Letter from Clarence Williams to Gretchen Williams, May 14, 1945

Well honey for the first time since being over here I can tell you exactly where I am. we are in a very small community by the name of Kirchbichl, Austria and it is about fifty miles North and slightly East of Innsbruck so if you glance at a map you can get an idea of about where we now are.

This is the first I have written for three days, the first day we traveled most of the time, yesterday I was sick but am feeling some better now. I had a terribly upset stomach and couldn’t keep anything down. Today I havn’t eaten much, just havn’t felt hungry but have managed to keep it inside. I felt as though I had been poisoned from the cramps in my stomach but still don't know the reason for same. Both Cap’t Martin and Cap’t O’Brien checked me, gave me some pills and told me to go to bed and I got up feeling quite a lot better. I havn’t had any mail from you for several days I suppose because of our constant moving. We covered quite a long distance moving from our location in Germany near Wasserberg down to our present location. We are now completely surrounded by the Bavarian Alps and are they ever beautiful. I hope some day to be able to bring you over here on a vacation tour of this country. As yet we don’t know how long we untill be over here, today we put in applications for seef[?] study and group   teaching courses. I put in for Business Principles and Management and also Fundamentals of Advertising. If we have to be around a couple months, I just as well have some thing to study however I know I won’t be able to get interested in it for thinking about home. Each and every day I am getting more disgusted.

I sent some pictures in today to get them developed and surely hope they turn out good. If so I’ll send them to you, they are mostly of scenery and places we have stayed around Germany.

I received the box you sent me from Williams and Klorns[?] containing the cookies, candy and gloves. Thanks a lot honey they were really good. I still have some of them left to pick on when hungry.

The weather here is still wonderful and during the day it gets almost hot. Even the evening aren’t as cool as one would expect for all the snow here in the mountains.

I am enclosing a few post cards that I picked up along the line. The bridge shown on the one of Wurzburg was destroyed however the Engineers repaired it for use. Its the town that had all the champagne in the underground tunnels. Our planes had dropped incendiary bombs over the city and when we came through it looked almost like a ghost city. Practically every building in the city was gutted by fire that left withing[?] but the walls standing. It apparently was quite a beautiful city at one   time. Wasserburg was the town we were in more recently where we stayed in the Yale Professor’s home. It hadn’t been too badly damaged as the fighting had practically ceased by that time. The town of Tegernsee we havn’t been in but it so typical of these Austrian towns, thot I would include it to give you an idea of how pretty these little towns are. They really go in for flowers and so many of the buildings have scenic paintings on the outside walls.

Well darling guess thats about all for today except to say I love you and miss you terribly.