tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19351222784771012282024-03-19T02:53:05.261-07:00Rosalind SinclairRosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-51726956981017180692015-08-14T13:10:00.001-07:002015-08-14T13:10:31.711-07:00Letter From Bob, August 1945July, 1945<br /><br />My dearest Rosie:<br /><br />Your picture has faded to near invisibility, and I fear it will soon be gone forever. I take it out again, hold it, then tuck it away once more.<br /><br />The photo tells the whole story of my time apart from you. It is torn and faded from tropical sun and rain, stained from the sweat of malarial fevers and creased from a thousand folds and unfolds to hide it from the Japanese.<br /><br />There's a hole near your shoulder from the twig that pierced my parachute harness when I bailed out of my spinning P-38 into a carpet of jungle, and a speck of dried blood from the Jap bayonet that hacked off half my foot when they cut me out of the tree. At least I think it's my blood. There was so much from the other poor fellows in the so-called "medical" tent where the Japs left me to work in a POW camp in the Philippines. I suppose I should have been grateful the Japs found a cripple like me useful enough not to waste a bullet on, but I confess there were moments I envied the dead I was burying.<br /><br />I don't remember much about being rescued. The Japs just disappeared one day, but most of us who were still alive were too weak to do anything about it. <br /><br />Next thing I knew I was sitting at our kitchen table in Seattle, drinking coffee and complaining about the rain until Stormy ran by with a ball of yarn and made us both laugh.<br /><br />But of course I wasn't in Seattle at all. It was makeshift hospital in a remote corner of the Philippines. <br /><br />And Stormy's a grown cat now. <br /><br />And you have likely found another fellow and moved on.<br /><br />They tell me I was declared dead. My dog tags were long gone by the time the Americans liberated our camp a few weeks ago, and I wasn't in any shape to identify myself for most of my time in this hospital. I imagine they tried to send some sort of update to you but I don't have much faith in the speed or efficiency of the Army's communications. Given what I've seen in the newspapers they've left on the nightstand I understand MacArthur's had a few other things to attend to besides paperwork on a gimpy flyer.<br /><br />I tried calling a few times but there was no answer. Perhaps you have moved. Anyway by the time you get this I'll be on my way.<br /><br />They tell me my ship's supposed to dock in San Francisco in time for the train that arrives in Seattle on the afternoon of August 14. <br /><br />If this war's taught us anything it's that hope is a luxury few can afford. But yet I do hope. <br /><br />If you're not there I'll know you've made someone happy and found the life you should have. I'll climb back on board and move on. I will keep the picture next to my heart until it dissolves into memories. But those memories are more sublime than any picture could ever be. And they will sustain me forever.<br /><br /><br />Your loving husband<br /><br />Bob<br /><br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-21195389275414771992015-07-29T20:52:00.001-07:002015-07-29T20:52:52.487-07:00I Hold With Those Who Favor Fire<br />The package was so small I hadn't noticed it at first. Stuck between bills and the Saturday Evening Post, it had fallen unseen onto the carpet.<br /><br />I knew the handwriting the minute I opened it.<br /><br />Mine.<br /><br />Tad's neat cursive appeared only on the address and on a short note on the top of the stack of my letters to him.<br /><br />I had to scrape around in the kitchen drawers for matches, but the paper kindled quickly in the dry July heat. As sparks whirled up the chimney the edges of Tad's note curled in glowing golden lines that quickly ate their way to the center of the paper, leaving fine, black ash. <br /><br />"Rosie - I can understand but I can never forget. You are the love of my life and always will be.<br /><br />I'm just a scientist, without elegant words for my feelings, so I'll turn to my favorite poet, Robert Frost:<br /><br /> "Some say the world will end in fire,<br /><br /> Some say in ice.<br /><br /> From what I've tasted of desire<br /><br /> I hold with those who favor fire."<br /><br /><br />Our times will end in a kind of fire. What the world will be like afterward I do not know. But I can only hope that you'll think fondly of our time together when you look back from whatever your future holds, which I dearly hope is great joy.<br /><br />All my love,<br /><br />Tad<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-19337619852272944882015-07-19T21:15:00.001-07:002015-07-19T21:15:21.416-07:00Letter to Tad, July 1945<br />Dear Tad:<br /><br />I may regret this letter for the rest of my life, but I would rather live with sorrow than falsehood. <br /><br />When Bob and I married we made a vow to be faithful to each other "til death do us part." We are now parted by death, and nothing stands between you and me. You are a kind, honest and thoughtful man, and knowing you has made me immensely happy. <br /><br />For the last four years I have fought the war. I don't mean by working in the bomber factory, though I hope I've done some tiny part. I mean I've fought against the war and what it's done to my life. There's nowhere, from the train station to the grocery store, from my empty bed to my empty ring finger and the empty space on the shelf where Bob's picture used to sit, that hasn't been fouled by this conflict. <br /><br />It seemed nothing was ever up to me, that circumstances beyond my control must dictate my every action.<br /><br />Then came Betty's wedding.<br /><br />I was thrilled for her of course. But as her bouquet flew toward me, I suddenly understood what I think I'd known all along. I did not catch the flowers.<br /><br />Betty's husband died in the icy wastes of the Aleutians. Bob's bones lie in the soft warm mud of tropical island. I imagine some beautiful tree has grown and blossomed over his remains, a living bouquet that I will never see but fills my heart with joy and always will.<br /><br />Bob was an architect. So I can't help thinking of things in terms of houses. I now know that my path lies in rebuilding my life on its original foundations, not in moving to a new home. I will win the war by defying it and staying true to everything that mattered to be before that horrendous Sunday morning so long ago.<br /><br />I cannot love anyone else. I cannot live anywhere but in the little white bungalow under the cedar tree, the place Bob and I chose to start our lives and where I intend to finish mine. Then we will be together, in a place without war.<br /><br />I wish you all the love and happiness you deserve and will undoubtedly find. I thank you for your help and support. Know that I will always think of you with the greatest affection and gratitude. I have no doubt that your life will be filled with the love and joy you so deserve. Mine perhaps will not, but it is the fate I choose.<br /><br />Your friend,<br /><br /><br />Rosie<br /><br /><br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-39644606923612811102015-06-30T21:30:00.001-07:002015-06-30T21:30:04.436-07:00Letter to Tad, July 1945 Dearest Tad:<br /><br />I take your letter out and re-read it so often it's beginning to fray at the edges and tear in the creases. The world's full of change, and I feel you are one of the last remaining certainties.<br /><br />If this war's proven nothing else, it's shown me that I can get used to almost anything. The daily rhythm of factory life, the rivets and bucking bars and lunches and breaks have become almost a comfort while the world beyond Seattle falls to pieces. <br /><br />But now even that's changing. It's as though once the world (or at least part of it) begins to heal a bit things here start to dissolve.<br /><br />Susan has quit the factory, and it's only a matter of time before the rest of us go. The pictures in Life Magazine of a lonely, empty Willow Run, only recently flowing with rivers of B-24s, were a sharp reminder that the world moves on.<br /><br />Even though the fighting in the Pacific continues I'm sure my friends and I won't be needed at Boeing much longer. General Arnold wants to pulverize Japan, but a country the size of California will soon be as saturated with craters as the Moon, and there will be no need for as many Superfortresses as we're now churning out.<br /><br />So I'm trying to take my mind away from the rivets and turn it to the future. Thinking of you makes me happy and hopeful. My vision of our life together isn't yet complete, but it grows daily in my mind and my heart.<br /><br />Please write again soon before your last letter completely disintegrates.<br /><br /><br />Love,<br /><br /><br />Rosie<br /><br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-47327853530222229872015-06-19T11:13:00.001-07:002015-06-19T11:13:09.989-07:00Letter from Tad, June 1945<br />Dearest Rosie:<br /><br />You've every right to toss this letter unopened into the scrap pile given how long it's taken to make its way from my heart and mind to your mailbox. Night after night, on mahogany desks in Washington, D.C. and steel tables in drafty prefabricated huts in the Hanford desert, I've scratched out the words on a sheet of gradually fraying paper. Sometimes just a sentence, or nothing at all, before the phone rings or someone knocks. It's always urgent and always secret. But never as important to me as you are.<br /><br />Alas, the world doesn't see it that way. Of course you know I can't tell you much about my work, but I can say I've been traveling a great deal. Washington State, Washington, DC, and even New Mexico. You'd like it there - clean, beautiful desert with sharp mountains against a dark blue sky. I hope we'll see it together some day.<br /><br />Wherever I go I read the same sickening stories you do in each day's newspaper.<br /><br />Okinawa shows us that there is no hope of redemption for the Japanese. They will never stop fighting until every last one of them is dead, and they'll make sure to take as many of us with them as they can. This war cannot continue, for their sake as well as ours.<br /><br />The project I'm working on, if it's successful, will put an end to this and every other war. I know everyone in Seattle's guessing: Could it be a new kind of radar? A secret code? I will say this - when it's revealed it will change the world, and for the better. After all the unimaginable pain and destruction this war has caused, we'll come out clean and bright as a sunrise over the New Mexico desert.