June 26, 1943
Dearest Mother,
Just a few lines to let you know that I'm feeling fine and hope that you are the same.
I came back from bivouac last night. While out on bivouac we went through the infiltration
course. It's a course where you crawl on your stomach for 150 yards under barbed wire which is
6 in. from the ground, and while you're crawling, machine guns are fired about 18 in. over your
body and you crawl toward the machine gun. The ground that we crawled over was really stony and
dusty and my fatigues were soaking wet from sweat and my face was full of the dust from crawling.
If you would have seen me, you wouldn't have recognized me.
After the infiltration course, as tired as we were we still had to go through the close combat
course. That's a course where you walk through a section of the woods and targets shoot up in
front of you and to the sides. There were 9 targets altogether. You would walk 10 feet and one
would shoot up and you have 4 sec. to hit it. Then you walk maybe 15 ft. and another shoots up
and you have 4 sec. to hit it etc. till you have fired at all nine targets. I made perfect score
on all of them so in case I ever do get in combat I guess I'll be able to take care of myself.
Tomorrow we go out on bivouac for 1 wk. We are supposed to do a lot of problems when we use
real ammunition and the problems will be the same ones that we've been practicing on, for the last
few wks. only we won't fire at each other like we did in the practice problems but at dummies.
We will also have a test in marching. We are supposed to go 4 mi in 50 min. run 300 yds in
45 sec. and do 30 pushups in 25 sec. so I guess I'm in for another hard wk.
Well mother, I guess that this is all and I'll try and write while on bivouac and give the letter
to one of the truck drivers that may be coming in to camp or something.
I'll close with love to you daddy and the kids.
Your loving Son,
"Jimmy"
