June 18, 1943. A letter from Anna to Dad. She reports that the weather back home is “warm and hot but we always seem to be having a slight breeze”. She quickly gets into the news from the neighborhood and fills Dad in on the day to day goings on.
- She had an opportunity to see Carol DeRouville’s baby. “It looks just like the husband. She is fair with rosy cheeks and light brown hair, not like Carol’s which is almost black.”
- On the upcoming Sunday, “mama and daddy are going to High Mass to hear Fr. Harzynski’s first Mass”. Meanwhile Anna will be home with the baby.
- They continue to keep up their correspondence with their friend Joe Miller who “hasn’t too many complaints about the Navy.”
- She received a letter from “Billy” who is in the hospital. There is no mention on Billy’s relation but it he is likely Billy Lubinski, her brother-in law. “He had an ulcer in his throat and the doctor got the better of him with his knife. He said that for a couple of weeks he couldn’t eat or swallow but now he is better.”
Anna asks Dad when he thinks he might get a furlough and come home for a visit. “Now that Stanley was here already we cannot look forward to seeing him again in another couple of months, so we are looking to the time when we will see you again.” She advises him that based on what she hears from Billy, Dad should not push too hard to get into radio. Billy is in radio, but according to Anna “just what he does I don’t know but he says that he is having a heck of a hard time understand what they are teaching because they go so fast and if you don’t catch on to quickly you just don’t go any further and they don’t feel like bothering with you. Billy says that lucky for him he knows something about radios because he pities the guys who haven’t any foundation training or learning in it.”
As far as things around the house, Anna writes, “Right now I am so tired after cleaning the whole house. This week it was more because I vacuumed the furniture…and…scrubbed…the back and front stairs. There is no one home now as mama says but we still have the same amount of dirt. Before we used to blame you boys for it but now I don’t know whose fault it is or was.”
She comments on the war news in general “So far the war news looks pretty good and I hope the end of this miserable war is very near. On one island a flier was forced to land and when his did islanders—Italians—surrounded him and were surrendering to him. He was taken aback and didn’t know what was going on so they commenced to explain to him that they were giving themselves up and they made him their leader.”
Excerpt from Anna’s letter to Dad dated June 18, 1943 detailing news about Italian citizens surrendering to a downed American pilot during WWII.
Anna finishes her letter with the sign off, “I will close my letter for now because I have covered all the important news so So-Long, Good-Luck, and God-Bless-You.”