<br /><br />I slipped out of my hut this afternoon, determined to finish this letter. It's dusk now and I can barely see to write, but it's beautiful here. I'm sitting on a boulder still warm from the day's heat. Below me, the lights of the Hanford Works are just beginning to twinkle across the sagebrush. Above me, the deep violet band of the Earth's shadow is climbing above the eastern horizon, pulling a blanket of stars behind it. <br /><br />They don't teach physicists poetry, so my silly words don't do justice to my feelings. But I'll say I take enormous comfort in knowing the same stars are shining on you, even though they're hidden by Seattle's clouds. No matter how much work clamors for my attention there's always a hidden corner of my heart that's untouched by it. It's a place like this lonely ridge: Safe from the world's cares, needing only you by my side. I imagine us standing here together arm in arm, gray-haired and wrinkled, looking over the ruin that peace will have made of this place, and I smile.<br /><br />All my love, <br /><br />Tad<br /><br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-51645736808826300782015-05-17T17:35:00.001-07:002015-05-17T21:39:10.653-07:00Letter to Tad, May 1945Dear Tad<br /><br />I apologize for taking so long to write.<br /><br />Since the war came I haven't started a letter with anything but "Dear Bob." Each time I've scraped a chair up to the desk to try, my pen seemed to trace the lines that were etched ever deeper into the blotter over the last four years. <br /><br />But time runs only forward. The magazines promise a fresh, shining world after victory, gleaming like new cars and kitchens. I'm sure it's true, though I haven't been able to make myself care until now. You've helped me to see that life will go on, that there are good, kind people with loving hearts no matter what is happening in the world. <br /><br />I miss you and wish your work wasn't on the far side of the state. I know you can't talk about Hanford and of course I'd never ask you to. You'd probably get a good laugh, or at least one of your quiet chuckles, over the things people speculate about it: Some kind of improved radar. A big bomb like the ones they dropped on bunkers in Occupied Europe. Or my favorite story, a Buck Rogers death ray.<br /><br />Whatever it is you're really doing no doubt it's for a speedy end to the war and the betterment of mankind. <br /><br />Life here on Tillicum Drive is outwardly the same, but changes are seeping in. My neighbor Susan's husband is one of the lucky few coming home to a white-picket life instead of transferring to the Pacific. My other neighbor Betty still dreams of personally roasting every Japanese alive in revenge for Joe's death on Attu, but she's distracted now by a mysterious new man in the factory. And of course you know about your sister Jane. By the way, she hasn't said much about newlywed life recently; I do hope all is well.<br /><br />So that leaves me. And I don't want to be left. I want a world of peace and a man to share it with. I am grateful to you for your patience.<br /><br />Since you can't write about your work, tell me about your dreams. You've seen so much more of the world than I have, being a college professor and living on the East Coast and hobnobbing with the grandees in Washington, DC. How do you think we'll live once victory is won? Helicopters in every garage like the papers promise? I'd settle for a new washing machine but perhaps I'm thinking too small.<br /><br />I hope you will respond more quickly than I wrote to you. I can't tell you how much it means to me to look forward to something. <br /><br />Very truly yours,<br /><br />Rosie<br /><br /><br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-7790300268410975532015-02-14T10:19:00.001-08:002015-02-14T10:19:46.529-08:00Valentines Day<br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=15/02/14/227.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/15/02/14/s_227.jpg' border='0' width='280' height='277' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br /><br />Of course Valentines Day is nothing. <br /><br />No holiday matters when girls like me come home each night to empty bungalows with the murder of millions tossed onto their doorsteps.<br /><br />How morbid. I look at what I've just written and realize I'm feeling sorry for myself even when I'm trying to pretend I'm not. I'd better snap out of it before break's over or I'll catch heck from the foreman.<br /><br />So I might as well be honest. After all, it's not as though anyone but me is ever going to read this.<br /><br />It's my fourth Valentines Day alone. How many more will there be? Should there be? I love Bob desperately and always will. But the Army says he's never coming back and I can't possibly know what General MacArthur and all his Lieutenant Generals and sub-generals and whatever else they're called don't. My heart thinks it does, but my head knows better.<br /><br />Tad is a good man, who says he loves me. Whatever that mysterious war work he's in charge of across the mountains in Hanford is, he takes it seriously.<br /><br />If I spurn him, what am I to do? The war's ending. Oh, sure, the posters tells us to "Keep at it, this war's not won by a darned sight," but everyone can tell. My cousin Nick at home in Portland wrote that old man Henry Kaiser's already planning to scale back employment at the shipyards. "Back to the auto shop," he said, "assuming there will be cars after the war."<br /><br />I remember hearing Prime Minister Churchill say on the radio two years ago that it was "the end of the beginning." Now, it's the beginning of the end. And it's up to me to decide what happens next.<br /><br />Drat, there's the whistle. Back to the bombers. <br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-78243675893915149502015-01-04T18:54:00.001-08:002015-01-04T18:54:34.250-08:00A Year and a DayIt's been three hours now since I opened the envelope. <br /><br />Strangely, I don't feel as though I should die. <br /><br />I don't feel anything at all. <br /><br />The letter was short. Army efficient.<br /><br />"Dear Mrs. Sinclair. I regret to inform you that your husband, Lieutenant Robert Sinclair, has been declared killed in action. <br /><br />Having been missing since December 30, 1943, and no evidence of his survival having been found, it is my sad duty to bring you the news that Lieut. Sinclair died serving his country. <br /><br />Rest assured in your hour of grief that your husband's sacrifice was not in vain. The cause of justice and freedom will prevail, and millions will be liberated from tyranny by the gallantry and selflessness of Lieut. Sinclair and the thousands of others who lie in eternal piece in the soft earth of France or the coral sands of the Pacific."<br /><br /><br />Bob would have been twenty-five years old in three weeks.<br /><br /><br />I should sleep.<br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-42970234279163185352014-07-30T09:57:00.001-07:002014-07-30T10:01:41.534-07:00July 1944Dear Bob:<br /><br />War has made us many things: Fighters, factory workers and experts at going through the day while disaster hides in the next ridge, the next island, or the postman's next bag of letters. <br /><br />Now I'll have to add another item to that list: Assassins.<br /><br />There's a strange new fellow at the factory. His name is Jim and he doesn't talk much. And when he does it's always abrupt, as though all the extraneous chatter that fattens ordinary conversation has been burned away from his thoughts.<br /><br />Jim says he met you in New Guinea. That you were part of a secret mission to ambush Admiral Yamamoto. That your handpicked squadron of Lightnings flew for hours at wavetop height to arrive at the exact place and moment Jim's coastwatchers said the enemy's plane would appear. That the architect of Pearl Harbor was blown out of the sky and smashed to the jungle floor still strapped to his seat.<br /><br />The papers have recently had news of that year-old event, but I never guessed you had a hand in it. I imagine we'll never talk about it, but I'll always know in a warm corner of my heart.<br /><br />What a strange thought: I'm thrilled to learn my husband stalked a man across the vast Pacific and killed him. <br /><br />Well, since secrets are coming out, I'll tell you mine: I murdered someone, too. Not exactly premeditated, and everyone at the plant says it was an accident. But the man's just as dead as Yamamoto. He was awful fellow who made it his business in life to torment me. I finally snapped back at him when were were both on a Fortress wing. He came at me. I raised my rivet gun, his foot caught in the air hose, and over the edge he went in the wink of an eye. He left the factory feet first, and I was horrified. But inside the horror was a tiny bright speck of gladness.<br /><br />I pray this war won't go on much longer for fear of what we all might become.<br /><br />I'm going to go burn this diary page now. I'll watch the ashes flare golden for an instant and wink out as they spiral up the chimney, carrying away our secrets away to the garden. Next year they'll be nothing but bright flowers.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-90171206873453394662014-05-28T18:16:00.001-07:002014-05-28T18:16:27.272-07:00Hurry Up and WaitMay, 1944<br /><br />Dearest Bob:<br /><br />It seems the world is holding its breath like an angry toddler. But General Eisenhower's a patient parent, impervious as to whether humanity turns blue.<br /><br />Everything's slowed to a crawl, and the talk's of little else but invasion. Strange how time passes slower and slower the more you want something. But glacial as it must be for everyone else, I'm a boulder in a speeding rapid while I wait for your return.<br /><br />A fellow I once met (never mind who he is, he's not important) said I reminded him of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. You remember, from the Trojan War. I had to climb on a chair and get my old college books off the high shelf to remind myself of the rest of the story.<br /><br />It seems Penelope waited twenty years for Odysseus' return. She was thronged by a hundred suitors, each urging her to give her husband up for dead. But she wouldn't. Being only a woman she hadn't the brawn to fend off the would-be bridegrooms so she used her brains instead. She told her ardent admirers she'd marry when she finished weaving her father-in-law's burial shroud. Every day she wove, and every night she'd secretly undo most of the weaving. Being thickheaded lunks, the suitors never caught on to the trick until it was too late: Odysseus returned and shot all of them dead with arrows.