Letter from Clarence Williams to Gretchen Williams, Feburary 10, 1945

Gee honey, I hit the jackpot in letters today. Received twelve in all, ten from you and one each from Dorothy K and the Dr. Millers. Certainly had a variation in the past mark dates ranging from Jan 4 to Jan 30. I have now received one for every day in January with the exception of about 4 days.

I was very happy to hear you were so thrilled with the roses. You see I read one of your later letters and all that you stated in it about the flowers was that the buds were opening up. Today I get the one of Jan 4 really telling me about them.

This is the first chance I have had to write you in several days due to the fact we have been moving. I can tell you now that we landed in Southern France at Marseilles and our camp site was about 15 miles from that location. That was the large city I referred to in my letter. The smaller city we visited was Aix which is pronounced X. The night before we left our old site we visited the Red Cross for coffee and cookies, a small piece of cake and all the coffee you want to drink for 5 franc’s or 10¢. After that we had a bridge game with three of us boys and the hostess who was a girl from Px. She was very happy to get to play as she stated the last she had the   privilege was months ago in Africa.

Regarding Lupa, Dan and Richie, I haven’t seen them for over a week. Sol I see every day since I am now living with the boys in Personnel. We have a pent house apartment (5 rooms) including our red, blue and green rooms. Ha! Seriously tho, we are living in an old house with no furniture of course and sleeping on the floor in our sleeping bags but it is heaven compared to those pup tents. Our food in again wonderful after living on rations the past few days. We got a couple stoves and electricity for lights today so will soon be very snug.

So Mary and Fran are moving back to Mann’s. No doubt Mary will be much happier. I hope Fran doesn’t get sent to P.O.R.[?] I think that is much worse than being shipped with fellows whom you know.

I was glad to hear that Elsie found my knife as I have had that for several years. However I would prefer you keep it for the present as I still have the one J & R gave me. They are almost a necessity too. I have also used the big one several times and find it very handy for opening cans.

Honey, you must be a whiz at guessing dates. Will you kindly write me the date the war will end. Ha! Make it real soon I hope.

Well darling, think I will close for now and take a real good old bath in my helmet. Perhaps I can write more later as I am C.Q. tonite.