Letters to Lou

Dear Lou,

Here’s a change of address for you to note, Lou. I am now with the same organization, but in Camp Forrest, Tennessee instead of Meade. Naturally, it’s not what I’d call a change for the better since it will be an impossibility to see Judy except on a furlough. As far as her living near here there isn’t much of anything around here and besides, from the looks of things we may be on maneuvers and bivouac a great deal of our time here. This is definitely a maneuver camp and it’s very obvious. What a flat mud hole this place is! Mud that sticks like hell. The camp itself is very large, much larger than either Camp Stewart (which it is reminiscent of) or Fort Meade. We left the latter camp Friday Saturday morning at 1130 and arrived here 1.00 A.M. Monday. Then at 2 in the morning we had a little march of 4 ½ miles across camp to our new barracks – there wasn’t any transportation for us. The trip itself was swell, we had Pullmans to ride in, good meals all the way, we could sleep all we wanted to and read, write and draw. Most of us didn’t care when we would get to Forrest we were having such a good time without formations and various forms of “chicken shit.”

We have only been here a few days and we are getting things in order. And I learnt that beginning midnight of Jan. 29 I’m getting an eleven day furlough!!! Yeah man, that’s what I call a good furlough. I’ll probably be traveling about three days of that time but I’ll still have much more time at home than I’ve ever had before.

Today is the 20^th and I’m thinking of Ann. She is probably en route to you now. Boy, that is swell. I hope you will have a swell time as I’m sure you will.

In coming here by train I got many impressions of the trip. In my letters to Judy I’m painting these fleeting glimpses I had and it’s very interesting. Also I did other artwork on the train and also read the Dean of Canterbury’s latest book Secret of Soviet Strength which Willard gave me. I’m lending it out to some of the fellows who wanted to read it here.

I guess I’ll really go to town on artwork now since there won’t me [sic] much else to do. And I have plenty of equipment with me.

That is about all the news. Mail is beginning to come to us now from Meade so I hope soon I’ll be seeing one of your letters which gives me such a “[…]”.

Well, so long for now, gate, and don’t forget to give Ann a big kiss for me. Best of everything to the both of you.

Your pal,

Arthur