Letters From The Prairie

1945

Bud writes home

January 7
Bud mistakenly dates this (and the next) New Year's letter "1944"
"All your letters written Christmas night arrived today and I was certainly glad to hear that you all had a real Merry Christmas...with snow."

January 11
"I guess the evenings all of us miss the most, though, are the Sunday evenings, popping corn, munching apples, listening to Charlie McCarthy or Eddie Cantor..."

January 17
"The destroyer boys envy our life but not our manner of service - we lack all the glory of battle..."

January 25
"I'm sitting under a light on the signal bridge and the wind is taking over..."

February 7
"The war is beginning to look a lot better, isn't it? It's a terrible thing, but I hope the Russians and British and us make a bloody battlefield of Germany."

February 13
"Harriet Ann can be proud that her checker board is contributing so favorably to the morale of the USS Prairie radio gang."

February 15
"What with 2 years at Kiski and as many in the Navy, the past four years haven't given me much home life. But just wait until I do get back - woooof."

March 8
"Often enough I have probably told you the ingloriousness of being a tender sailor ... just sitting in one spot for months at a time servicing the fleet."

March 14
"The line has been so long at the post office that by the time I ever get up to the windown, it shuts down."

March 20
"Dad told me of Bob Charlands being lost in action. Gad, this war is changing a lot of lives..."

March 29
"Beheld my first women in eleven and a half months. It was quite a sight to see all hands at the rail, officers and men alike, trying to catch a glimpse..."

April 4
"I read an article by Ernie Pyle tonight about sailors ... that the sailors life is a miserably monotonous life. Where a year of seeing nothing but flat, hot, sandy, stinking atolls and water compares with maybe three years of a soldiers life."

April 30
"Martha Metzer's fiancee visited me aboard the might P ... he had been up at Okinawa and off Iwo ... like everybody, he didn't much care for the Pacific."

May 16
"So, my old fourth, fifth, and sixth-grade heart flame is married. Boy, Pauline Neuber really twisted the hearts of all us young males in them bygone days."

May 29
"I'm glad to learn Mary's boyfriend's name. She had kept calling him 'Sopie.' I had no idea what his real name was until Mother enlightened me. Thanks. It is a queer name, I admit - something like Harlan Shirey Yenne."

June 12
"Firstly, I want you, Mother, in particular to stop worrying. Don't ever worry about the Prairie or me ever getting into a dangerous spot."

June 16
"I got a letter returned from my pal the censor. It was a nice letter, too, but I went one paragraph too far so he rejected it."

July 4th Celebration Menu

August 28
"Today the fleet moved into Tokyo Bay - at least a terrifying part of it, and reports have it that the surrender will be signed in the coming week."

September 9
"For the past year and a half you've been wondering what I've been doing and asking all kinds of questions in your letters. Now I'll try and give you the dope."

September 17
"An awful lot of men on the Prairie have their points for discharge, and it is already approaching the stage where a man can't get home unless he has a relief ... my future isn't too bright."

September 23
Navy censor stamp no longer on envelopes
"Last week we learned over the press that the world was supposed to end last Friday. Glad it was a mistake cause after spending all this time out here, I'd rather it be put off for a couple of years."

September 26
"The flag now aboard the ship is supposed to secure operations at Ulithi October First so there is a good chance we may leave here sometime next month. For home, I hope."