<br /><br />I hardly have a hundred suitors, but there have been a couple of pests lurking about. Don't you worry, I'll send them all packing, so there won't be any need for arrows when you return. I just need to figure out what to do. Taking my day's bomber-building apart each night isn't realistic, but if Penelope could hold off a hundred men I can take care of a wolf or two.<br /><br />I just hope it's less than twenty years before you return.<br /><br /><br />Your loving wife<br /><br />Rosie<br /><br /><br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-54527884483849338962014-04-26T15:42:00.001-07:002014-04-26T15:42:45.990-07:00On the Occasion of Our Third AnniversaryDearest Bob:<br /><br />I'm sitting at the edge of the Boeing plant airfield, bundled into one of your old Pendleton plaid wool shirts against a typical blustery Seattle spring day. You'd no doubt laugh watching me try to scribble in this diary with one hand while I tug at my flowered scarf (you remember, the one you gave me back in college) with the other. I fear both the scarf and I are the worse for wear these days, but it's all for the war effort.<br /><br />As strange as it seems, writing as though I were actually sending you a letter keeps the hope that you are somehow still alive burning in my heart. It's just a tiny ember, like one of those specks of golden light that used to spiral up from the gray late-night ashes of our summer campfires. <br /><br />Alas, most of the fire in my life now comes from the destruction that I have a tiny part in creating. Of course it's all meant to end the war as soon as possible, but it's painful to read each day of the hellish infernos our Flying Fortresses are making of Europe's ancient cities. In return, the bombers and their crews are tumbling from the sky at such a rate I often wonder as I'm working how many weeks each immense, complex machine I labor on will last once it rolls out the hangar door.<br /><br />Goodness, this talk is hardly a fit subject for an anniversary letter! I should dwell on the more cheerful things you'd no doubt want to hear of wherever you are. The rhododendrons are blooming in huge balls of pink and white blossoms. The first swallows are back, bounding through the air on warm afternoons. Stormy is shedding her winter coat, much to my consternation on laundry day. She sends you a hearty meow!<br /><br />Well, I must return to the factory. The next round of Fortresses is warming up on the tarmac. Soon they'll be off into the big white clouds that punch like fists into the blue April sky. I remind myself that you are somewhere under the same sky, looking at the same sun and the same moon that shine down on Seattle. I believe with all my heart that we'll someday be looking at them together.<br /><br />Your loving wife, Rosie.<br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-54272280697890359942014-04-07T18:43:00.001-07:002014-04-07T18:43:44.820-07:00Harborview<br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=14/04/07/919.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/14/04/07/s_919.jpg' border='0' width='280' height='170' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br /><br />I suppose I should be grateful things aren't worse. The pain's receding, the nurses are decent and my bed's near the window. Sometimes little formations of B-17s pass across my square of sky, reminding me that Boeing is quite capable of sustaining Flying Fortress production with one less girl.<br /><br />Time's on my hands and on my mind. The doctor says I'd likely recover faster if he had that new "Penicillin" drug, but like everything else desirable from milk chocolate to men, it's at the front, so I'll be recovering as nature intends.<br /><br /><br />I've pulled out that diary, after tucking it into a drawer as soon Betty and the rest of the girls disappeared in a laughing burst of hats & gloves. I need something to do besides brood about Bob and watch the bouquet from that loathesome cad Carl slowly wilt. I have no doubt it's from him. Every glance at it brings back his words about getting on with my life and facing the truth that Bob will never come back. What makes me angriest is the realization that Carl's words hurt me so because I fear he may be right.<br /><br />I look out the window again. A flock of bombers passes, metal geese against a white sky. What have I got to say that anyone, including my future self, would want to read? I guess that's not the point. Nurse says I should just write because it will make me feel better, and not to worry about tomorrow. It will come soon enough in its own way no matter what I do.<br /><br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-26014487037063289132014-02-16T16:07:00.001-08:002014-02-16T16:07:06.105-08:00Letter from Wichita, February 1944<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=14/02/16/1344.