Pvt. W.D. Johnson Jr. 34945847
G. Co. 26th. Inf.
Apo # 1 c/o Postmaster
New York, N.Y.
Feb 17, 1945
Germany
Dearest Mother & Dad:
Mom, I received two letters from you today addressed to my first provisional address and one addressed to the hospital. I’m hoping that all the other letters you sent to the hospital will start catching up to me now. Your letters today were dated Dec 7th, 10th and Jan 20th so you can see that before long you can figure that most of your letters will have caught up with me.
I’m wearing my new sox today and they are grand. They are so much more comfortable than most of the G.I. sox and are really good on my feet.
In several of your letters you have asked me to request something for you to send me. Honey, there are very few things that I can really use in the way of personal articles. We have to carry about everything we own with us and considering our pack, rifle, ammunition and other gear it just isn’t possible to carry much else. Too, the Army gives us everything we need, including cigarettes which we get without charge. Every week or so we get a “candy ration” which is usually a few Hershey bars. We get hard candy out of our C rations and we have a ration which we call a D ration and which is a large chocolate bar; hard, concentrated vitamins. Despite this, we get little enough sweets to satisfy the average yen for sweets. That boils my needs down to soft candies & cake and those hardly stand shipment. So you see, it just about eliminates everything. Louise said she sent me a box of Mary Ball candy. Now that is a gift, if it gets here. It is of the variety I could enjoy so I would like that.
How about getting a box of that Mary Ball candy that they put up to mail to service men and send it to me? Louise can tell you how to go about getting it from B’ham. It surely would be appreciated. I still can’t get over being pleased at receiving my Christmas box. I had given up hope that any boxes would reach me so you can imagine what a pleasant surprise it was.
Mom, I surely enjoy your accounts of Julie’s sayings. That observation about the Lord talking to somebody else when you lost your purse was pretty keen. I surely do miss the little rascal.
Dad, I’m glad you are getting some good out of my clothes. I’ve trimmed so, as you saw when I was home, that I hope it’ll be a few years before I’m fat enuf again to wear them. I wear a 32 waist now.
Be sure and write me the news of Macey as soon as you find out what they’re going to do to him.
Mom, you asked about my volunteering. In one sense of the word, I did, but you ask Louise about it and she can tell you the whole story. I presume you have reference to my original entrance into the Army. I’ve tried to write as much as possible these last few days because it probably won’t be long before I’ll hit another period when I can’t write for a week or two. As I’ve said before, when you hit a dry spell on letters, don’t worry as those times will occur frequently as we move around. But don’t let that stop the letters from home. They are wonderful, and there’s just nothing to equal a letter from home.
Please remember me to Dixie and Grandma and thank them again for the nice hnkfs. They were mighty sweet to think of me.
Dad I hope all is well with you and your business and I hope the hay fever doesn’t bother you this spring. Don’t work too hard.
Louise says “hope” is an overworked word in her vocabulary and I realize I use it a lot too. But its a fine thing and is what keeps us going so I don’t mind. Take care of yourselves and pray for the end of the war and everything will work out ok. Love always David Jr.