A Marine writes home...

[akflightmedic]

Dear Ma and Pa,

I am well. Hope you are. Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before all of the places are filled.

I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m. but I am getting so I like to sleep late. Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot, and shine some things. No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing.

Men got to shave but it is not so bad, there's warm water. Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food, but tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by the two city boys that live on coffee. Their food plus yours holds you until noon when you get fed again. It's no wonder these city boys can't walk much.

We go on "route marches," which the platoon sergeant says are long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it's not my place to tell him different. A "route march" is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks.

The country is nice but awful flat. The sergeant is like a school teacher. He nags a lot. The Captain is like the school board. Majors and colonels just ride around and frown. They don't bother you none.

This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals for shooting. I don't know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and don't move, and it ain't shooting at you like the Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don't even load your own cartridges. They come in boxes.

Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. You get to wrestle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, they break real easy. It ain't like fighting with that ole bull at home. I'm about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from over in Silver Lake. I only beat him once. He joined up the same time as me, but I'm only 5'6" and 130 pounds and he's 6'8" and near 300 pounds dry.

Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellers get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,

Alice

[JCicco345]

That's awesome.

[Asysin2leads]

Yeah... heavy on the kitsch, light on the humor. They teach you how to fly AV-8B's back there on the ranch too?

[MedicRN]

Yeah... heavy on the kitsch, light on the humor. They teach you how to fly AV-8B's back there on the ranch too?

If you've never lived a farming or ranching life (or at least have an idea of what the life is all about) as well as one in the military, you probably won't get the humor. :dontknow: I think it's absolutely hilarious!!! :laughing5:

[Aggie EMT]

Haha!! That's awesome, I especially like the part about going to the mailbox and back...country living ftw!

[Asysin2leads]

If you've never lived a farming or ranching life (or at least have an idea of what the life is all about) as well as one in the military, you probably won't get the humor. :dontknow: I think it's absolutely hilarious!!! :laughing5:

Actually I grew up on a farm and did hay every summer, wrestled many and animal, and I still don't think its very funny.

[DwayneEMTP]

Is there something 'un'funny about it that I'm missing?

Seems to me a play on country kid's attitudes about city kids...Pretty funny I thought, though seems to have ruffled some feathers...

I spent my pre-teen years working cows and breaking horses, my teen years on a cash crop farm in Minn, and have never known a country kid that didn't feel the same way...for pretty good reason to boot...Put up 80,000 bales of hay in summer, when you're not doing your 'real work' and boot camp doesn't really look all that scary...

But again, perhaps I'm missing some insult to the military....

Dwayne

[Richard B the EMT]

Is not "Alice" the same person who, on her first trip to New York City, scratched at the Broadway and West 42nd Street pavement with her boot, and said, "It's just as well they built a city here, this ground is too hard to plow!"

Story goes, during WW2, a city boy and a country boy ended up in the same Army infantry patrol all the time in the Italy campaign. They came into a farm, where they found a man milking a cow. The city kid spoke Italian, and, translated what the man said, that "this was his farm" and other stuff.

The two infantrymen started to leave, when the country boy spun around, and shot the farmer, who had stood up with a pistol in his hand!

"Hey, 'Country', how did you know he was not a farmer?"

"Well, 'Brooklyn', he was milking the cow from the wrong side!"

(So I'm a city kid, I admit I wouldn't be able to survive in the country without some serious retraining.)