July 17 & 19, 1943. A pair of letters from Uncle Stanley to Dad. Stanley has been at Great Falls, Montana for about a week and a half while Dad is in his second month at Topeka Army Air Base. Stanley has been burning the midnight oil getting the payroll done, working until 2 and 4 in the morning. On the upside, it seems that the mess hall at Great Falls is open late too. He relays that a K.P. fixed him a late night meal of “two fried sunny side up eggs, fried bacon, bread and butter coffee, milk and tomatoes.”
As far as his job is concerned, Stanley writes that “Payroll is a lot of sheets stapled together and it looks like a book which opens sideways. You have to be quite accurate and neat on it so they can read it. If you make errors on it erase it and neatly type the correct thing in it and then you have the personnel officer initial… the payroll.”
Stanley also passes along his congratulations to Dad on his “extra stripe”. He comments, “Now people at home can’t say that the Murawski boys are just a bunch of plain sissies and won’t get anywhere like some of them already have said. It made me happy all over to hear about your promotions. I hope that it won’t be long before you get another one.” He goes on, “We Murawski boys will show the people at home that we do not have to handshake anyone to get stripes like some people say you have to do.”
In an excerpt from his July 17, 1943 letter, Stanley congratulates Dad on getting his corporal stripes and has a few comments to go along with it.
Later in the letter Stanley advises, “You better sew the corporal stripes on all of your clothes as sometimes at some fields they watch to see if you have your stripes on and if you do not they reduce you for cause.”
Stanley also mentions that they had steak for dinner and reflects that army life isn’t that bad. “You know the more I stay in the Army the more I think it isn’t a bad place to be after you think about all the rationing of this and that. You get food for free, clothing and board and besides you get some extra money. You can save more when you are in the Army than you can when you are at home.” He also mentions, “What the heck, you get medical attention…and almost everything else.”
Stanley also tells Dad they are “attending ground school for the whole week.” He is in the group that goes in the morning. The school is made up of a series of lectures that are given in the base theater. He spends an entire paragraph detailing one of the lectures. I’ll let him convey the information in his own words:
In an excerpt from a letter from Great Falls Montana, dated July 19, 1943, Uncle Stanley details a training lecture that was given on the base.
The July 19th letter is the letter in which Stanley enclosed a picture of himself working at his desk. You may have seen this picture in a previous post. He explains some of the details in the photo, “the cards in the small box …are pay cards. On the extreme right are the special orders assigning me to squadrons … On the extreme left is the door to the outside. The small square piece of celluloid on my shirt has my name and organization and what kind of work I do. Not a bad picture I shall admit.”
Stanley Murawski working at his desk at Great Falls Army Air Base.