November 16, 1943

Dear Wilma and Bill:

I’ve changed my address again and I guess it will be permanent for a while now for regardless of where we go we will get our mail through the Fleet Post Office.

I’m still in the States but we are supposed to leave most anytime. This is more or less a commando outfit and we will probably be stationed on some island in the S. Pacific.

They issued us heavy shoes packs and green jungle uniforms and a little later we will be issued Carbine rifles and bowie knives and helmets. Our unit consists of around five hundred men.

I don’t know exactly what my duties will be yet but it will be connected with athletics some way, probably recreation work.

We were told to buy enough tooth brushes and paste to last a year or eighteen months and we have to send all our heavy clothes home. That is the reason I thinnk it will be the S. Pacific. I wish I had some way of telling you when I do get there but I guess I will have to hint and you will just have to try to guess.

Aline and another nurse in Salem are coming out to Los angeles to a larger hospital sometime in December but I guess by the time they get out here I will be gone.

No, I don’t know what kind of a present you could send. I will probably be gone in a couple of days and food would spoil and I just can’t think of a thing I could use so just wait till I get back if you want too.

I don’t know whether we will get any more liberty in the States or not so I may have to send you the money to get Tom a present for me.

Well, it’s about time to muster so I guess I better stop.

Write often.

Love
Elmer