only way we can get to town is for them to take us out in trucks."

"The first thing we did when we got to Little Rock was to rent a bathroom in a hotel for a dollar and we all three shaved and took our first bath since we left Camp Swift."

"Villars has a great aunt who lives in Little Rock. He hadn't seen her for 10 or 12 years and didn't know for sure whether she was still living. We finally found her address in the city directory and went out to see her. We stayed there for supper. We got to sit on a real davenport in a living room, too, and it sure felt good."

"It's been plenty hot here the last couple of days. There's a pretty good breeze today, but I'm afraid it's going to blow up another rain and that means more mud. It's just getting dried off from the last one. The mosquitoes and chiggers are fierce here, especially at night. They almost carry us off. We have big tents to sleep in now instead of sleeping in the trucks. When it rains the tents get full of water, and there's water and mud all over the place. I sure hope we get out of here pretty soon and they have a nice furlough waiting for me when I get back to Swift."

"Well, that's about all I can think of now. Say "Hello" to all the folks for me."

"Love"
"Ralph"

Biscoe, Arkansas

"Well, I'm still in Arkansas." So begins Ralph's letter dated May 20, 1943. He is in Biscoe, 14 miles southwest of Brinkley and 60 miles northeast of Little Rock. The Cache River is to the east, while the White River is just to the west. Ralph goes on to describe the challenges at hand.

"We didn't find any flood here when we arrived, but there is one now. The first thing we saw was a dust storm. I thought we had a lot of dust in Texas, but it's mild to what they have here. We got here ahead of the flood, and our job was to hold it back. They have a levee here about 15 or 20 miles long and we're trying to make it hold. There's a lot of land under water now, but nothing to what it would be if the levee let go....it's the White River, and right now it's a raging son-of-a-gun."

"We are camped in a pasture field just outside of Biscoe, a little hick town of about 4 or 5 hundred, of which about two thirds are negroes. We are about five miles from the river, and right now, that's close enough. We didn't do anything much Sat. and Sun. but we've been busy since then. I've been pretty lucky, so far, in getting an easy job. Mon. and Tues. I rode up and down the river in one of these big 21 foot ponton (sic) boats, with an outboard motor on it. We were hauling sandbags from a big river steamer and scattering them up and down the levee. We also hauled men, tools, chow, and everything else. It was a lot of fun. But yesterday was my lucky day. Seven of us took four outboard motors and a boat down to the Cache River, a small tributary of the White, to repair and test them. Well, there wasn't very much the matter with them, and we had them fixed in a couple of hours, so we spent the rest of the day riding up and down the river. At dinner time some of the natives told us there was a club house about four miles down the river, so we went down. They weren't operating a public place, but they said they'd fix u up something to eat. It was man and his wife and he's a fisherman. He asked us if we'd like some fish. We said "sure", so we all got in his old river boat and went out to some of his nets. We got four fish that averaged about fifteen inches long and six wide. His wife fried them in corn meal, and made corn bread sticks. We had, besides all the fish we could hold, green beans, some ham and eggs, lettuce, ice tea, and a few other things. We sat down around the table to eat, just like home."

Ralph goes on to describe life along the river. "They have a raft tied in front of their house with a building on it. They had moved everything they needed out there and the rest upstairs. If the water gets three feet higher their house will be flooded. He said in 1927 the water was knee deep in their upstairs. We carried their ice box out on the raft for them, and that's all the pay they would take. I'd have given them five dollars for that meal, willingly, if they'd asked for it, but they wouldn't take a cent. I'm going to drop them a card or letter some of these days, and tell them again how much we appreciated that meal. His name is Ray Allsup, Brasfield, Ark."

The living conditions are not the best for the troops, but providing a taste to prepare for worse conditions to come. "I don't know how long we'll be here yet, but I hope we go back to Camp Swift before long. If I don't get a bath pretty soon and some clean clothes, I'll start to rot. All we have to wash out of is our canteen cups, and it's darn inconvenient. I've only shaved twice since I left camp, Sat. night and last night. "

One night, Ralph gets a taste of life in the South and the place of negroes in that system. "We had a little excitement here in town the other night. A negro pulled a knife on the constable, and after he had told the negro three times to drop it, the constable shot and killed him. No one seemed to think much about it. A 'nigger's' life doesn't amount to much here. They shoot one every once in a while to keep the others quiet. They outnumber the white people about two to one, and they get kind of cocky sometimes."

Ralph also provides some insights into the economics of the times. "The business people in this and surrounding towns are sure making money. They've raised the prices on some things such as beer and cigarettes. They usually run out of everything like that early in the evening. The grocery keepers are asking all their customers for their extra ration points, so us boys can buy what we want. They've been getting plenty of them, too. I think it's pretty nice of them. The first night we were here, Villars and I decided we wanted some cheese, so we walked in the store and ordered a quarters worth. The man asked us if we had any points, and before I thought, I said, 'What kind of points?' I had forgot there was such a thing. He let us have the cheese, though on his own points."