June 23, 1943. Stanley writes to Dad. Stanley relays the news that he was promoted from corporal to sergeant on June 21. He apologizes for not writing earlier as he has been busy with work. Just the last night he “worked till almost eleven in the evening just getting a supplemental payroll so them wise guys who just came in can get paid by the end of the month.” He continues, “Things are humming around here and there is a lot of work to do. I haven’t had much time to myself… I am the boss right now over myself.” He goes on to detail that there are two other newly minted clerk that he works with and that being a bomb group they expect to have a total of “some 320 or so men.”
He gets into a little bit of detail about his job, mentioning that when he made up the supplemental payroll it was “16 pages that is only 8 pieces of paper. The way you count the sheets is that every sheet is numbered evenly that is 2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16 and not 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8.” He also details, “We sure get some fellows with some tough names. The first sergeant and the rest can’t even pronounce it. One fellow’s name is Langiewicz, another Superzynski, and another we got today is Przygodzinski.”
He says that since the latest round of promotions (about 41 men) he has a lot of work to do. “I will have to enter the rating in the form #20, Service Record, Pay card. I will have one of my clerks do the work while I do something else. They came from some clerical school at Arkansas. You know how the new clerks are. You tell them to do something and they say that is not the way we did it. I tell them to do it the way I want it and that is all,”
He catches Dad up on some other news:
- “So far the Medical officer did not do anything about the blood pressure. The last time he took it he told me if anything came up he would notify me about it.”
- He mentions that he went to see the movie Iceland with Sonia Henie and Jack Oakie. The movie Guildersleeves Bad Day will be playing later in the week.
- He encourages Dad with respect to ASTP. “I hope you make out good and I know you will in school if you do get there.”
He wraps up mentioning that he received a few more letters from their sister and that he needs to write home more often as well. He closes wishing Dad that “…the God Lord will grant you your wish of going to ASTP.”
Lobby card for Iceland starring Sonja Henie. Image credit www.lewiswaynegallery.com