Letters Home: "We Crawled 80 yds On Our Back And Belly With Machine Gun Fire Overhead"

February 19, 1952
Fort Knox, KY


Dear Mom, Dad and all,

I got the letter with the $5.00. I got a pkg. from M_ quite a while ago. It had cookies, home made candy and apple and orange in it. It sure was good. [1]
      I saw the same show you saw quite a while ago The Blue Veil. I guess it was about a woman adopting a kid.  I see Jim and Leslie almost everyday. They are O.K.
I don’t see Lowell any more. He must be through Basic.
      You can tell R_ that when he gets the skirt to lay it aside and I will put it on when I get there. [2]  4 more weeks. We get Fri. Sat. Sun off. Monday morning at 5:00 in the morning we leave for bivouac. That will be for 2 weeks. I might not get to write too often but we will get mail call every night. If we have the right kind of weather it will be fun to camp out.
      We sure put in a rough day today. We didn’t get up too early but had a early dinner and went out on the infiltration course. We crawled 80 yds on our back and belly with machine gun fire over head. About every 20 yds was barbwire about 6 inch off the ground. I sure was glad when that was over. We did it three times. Once with no gun fire, once in the daylight, and again at dark. [3]  The last time they used tracer bullets. Nobody got hit, but it about killed some of the fat guys to get through.
      I got this letter from my landlord in Madison so I might answer it someday. She sure will be surprised. Ha!  To find out I’m in the army and that J_ is married. I guess I will have to sign off for now.

Love,
V.

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[1] M_ is his older sister.
[2] I added a "fender skirt" tag to this post due to his ongoing obsession with fender skirts.
[2] Night infiltration. You can get a little bit of a feel for how it looks today here.