Feb 7, 1944, Camp Blanding, Florida

Dear sunlight,

My short enjoyable holiday ended last night and this morning the grind began again. This morning we started with dismounted drill as they call it, after that we had a lecture on grenades of all types, including fragmentation, incendiary, smoke and incendiary, with demonstrations of a few. Everything we do here and everything we train for is closely connected to actual battle and as time goes by will become even more immediate. They make no bones about our work and what it is intended for. Actual battle situations are mulled over and discussed and our part and our action in them. It is difficult for any civilian removed from all this, surrounded by civilization and a way of life that is so completely different from this to picture the life of a soldier. I know I never did. This has proved to be a marvelous opportunity for me to learn new things, experience new feelings, and to be revivified in a sense since there is nothing here which doesn't arouse my curiousity. Lt. Clift, a young Southerner, one of our platoon leaders (there are 3 of them, one for each platoon, consisting of 60 men, in the company) threw a smoke grenade about 50 yds from us. Streamers of smoke and fire rose up like a fountain and a huge cloud of smoke issued from the quart sized bottle. The heat was so intense at the point of contact that the wet grass began to burn fiercely for a distance. There is no danger though because carefulness is stressed so much and observed so widely. After that class, after our 10 min break we had a 2 hr continuation of our class on first aid with movies and visual demonstrations by the non coms. My pack which I carry for the better part of the day is becoming a part of me. I don't know I'm carrying it and feel good when it's on. I'm learning too to use my rifle or I should say handle it for we won't really use it for weeks, like a toy, learning the manual of arms and running with it. It weighs 9 lbs and has a range of miles. It is a Garand. The mechanism intricate and marvelously contrived. To think that the highest scientific achievements of man are incorporated in the instruments of destruction; instruments which are so anti-man. Everything here is a combination of the most primitive and the most advanced. I'm becoming more adept at allocating my time, although by no means must you construe that to mean that I have time in the old sense. But one learns how to snatch impossible minutes, to speed everything up and to do everything in the manner of a fireman always on the go for a perpetual fire. They even annoy us at mealtimes, when the 1st sgt. will come in and give us instructions or orders, compelling us to be at ease, which means technically laying down our implements and listening, in spite of the fact that our meal is a hurried though satisfactory one in every sense and when we use part of that time to do sundry things like cleaning rifles, bunks or a million other things that there is to do, collecting and writing mail etc. Today at our meal, I was just about to dig into a piece of pumpkin pie and was interrupted by a fire call. We were out of the mess hall, all 180 of us in 2 min flat, lined up in formation. We only have 7 or 8 formations , regular ones that is, a day. Please don't get the totally erroneous impression from all I write you of this accelerated life that I do not enjoy it. I do. I'm amazed that some of the g___heads(?), of which their are many and some of the fatboys can stand up under it. But it seems that even this tail end of the military pool is still in pretty good shape.

The questions you ask me in your letters are history by the time I get them. I think I answered most of them before you asked them. I will need money soon however since I haven't been paid as yet and probably won't get the significant am't until March. I can borrow money easily although I haven't found it necessary yet. It makes me feel good to know that you looked well the night you went to W______. Wish I was there. By the way, if you can, send a P.M.O. I can cash it easily. I'll describe mail call to you in another letter. And don't stop seeing my mother, please. It buoys her up, I know. I haven't yet made up a complete list of what I need so we'll have that suspended for a few days. As for the the cake my mother is going to send me and your cookies, the boys and I will look forward to them eagerly, darling and will make short work of them.
How long will it be before I can walk down the stairs, into the garden of K.V., walk into G building past the guard, ring the elevator bell, glide up to floor 11, open our the door to our eyrie and take my little package of smoothskin, blackhair, Gauguinnose in my muscular embrace? After the war, after the beast is laid. 
Your Joe