Post #53:  Bivouacs, bayonets, and barb wire at Camp Blanding

July 7, 1945, 1:30 a.m.
Service Club
Camp Blanding, Florida

Dear Pop,

Thank you for the letters and for taking care of obtaining my teacher's retirement number for me and for sending the insurance approved form. It was a good plan to make that copy. I decided to have the government take care of the policy's payments for me while I am in the army, and I will have two years to pay it back to the government after I get out of the army. I am taking care of all of the other insurance payments myself.

It is now between 1 and 2 a.m. I am Sergeant of the Regimental Guard tonight for the 66th Regiment. I have to see that the guard is posted on time by the corporals of the guard house in case any trouble should arise in the Regimental area. The guard has walls around their various posts. They have two hours on and four hours off all night. We have three different shifts of ten men each.

I guess you have been having pretty warm weather up there from what Catherine says, and I noticed last Sunday that the high in N.Y.C. was 97 degrees F. It is extremely hot here too, and very muggy with showers every day. Also we are in the toughest part of our training cycle now and will be going out on bivouac again for two weeks the last part of July. It will be my fourth two week bivouac since I've been here, but the first one in the middle of the summer, and from that angle it will probably be the toughest. Of course we have a lot of short bivouacs from time to time of two or three days each, in which we have night training and sleep out on the ground, and often get soaked, as we did two nights ago.

Yesterday the non-commissioned officers had to put on a bayonet obstacle demonstration for the company four different times. The course is about 500 yards long and consists of running through it, bayoneting the various obstacles, crawling under barb-wire entanglements, without getting your rifle dirty, and scaling ten foot log walls, jumping wide ditches full of water, throwing hand grenades etc. We demonstrate to the trainees and then they do it. That is the way all of our training is carried out here, and one has to keep in pretty good shape to stand it, especially at this time of the year. We also give lectures and constructive analytical critiques before and after the demonstrations.

Today I have been in the army exactly 51 weeks without having missed any time at all when I wasn't either on duty or able to be on full duty. July 17th will be the beginning of my second year and July 27th, I believe, will mark the beginning of my second year at Camp Blanding. I certainly never expected to be here this long when I came down last year, and I hope the war keeps on going well so that I won't have to be here this time next year.

There are many times when I have an intense desire to volunteer for overseas assignments, as different opportunities arise to do so, but so far I have stuck it out here, realizing that in many ways this position has more potentialities for advancement, and is more advantageous to me at the present time.

One such opportunity presented itself last week when they asked for volunteers between 26 and 30 years of age, with fairly good educational requirements, for the C.B.I. (China, Burma, India) Theater of War, consisting of becoming a para-trooper first and then going to China to assist in the training of Chinese soldiers in American combat methods.

I have been advanced to full Platoon Sergeant of the 1st Platoon and have 65 men under me, who I am responsible for. So far we have the best record of any of the three platoons in the company. I have as my understudy and assistant, Pvt. Edward Veach, whose people at the present time live on Catherine Street in Poughkeepsie. However he lived several years in Bangall and went to school in Stanfordville. He knows Andy and a lot of the people I know. He was a Sergeant when he came back from Germany in January but went AWOL for 10 days to keep from being sent back over again in the army of occupation, so was demoted to a private.

He was in continuous combat from June 6, 1944 until January 1945 in France, Belgium, and Germany, and was wounded twice and has the Purple Heart. He is only 19 years old, but has been through a lot, and it is these men who really should be doing all the training here in the States to the replacement troops. They have been through it already and can give the trainers a lot of valuable instruction which has been learned the hard way.

Most of the instructors here are overseas men at the present time, but many are not physically fit to stand the pace here, or are just marking time until they get out on points. One of our non-commissioned officers from Minnesota left today after five years in the Army. They certainly deserve to get out, and for many, the re-acclimation and readjustment back into civilian life will be very difficult, indeed after the regimented life in the Army. Many of these men have changed a lot and have different viewpoints on life than originally. Many will be much better civilians because of their experience, and many I fear will not.

Remember me to Katie and I hope that you and Katie and the boys had a nice time during Katie's vacation on Pugsley Hill. This is all I have time for now. Please tell Aunt Dorothy and Aunt Julia I enjoyed hearing from them and will write soon. I also wrote this as sort of a general letter as I just don't get around to writing to everyone.

Thanks again, and I hope this finds you feeling fine and everything going well.

Lovingly, Hall