Camp McCoy in the Words of My Uncle: POST SEVENTEEN (The Letter of Laughter) 20 Feb 1943

Feb 20, 1943

Sunday

Dear Mom & Dad,

Hope you both have your chin up. How are Eugene and Helen? Helen will be O.K. after the shock is over.(I have no idea what type of shock his sister is dealing with.)

When Helen (friend) stopped coming up I guess you lost your interest in cactus plants. Ha! Ha! (I remember my grandmother having a very tall cactus that would flower once every so often.) Ma, all you need on your drawings of your cactus plant is a little painting. That picture of the sunset. The sun is higher up than I thought.

We had 4 or 5 warm days last week. They say spring comes about the middle or last of March up here.

I hear we are going to move before April 1.

The soft coal they burn up here has a lot of gas to it. The smoke is yellow. With so much cloudy weather the smoke hangs close to the ground. When we have a few warm days the snow is so black you would never know it is snow. Different coal then we have in the East. It has a lot of sulfur in it. (types of coal)

Anthracite: The highest rank of coal. It is a hard, brittle, and black lustrous coal, often referred to as hard coal, containing a high percentage of fixed carbon and a low percentage of volatile matter.
Bituminous: Bituminous coal is a middle rank coal between subbituminous and anthracite. Bituminous usually has a high heating (Btu) value and is the most common type of coal used in electricity generation in the United States. Bituminous coal appears shiny and smooth when you first see it, but look closer and you may see it has layers.
Subbituminous: Subbituminous coal is black in color and dull (not shiny), and has a higher heating value than lignite.
Lignite: Lignite coal, aka brown coal, is the lowest grade coal with the least concentration of carbon

Got my other mill paper to-day. It has my name in it.

I sent Joy a card. I didn't know if Joy Hamblen would or could cash a money order. That is why I sent the order to Windham.

Yes, Clarence Hanscom is in the same camp. I lost him for about 3 weeks. Now he is on the same Company street as me. Sometimes it is a week before I see him. He is in the 12th Field Artillery Battalion. I'm in the 15th Field Artillery Battalion. But he did come over to-day about 10 o'clock and brought a letter. Guess who from Ha Ha, did we have a good time. The letter was from Fred Grosbeck. Now you have a good laugh. Clarence used to kid him about Lizzy Read. He wrote he was worried about Lizzy up there in the cold all alone. He said she needed a man but couldn't find the right one. He said he was doing well staying single. Ha! Ha! what fun. Do you want to know whose having a baby? It's no joke. Really it's fun to have a letter from him. He told something about Boston and called it the Bean city. (Boston, Massachusetts is called Beantown. According to Boston-Online.com, back in colonial days, a favorite Boston food was beans baked in molasses for several hours. Sailors and traders called it "Beantown" while the locals did not refer to their city by that nickname.) He asked something about me so when Clarence writes back I'm going to send him a few lines. Boy oh boy Ha! Ha!

I got my income tax papers O.K. Thanks. I walked guard duty last week from 4:30pm one day until 4:30am the next. It was cold and the wind blew hard. (We know that will be preparing him for the winter months in the Adrienne in the ETO.) As I walked my post early in the morning I had plenty of time to think. You may be sure I kept thinking of you folks at home. Tell Eugene to keep up his courage. I suppose Helen's courage is O.K. now. The south will soon move north. Get it. (Her boyfriend Joey will be returning from Florida soon.)

Guess this about all for today. Love to all and keep praying.

Love

Charles

P.S. How about these jokes?

^^Feb 16 Withdrawing Afrika Korps reaches Mareth-line in North Africa

^^Feb 16 Sign on Munich façade: "Out with Hitler! Long live freedom!" done by "White Rose" student group, caught on 2/18, beheaded on 2/22

^^Feb 16 World War II: The USSR reconquers Kharkov.

^^Feb 17 Adolf Hitler visits Field Marshal Erich von Manstein's headquarters in Zaporozje, Ukraine and stays until the 19^th. Erich von Manstein (24 November 1887 – 9 June 1973) was a prominent commander of Nazi Germany's World War II army (Heer). In 1949 he was tried for war crimes in Hamburg, was convicted of nine of seventeen charges and sentenced to eighteen years in prison. He served only four years before being released.

Field Marshal Erich von Manstein

^^Feb 17 NY Yankee Joe DiMaggio enlists into the US army.

Joe DiMaggio

^^Feb 19 German tanks under General Major Karl Buelowius attack Kasserine Pass, Tunisia. Karl Robert Max Bülowius (2 March 1890 – 27 March 1945) was a German Army officer who served during the First World War and the Second World War. He also served eleven non-consecutive years for the Weimar Republic during the interwar period which began in 1919 and ended on September 1939.