Letter or Postcard – Letter
Sender – Ralph Peterson
Recipient – Phyllis Peterson
Postmark Place – St. Petersburg, Florida
Postmark Date – 2 March 1943
Letter Date – 1 March 1943
Text:
My darling,
Night time again and time to write to my loved one. No letters yet today and I’m getting kind of worried if you are going to write or not. Still, it takes quite a while for the letter to go up there. Maybe you could have sent it up here with a carrier pigeon, if you could catch one. I suppose I will get one tomorrow. At least I hope I will. Well, I will start from this morning and tell you what I did. Got up this morning at five this morning, had chow, then I went up to the classification hall and got classified. Now after three weeks more training here I will be sent to school for about 20 weeks. When I graduate from there I will be a full-fledged radio technician, whatever that is. I know what it is though. I will learn everything about radio – the repair and the running of them. I guess that isn’t such a bad job. I had my choice between that and a lineman. I took radio, but my bunkmate from Coloma took lineman, so when I go to school I guess we will part. But Marvin Roeske is going with me. Billy Pick is training for a truck driver. He will be sent to a different camp, too. This afternoon we had physical [?] for about four hours. It was about 80 degrees above in the sun down here and two of the guys went under with the heat, but your little blonde Dane stood it all right. I feel good now except that my back is getting sort of red all over. It’s starting for a nice tan. There are six guys in my room and five of them are married. Three of us are 19 and the other two are 20, so we all get along pretty good. All five of us were married last November so after the war we are going to get together with all of our wives and take a trip around the states. The funny part of it is we are all from Wisconsin. They are real swell fellows, too. We all share pictures of our wives and my picture of you was noted to be the nicest looking. I really think it is the sweetest girl in the world. I guess three pages is all I can ever think of to write so I will close with love and kisses to my darling wife from Ralph.
PS – PLEASE WRITE EVERY DAY
Notes: