Africa Bound 12/19–20/1942 | Letters from WWII (1941

Introduction: This 14-page letter was written to family members in Newton, Massachusetts. It was started on December 19th and stretched into the afternoon of the 20th. We know that Schwartz was “Africa bound” and “somewhere at sea,” and this was the extent of the information the reader could gain about his whereabouts.

Among the letter’s many interesting features are: the way he describes how he is avoiding censorship by having a friend carry the letter home for mailing, even if he does not plan to give away anything strategic (page 1); how he sits on a relatively scarce chair and somewhat uncomfortably in the presence of officers, very conscious of the military’s hierarchical structure (page 1); how he provides a little comic relief about his “one-inch” haircut (page 2); how he made beneficial friendships and gained privileges (page 2); how he hints that he had been punished and a captain may have played a trick on him (page 3); how men’s bodies were inspected in a “farce” of a “peter parade” and what kinds of reading material they were given (page 4); how challenging train travel could be under crowded conditions (page 5); how he selected a good bunk on the ship and made the most of a difficult meal situation (page 6); how sea sickness was widespread and one man got so sick from it he was going to be sent home (page 7); how Warren was stealing food to share with his buddies (page 8); how he had a conflict with one of the “fellows” over the stolen chicken (page 9); how the only other two enlisted soldiers in the kitchen were the Ward “boys, all colored” (page 9); how he refused to cow-tow to an officer who wanted ice water, and he won the argument (page 10); how the hold in the ship where his outfit slept was a “pig sty” and the “password is Oink Oink” (page 10); how he describes the women (nurses) aboard the ship (page 11); how he has developed a friendship (page 12); how the ship fared on its first invasion of Africa (page 13); how he came to love the sea (page 14); and, how officers got around the no-gambling rule (page 14).

Instructions: To read from the digital facsimiles, click on an image below. For an enlargement, click again on the page image when you reach the next page. You also have an option to view a digital transcription of each page or a full transcript, with a compilation of all the pages. The transcriptions are as faithful to the original letter as possible, but a few words are difficult to decipher.