Letters To Home - January 15, 1951

Fort Benning, Georgia
January 15, 1951

We left Fort Dix at 3 a.m. Saturday and arrived here about 3:15 p.m. Sunday. The route taken was: Pennsylvania Railroad to Washington, D. C.; Richmond, Fredericsburg & Potomac Railroad from Washington to Richmond, Virginia; Seaboard Air Line Railroad from Richmond to Savannah, Georgia; Central Of Georgia Railroad from Savannah to Fort Benning. The trip, with one important exception, was pleasant. The meals were excellent, due to a Pennsylvania Railroad diner, to Washington, and a Seaboard Air Line diner the rest of the way. I had an upper in a Pullman this time. No problem there, and slept quite well.

As mentioned, the trip was pleasant, with one exception, and that exception was caused by our former leader. He got smart with the sergeant-in-charge at roll call at the railroad station at Dix, was pulled out of formation and taken somewhere. That threw the ranks off, and as a result, I was thrown in with a bunch of complete strangers from another company. Of all the rotten luck; another case of a stranger-among-strangers. It was a pretty quiet trip on my part.

The weather at Dix was cold and snowy when we left, about 11 degrees above zero. It stayed cold and snowy as far south as Raleigh, but gradually moderated. The temperature upon arrival here was 72 degrees, and we in our wool uniforms and overcoats.

Upon arrival, I was thrown back with my buddies from Dix, thank God. We're stationed for the present time at the main post, in big brick buildings with concrete floors and sun porches. Tomorrow I move out to my new outfit, a field artillery unit. Laffey is already gone, transferred to Camp Campbell, Kentucky for basic airbourne training, but will be back here in a few weeks for jump school. The rest of the gang is pretty-well split up; some to the infantry, some to the tanks, and the rest to another field artillery unit. Seems as though I'm destined to live with strangers the rest of my army career.

New address: Battery C, 44th Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Infantry Division,
Fort Benning, Georgia.