More Discoveries

I’ve heard it said that trouble comes in threes, but in this case, it has come in fourteen—letters, that is, in a second set which I just uncovered over the holiday weekend while searching for something totally unrelated.

I suppose this is actually a blessing—a bonanza of material to help give a clearer picture of the main characters in this family history. I am only dragging my heels on this discovery as I struggle with how to plug this new set into my (up to this point) chronologically-ordered world.

The easiest way for me to proceed, I think, is to go back and insert each letter into the previous sequence, providing hyper-links to the letters already posted which would fall on either side of the new arrival. The newer material, hopefully, will fill in some of the gaps in those long stretches which, incredibly, had no mail during that first pass.

With that, we go back to the beginning—back to the first full day since Frank Stevens arrived at the Naval Training Station at Great Lakes, Illinois.

                                                                        Feb 25, 1942

                                                                        Francis X. Stevens

                                                                        Copany 162

                                                                        U.S. Navel Training

                                                                        Station. Great

                                                                        Lakes Ill

Dear Folks:

           I arrived safely on the 24^th at 11:30 A.M. I have been pretty busy or I would have written yesterday. I am tired today for all last night we lay awake laughing ourselves sick at the boys falling out of their hammoks. One fellow fell out 18 times and he didn’t get much sleep. No one is home sick yet for everything is interesting. The food is fine, for breakfast today we had (Baked Beans puffed rice with cream and sugar coffe Bread + Butter fruit + cornbread) big breakfast eh – for dinner we had [?] steaks of ham potatoes soup (bean) bread + butter cake coffee + a apple, that kind of food sticks to your ribs.