Monday, March 8, 1943. Stanley writes Dad a short letter from Oxford, Mississippi. His school, course has ended and he had his final test in the morning. The test was made up of two parts, a section of true/false questions and a section of multiple choice questions. There were a total of 50 questions in all and the class was given 45 minutes to answer them. Stanley writes, “I knew all the questions with the exception of one or two I may have got mixed on. I did not like the true and false and multiple choice questions. We then handed in our books.”
After the final was given “in the afternoon we had a review parade in front of the officers on the drill field. At 5 we had retreat and at 5:20 we had a banquet with all the officers present. The band…played at our banquet. We had officer speakers. After retreat they told us with whom we were shipping but not where. We will know tomorrow.”
Stanley recounts earlier in the weekend that “Saturday we had school all day. Boy what a racket they had at school that day.” In what seems to be a tremendous breach of discipline, “Spitballs flew around. Before the class was over for the day magazines, newspapers and cardboard, and even [paper] airplanes flew around the class.”
On March 9th he adds the following to the letter before dropping it in the mail, “There is not much to say today except I am shipping and will not know where till I get on the train. Well, I’ll stop for now and write later. I have to pack etc. Well so long for a while.”
Excerpt from Stanley’s letter to Dad letting him know that he is shipping out but does not know to where yet.