Letter from Clarence Williams to Gretchen Williams, April 25, 1945

Decided to fool you and write you a letter on my new type writer. One of the boys found what appears to be a brand new German portable so brought it to me. I had to do a little repairing as a couple of parts were slightly bent and the carriage would stick but it now works swell. It has several signs and symbols that are not on ours and the keyboard is slightly different in that the Z is where the Y should be.

I didn’t receive any mail from you today but did get a letter yesterday, your letter of April 13th. At the time you were waiting for the arrival of Charlotte and Otto and planning to go to Trentino’s for a drink. Boy that sounds familiar sure makes me wish I could have been there to go along. I am glad Bunny was still there as it would probably have been pretty dull for Otto not to have at least one of us old cronies to have a beer with. Of course I realize Charlotte is his main attraction which is as it should be and I hope the kids had plenty of time to theirselves.

We just had quite a thrill, heard the ack ack open up so rushed outside to see what the score was. Every night between 9:00 and 10:00 PM the Jerries send over a plane or two for scouting the area and for strafing who ever they can locate. They have nicknamed him bedcheck Charlie and look forward to seeing him every nite about the same time. Tonite he flew right over our building with the tracer bullets following him across the sky. Last night one came in so low over some tank units that he struck some wires and wrecked the plane.

Just listened to a news broadcast from the states stating they are going to discharge men 42 or older, thats encouraging dont you think. Ha! Only seven more years to go, I think if I was in that long they would have to keep me in a straightjacket.

The weather was beautiful today after a heavy frost last night. I hope it stays this way the next few days as it may make quite a difference in the length of the war. According to the news tonite the Russians have surrounded Berlin, I hope they can keep Hitler from escaping as it may help to end things a little sooner. We also heard Bob Hopes program which is the first for quite some time.

I received a letter from Earl White today, he is over here now also. He said they landed just last month and was still in France when writing on the 9th also stated they had been living in dugouts practically all the time. I wrote him quite some time back at Calvert, Texas addressing the letter to Ruth and asked her to forward some to Earl and I suspected he would be across by now.

Well, darling, guess this will have to be all for today as it is getting quite late and I’m running out of news.