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/14/02/16/s_1344.jpg' border='0' width='225' height='142' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />Dear Betty and Susan:<br /><br />It's been a strange adventure indeed building B-29s here in Kansas. I understand why Dwight sent us here, but it's awfully hard to get used to this place. <br /><br />My days are a blur of flat, white landscapes and towering silver mountains of Superfortresses. To compare our B-17s to these mammoth new bombers would be to liken the Smith Tower to the Chrysler Building. And I'm afraid I'm turning out to be more of a Smith Tower kind of girl. These behemoths have an alien, and I must say, sinister quality, almost soulless. Perhaps the engineers who designed them meant it that way, since their single purpose is the defeat of a sinister and soulless enemy who sits at an unimaginable distance. <br /><br />But a rivet's a rivet, so I'm just tying to concentrate on my work. And a lot of it there is. Dwight warned us we'd be busy, but Jane and I had no idea of the scale of the project. The Wichita factory's so far behind that girls are flooding in from all over the country to help out. It seems the B-29's complexity has been an endless headache, with defective planes rolling off the assembly line and redesigned parts arriving too late for factory installation. We're sometimes working out on the tarmac in daggers of cold wind and whirling snow. Never did I imagine I'd long for the damp gray of Seattle!<br /><br />Speaking of icy, we Northwest girls got a less-than-warm reception when we arrived. I suppose the locals resented interlopers, and I admit we lacked appreciation at first for the difficulties of our undertaking. Things are better now and we've made a few friends.<br /><br />I imagine you've seen the installments of Dyess's story in the Seattle Times just as we have here. Needless to say I find it hideously difficult to read about what happened in Bataan two years ago in light of where Bob may be now, but I refuse to give it up, though Jane thinks I should. If nothing else it's given me fresh strength of purpose for the job here in Kansas. Every rivet is one tiny step toward launching these wicked-looking weapons at an enemy who surely deserves them. <br /><br />Well, enough with the morbid philosophy! I hope all remains well on Tillicum Drive and that Stormy is not being too much of a pest. I'm told that the workforce here is expected to be large enough by early March to allow our return to Seattle. By then the skies will be lighter and the first rhododendrons should be blooming. Never will anyone be as happy to see rain, moss and a Flying Fortress factory! Til then, take care.<br /><br />Your friend,<br /><br />Rosie.<br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-10123183133279035422014-01-05T21:34:00.001-08:002014-01-05T21:34:11.545-08:00Dear Mrs. Sinclair<br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=14/01/05/1885.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/14/01/05/s_1885.jpg' border='0' width='281' height='215' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br /><br />Dear Mrs. Sinclair. I regret to inform you that your husband Robert is missing in action as of December 30, 1943.<br /><br />Lieutenant Sinclair was last seen piloting his P-38 in the Southwest Pacific. Unfortunately military secrecy prevents me from disclosing the exact nature or location of his mission. I can report that, according to others in his squadron Lieutenant Sinclair's unarmed plane was attacked by several Japanese Zero fighters. Your husband took evasive measures, but fire was seen in one engine and his plane descended rapidly. One member of the squadron reports seeing a parachute but others say there was none.<br /><br />It grieves me to deliver this news, but I trust your strong heart and steadfast nature will see you through the difficult times ahead. Bob spoke of you often, and while I cannot say I know you I feel confident you are someone who can face adversity with the same firmness of purpose your husband showed every day.<br /><br />If there is further word you of course be notified. For now, please accept my sympathies. Lieutenant Sinclair was an outstanding pilot and served his country with distinction. Your husband was immensely proud of you, and you would honor him by carrying on with the war work that is as essential to our victory as the missions he flew.<br /><br />Sincerely, William Howard, Commanding Officer<br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-57159252747907260282013-12-13T15:45:00.001-08:002013-12-13T20:50:11.912-08:00Letter from Bob, December 1943<br />
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<a href="http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/12/13/1467.jpg"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/12/13/s_1467.jpg" style="margin: 5px;" width="281" /></a></center>
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<br />
<br />
Dearest Rosie:<br />
<br />
Once again we're apart at Christmas, and once again I'm unable to send you a present. But in a way I suppose I have. It's just not one I can wrap in a bow and pop into the mail. It's a whole Jap base, tied up with ribbons of steel instead of paper.<br />
<br />
Rabaul's been a fly in our soup for a long time. It sits across the Solomon Sea from New Guinea, on the island of New Ireland. After they seized it from Australia the Japs built an immense naval base there on the edge of a sunken volcanic crater. Japs from Rabaul have been harassing our ships and airfields from Guadalcanal to Bougainville. <br />
<br />
Well, MacArthur's had enough, and we're in a position now to let the Tojo know that in no uncertain terms. <br />
<br />
"Rosie" and I and the other P-38s escorted fleets of B-25 Mitchell bombers attacking Rabaul. We came in skimming low over the jungle hills to shoot up the anti-aircraft guns and bomb the base itself. We flew high over the Japanese supply ships that twisted and turned through the sea far below in a futile effort to evade us.<br />
