May 15, 1942
Fort Ord, California
Dear Folksies,
As you no doubt gathered from my request for some of my communicable disease notes, we are at last doing something at least vaguely connected with the practice of medicine. We have to teach the enlisted men, by giving a series of lectures. Some of the surgeons lectured to them this week and miscellaneous subjects have been assigned to the rest for work-ups, though all won’t lecture on the subjects they work up. We are having uniform outlines so that all men get taught the exact same thing and we won’t have one group taught one thing and another taught slightly differently.
We are also hearing talks of one kind or another presented so far by the 1st Med. Regt. One was on the sulfa drugs. That was a good talk but gave us nothing we didn’t know. The other lecture was on Australia, by a man who has never been there but who got what little he told us from books and from a few letters from a man with whom he corresponds.
They have asked our group to contribute beginning next week and I think Roy Cohn will be the first with talks about his experiences in India. If our group can’t provide better and more interesting talks than we have heard from the 1st Med. Regt so far we will most certainly give up.
Yesterday noon I was sitting close to the dining room door so that I could hear the telephone ring when you phoned. It was certainly good to hear your voices.
Loads of love,
.
