May 6, 1942
Fort Ord, California
Dear Folksies,
We arrived here at Ft. Ord on Monday at 10A.M. The troop train had been way ahead of time and consequently we were kept on a siding at Castroville (about eight miles from Ord) for almost five hours. Even at that, they unloaded us a half hour ahead of time and the trucks that were to meet us were not there yet.
However, we finally were met by Capt. Collie who is personnel officer plus holding some other positions in the unit. We were taken to our present barracks, which are very nice. Each man has a separate room with a nice large window. We spent our first few hours hammering nails in places we wanted them, fixing a few shelves and clothes poles to hang hangers on.
The barracks building is a 2-story affair with a washroom on each floor. A much nicer and more convenient set-up than at Lewis. My room is next to Serge’s and Bill Newsom’s and opposite Bob Treadwell’s, on the second floor.
Monday evening, several of us went to Del Monte where the medical convention was in full swing. I was with Bert Halter, Ed Blaisdel and Cy Johnson and we proceeded to bump into everybody we knew — all of whom knew that we were arriving!!
We finally slipped out at about midnight. We had until 1AM to be back here.
For the past 2-1/2 days we have been checking and organizing the material that we have in the warehouse — 4-1/2 freight car loads of materials for the hospital — much more supposedly coming from N.Y. in the next couple of weeks. Our warehouse is in a reconverted barn that had mules in it up until the end of last week. We have about 90 tons of stuff there and most of it is in heavy crates. The trouble is that so many of the crates aren’t labeled correctly and consequently we had to open up many of them; i.e. had the men open them while we check the contents. It was kind of fun because we learned what materials we will have to work with, etc.
Loads of love,
.