<br />
Although the Imperial Navy still holds Rabaul, we've pounded it and the smaller bases surrounding it nearly to dust, and I suspect it won't be much of a threat in the future.<br />
<br />
But there's no rest for the weary. The good news is, I'm out of the dogfighting business. The mechanics have stripped out "Rosie's" guns and replaced them with cameras. Needless to say I can't tell you exactly what I'll be doing, but I'll be saying, "Here's looking at you!" to a few Japs.<br />
<br />
Of course I'd a million times rather be looking at you. Knowing I've got furlough coming almost makes things worse. Somehow, having something you long for with all your heart and soul placed directly before you but not quite within reach makes the lack of it more sharply painful. Not knowing when I'd be home was just a dull ache, like the false dawns we see here before the real sun comes over the horizon. Having an actual date and waiting for it to arrive is far harder to endure. <br />
<br />
But endure I will. C.O confirms I'll be on my way back on New Year's Day! I'll telephone you as soon as I get to Australia. In the meantime, stock up on all those little ordinary things that we used to take for granted. I'd trade a mountain of breadfruit for a bowl of razor-clam chowder, and a bushel of coconuts for an apple. Oh, and be sure to get plenty of firewood. We're going to need it, since I'm planning on spending most of my leave inside with you.<br />
<br />
<br />
Your loving husband,<br />
<br />
Bob<br />
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<br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-74412241111699908392013-10-07T07:59:00.001-07:002013-10-07T13:25:09.963-07:00Letter From Bob, October 1943<br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/10/07/886.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/10/07/s_886.jpg' border='0' width='259' height='281' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />Dearest Rosie:<br />You're no doubt pretty mad at me for not having written in so long, but for once I've got an excuse. Seems I came down with a small case of malaria. Nothing to worry about, and the doc says I'll be good as new, but it was rough for a while I have to say.<br /><br />I've got no one to blame but myself. We're all supposed to take malaria pills regularly as New Guinea is so thick with mosquitoes that no amount of netting and ditch-draining will ever get rid of them. We're advised to keep our sleeves rolled down and our long pants on, but the sap who came up with that rule never spent months where the temperature and humidity never move off the 100 mark, to say nothing of chasing Japs around for hours every day in an unventilated P-38.<br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/10/07/887.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/10/07/s_887.jpg' border='0' width='218' height='281' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />You've probably read about our recent successes at Salamaua and Lae. After heroic effort the Aussies have driven the Japs out of their big bases there. Lae, of course is where Amelia Earhart departed on the last leg of her round-the-world flight five years ago. My buddies and I flew air support for these operations, thought the boys from Down Under had the toughest job. <br /><br />Well, I got so caught up in the action that I forgot a dose of malaria pills, despite the warning signs the doc put up:<br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/10/07/888.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/10/07/s_888.jpg' border='0' width='281' height='227' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />Sure enough, a few days later I woke up feeling like I'd been simultaneously hit by a jeep, tossed into Puget Sound in February and roasted like an ant under a magnifying glass. I don't remember much after that except dreams about as bizarre as the image I just described. I was laid up for a couple of weeks, but thankfully the docs pulled me through. They gave me a talking-to about the pills that I won't soon forget, but after what I've been through I'm about as likely to forget a dose as the Japs are to surrender tomorrow. <br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/10/07/889.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/10/07/s_889.jpg' border='0' width='259' height='281' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />So here I am, back in fighting trim, but with one remaining problem: Your birthday. You've patiently accepted my feeble efforts for the last two years, but alas there's even less to buy in a hospital tent than there is in a New Guinea village. But fate's a mysterious thing. While I was lying on my cot the CO came by and told me I'm eligible for a furlough! Won't be until early next year, but if you don't mind my banged-up carcass for a belated birthday present I'll be all yours!<br /><br />They tell me I was calling out your name while I was delirious with malaria. I don't remember it, but I have no doubt it's true. When everything sane seems to be slipping away I know that you are the one thing I have left to hold on to. Now I'll just be counting the days until I can hold on to you in person!<br /><br />Your loving husband <br /><br />Bob.