Sept 26, 1943
Dear Kay─
Thanks, I got your wire but I’ll have to wait until I get back to Shelby before I can collect. I also got a letter from home and enclosed was a familiar blue paper valued at $50 from Mom and Dad.
We are now stationed in a temporary camp at Enterprise, Alabama. This seems to be a peanut center. At any rate, we are here guarding prisoners of war who are harvesting the peanut crop. Incidently [sic], “we” means provisional Co. L and not the regiment. I don’t know where Hal is. Guarding these prisoners is a very lonesome job. They all volunteered to work and there has been no trouble to date. Some of them speak English but we have a special order to the effect that there will be no conversation between prisoners and guards.
I was assigned to the detail guarding the hospital but I quit after a week. Now, I’m out guarding them as they work.
The town of Enterprise itself is not too “hot”. Its [sic] about 4 blocks long in town, the rest is residential. Theres [sic] a couple of theatres and this and that. The nearest army camp (Camp Rucker) is 10 miles away but most of the soldiers there spend their pass in some other town, preferably Dothan.
We’re pretty near the Florida border line and from the route we took, we saw a lot of Alabama. I’d say its [sic] better’n Mississippi but its [sic] pretty much the same. We detoured around Montgomery, the capitol, so we didn’t get to see anything but part of the negro district in that city.
As I said, the town of Enterprise is pretty small. Whenever we get a pass to go out, we walk in town very slowly because if we walked too fast, we’d be out of the town before we know it.
Enterprise Hi [sic] School’s football team played Sampson for the first game of the season and beat them 3 to 0. They really rolled over Sampson and the fullback can really “handle” the ball. There wasn’t too big a crowd at the game although practically every solider in town was there. The schools cheered their respective teams but there wasn’t much “purr” to it.
We left at the half and went to see a show, just in time to catch the feature, a thriller, “Night Plane from Chunking [sic]”.
Speaking of shows, Hemingway’s FWTBT came thru Shelby but we missed it as we were out in the field. We saw a lot of the good shows, however, so I don’t miss FWTBT.” (Note: FWTBT = “For Whom the Bells Tolls”)
Shows now playing at Enterprise all showed at Shelby while we were there.
We had chicken for lunch today. I had a leg and I sure miss the rest of that chicken. Right now I could eat a dozen of em [sic].
Well, I hope everything is fine with you all back in Hawaii which is the only place to be. I’m fine as usual.
Talking about being fine reminds me; it gets awfully cold in the morning and kinda hot during the day. Were [sic] sleeping in tents on Army cots with only one blanket and that doesn’t help the situation much.
Aside from that, everything is all right. So long
Love
Stan
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