Dear Mom,

Well another day of doing nothing. This morning they put us on detail censoring mail. Boy, that's one job I don't enjoy. I never read so many letters in all my life. Some of the guys are quite bitter toward the censor and say so right in the letters. You should see the language some of the GIs use in describing things of interest to their wives. They swear like bastards. Some of them go so far as to tell where and what they bomb. You give no mercy to those guys - you just snip snip snip. You know a funny thing here it is 8:30 at night and it's only 1:30 in the afternoon in Chicago. You go to bed one night and at the same time I'm just getting up - the next morning. Oh yes, we had a little change in routine today. We went into the nearest town and and saw a USO show. Ben Lyons and his show - it was all right. - a all GI band and was it good. The girls were OK, too. We went to the officer's PX in town and got some stuff - you sure don't get much per week. You can send me some cigars if you want to and we can always use soap. Other than that I can't think of anything. I could use a good pipe - none of those filter jobs though. I can't say much for these towns. They're all dirty but this one is the cleanest one I've seen yet. There's not much to do in these towns anyway. I can't speak the language, the food isn't edible and neither is the wine drinkable. The women are all dirty so you don't even look at them twice. At least not yet anyway, ha, ha. Well give my love to every one and hows the old married man coming along by now. Any babys yet? Say, how are you coming along with the book case, Pa? Finished yet? Well it's time for bed so I'll close for now.

Love,
Rae