Letter from Clarence Williams to Gretchen Williams, October 29, 1945

This is pretty fancy paper for the Red Cross to be issuing don't you think honey. I see no reason why I should use my own as long as they have some available and believe me I feel I have earned every damn thing I get from this place. I am getting more disgusted each day I am here but think surely we will ship out of here Thursday or Friday. Tomorrow I am on detail again or what is known as K.P. pusher. The mess Sgt. tells me the job to be done and I get the men and tell them what to do. They feed a lot of men at this mess so I will have about forty K.P.'s to keep track of.

I went into Namur yesterday afternoon with a couple of the boys.   It is quite a pretty little town and we enjoyed just walking around and looking it over. I also took four or five pictures just as a remembrance of the place and bought a few picture postcards. We walked until we got tired and hungry and then went to a hotel for, believe it or not, a steak, french fried potatoes and plenty of sliced tomatoes. Also had hard rolls but no butter. The steak was rather small and thin but really tasted wonderful and they gave us more french fries then we could eat. It is more like the states here than any place I have been over here. The stores are well stocked and have almost everything imaginable. Of course yesterday being Sunday most of them were closed. I saw some beautiful Brussels Lace in the windows but like every place else it is rationed and required points to buy. I did buy a nice pipe for Pop and hope he likes it. I wanted to get him one of those long stemmed ones from Bavaria but was unable to locate any for sale. After eating the steak, I bought a huge bunch of grapes, think they were the largest grapes I have ever seen and they were very good. We seldom get fruit and those are the first I have had since being over here. Later in the evening we had cold waffles with whipped cream dropped in the little holes and with two dippers of ice cream on top. Can you imagine such a conglomeration? The place was filled with G.I.'s and that dish is called the G.I. Special. It tastes better   than it sounds however I couldn’t sleep worth a damn last nite and had horrible dreams. We were home and in bed at 9:30 and were completely worn out from the walking. Things are very expensive and our dinners were about $3.25 each. I priced a nice black leather bag in one shop and it was something over 3000 Franc's or about $65.00 so I decided against that of course.

I went to the show tonite and saw part of "Cinderella Jones." It was silly so I walked out in the middle and came here to the club to write you instead, I had planned to write you after the show but felt I was wasting my time when it was no good.

Well honey thats about all the news for today. Since I have to get up at 5:45 think I better say Good-nite and turn in early—