POST FORTY-NINE (25 Mile Hike Tomorrow) 28 Jun 1943

June 28, 1943

Monday

Dear Mom,

     It is now 6:30 and I've just finished K.P. I'm on for a week. You see it's just my turn. The hard part is I make a 25 mile hike to-night in 8 hours or less. Start at 9 o'clock, have until 5 in the morning. Gee, it's sure going to be a long night but when I think of coming home it will make it easier. I told you I just came off from K.P., well I came away with something that may help a little to-night - two oranges and a lemon. You can't drink water. It'll knock you out. It is quite cool to-night. A little wind blowing, that will help a lot. 

     I've lost 10 pounds the last few weeks. I got weighed Saturday. 

     How did Eugene's sweater fit?

     I want to get a wink of sleep before I go on the hike so won't write much to-night. 

     I'll be on my way home before the 10th of July. I'll let you know.

                                    Good night Mom

                                     Love to All

                                          Charles

P.S. I'll be thinking of you to-night while my feet grow sore.

 The Battle of the Atlantic

Dispersed from Convoy OS-49, the British steam merchant Vernon City was torpedoed and sunk by the U-172, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Carl Emmermann, south-southeast of St. Paul Rocks in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Of the ship’s complement, all 52 survived and were picked up by the Brazilian coastal tanker Aurora M. The 4,748 ton Vernon City was carrying coal and coke and was headed for Montevideo, Uruguay.

British steam merchant Vernon City

Kapitänleutnant Carl Emmermann

Allied Submarine Warfare in the Pacific

The submarine USS Peto (SS 265), commanded by Lt. Commander William T. Nelson, torpedoed and sank the Japanese hydrographic-meteorological research ship Tenkai (Maru) between Truk and Rabaul.

USS Peto (SS 265) submarine

The wreck of the Japanese Tenkai (Maru)

West Coast of Rota, Mariana Islands

The submarine USS Tunny (SS 282), commanded by Lt. Commander John A. Scott, torpedoed and sank the Japanese auxiliary gunboat Shotoku Maru off the west coast of Rota, Mariana Islands.

   Submarine USS Tunny (SS 282)

Japanese auxiliary gunboat Shotoku Maru

25 Mile Hike or Ruck Marches

KP will always be somewhere, some miserable GI will be pushing a broom or scrubbing a mess hall floor or peeling potatoes or washing pots and pans or cleaning a grease trap or serving on a chow line or unloading supplies on a dock or dusting rafters or filling salt and pepper shakers or doing any one of a dozen other tasks.

The military cannot bear to let KP die. It accomplishes many things at once. 

KP affords cheap labor. It can be used as a punitive measure to discipline an unruly body. It serves as a kind of shock treatment to scour from a raw recruit's mind any notion he has civilian rights. It inspires a kind of bonding among poor souls toiling in the kitchen. It makes a man appreciate all the more a one-day pass from bondage.