<br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-86509530587895371822013-08-14T06:46:00.001-07:002013-08-14T06:46:40.737-07:00Letter to Bob, August 1943<br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/08/14/480.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/08/14/s_480.jpg' border='0' width='281' height='252' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br />Dearest Bob. <br /><br />The letter-writing guides they give us are full of helpful hints: Keep it light!" "Talk about family!" "Tell them about doings around town."<br /><br />But I'm sure none of these things are what you really want to hear, and if I wrote them you'd be reading the pamphlet, not a real letter from me. <br /><br />I thought and thought about what to write. Finally, I decided to imagine it's a usual Sunday, since that's my day off from the factory and the only one to which a few tattered shreds of life before the war still cling. I'm sure that if you could be magically plucked away from New Guinea and parachuted back to Tillicum Drive for 24 hours, it would be on that day.<br /><br />I picture us having coffee together, snitching sections of the newspaper from each other as we always do. In my dream there's no war, no "communiques" or dispatches." No maps with snarled arrows circling each other around unpronounceable place names. No black wreaths enfolding lists of dead Seattle boys. <br /><br />Since it's a warm August day, we'd walk to the beach to watch the white sails blossom on the sea. The destroyers belching black oily smoke have vanished, and the ferries hurrying across the water are filled with picnickers instead of tired, grubby factory girls. <br /><br />We'd walk along the waterfront and stop at the soda fountain. You'd point out how the shadows are stretching further across the streets now that summer's ending, then laugh and tell me I had a spot of ice cream on my nose. <br /><br />We'd stroll back to the house. Instead of cartoon Japs on every telephone pole reminding us to buy war bonds and save scrap and not talk, there'd be announcements for garage sales and babysitters.<br /><br />I'd fix you dinner. A big juicy steak, with buttered potatoes. Stormy would meow and wind her way around the table legs. You'd feed her bits when you thought I wasn't looking.<br /><br />Then night would come and there'd be no more talk.<br /><br /><br />It doesn't take much to shatter this reverie: A glance at the paper, a turn of the radio dial, a walk down the street past all the bungalows with star flags in their windows. But my heart is strong, and the dreams are safe inside it until you come home and make them real again.<br /><br />All my love,<br /><br /><br />Rosie<br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-89143562851944694392013-07-26T21:37:00.001-07:002013-07-27T08:42:08.395-07:00Letter from Bob, July 1943<br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/07/26/2927.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/07/26/s_2927.jpg' border='0' width='281' height='207' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />Dearest Rosie:<br /><br />They've moved us away from the "big city" of Port Moresby to a small spot on the other side of New Guinea. I'm not supposed to tell you where it is, but even if I did it wouldn't matter. No one but the natives has ever heard of any of the places in this part of the world.<br /><br />We're spending most of our time chasing Zeros up and down the coast, scrambling to intercept the Japs when they come buzzing over the horizon from their big base in Rabaul. Old Man MacArthur's undoubtedly got some grand plan up his sleeve, but whatever it is it's not obvious to us jungle pilots. <br /><br />As usual it's a test of our speed and firepower versus their maneuverability, like hawks plunging down on sparrows. Except these "sparrows" are buck-toothed bastards who'll machine-gun a parachuting pilot without batting an eye.<br /><br />I used to think I was above saying things like that. I told myself I'm not one of those-blood-and-guts fellows. But watching your friends die changes a man forever. I worry sometimes, Rosie, that you won't recognize me when I come home. When I was studying architecture all I dreamed of and cared about was the earth: Houses and streets and trees and the little bungalow I'd build for us when we were married. I never thought about the sky except to admire a sunset. Now I spend all my time there and it's a beautiful but hateful place. It's full of stars and steel, raindrops and drops of blood. I just want to be done with it.<br /><br /><br />I'm sorry if I seem down. Haven't been feeling like my old self recently, and a little unwell the last couple of days. Nothing to worry about, just the usual sort of thing that happens when the cook decides to get "creative" with Spam and coconuts.<br /><br />Going to lie down for a bit after I mail this, then back at the Japs. "Rosie" has at least one 50-caliber shell with a Nip's name on it.<br /><br />As always I miss you more than I have words to tell. I picture you and Stormy (forever as a kitten though of course she's grown into a big cat now!) and our house, even when I'm skimming above the tops of the palm trees and over the icy Owen Stanley Mountains. I promise that when I return I'll never leave you again for anything.<br /><br /><br /><br />Your loving husband,<br /><br /><br />Bob<br /><br /><br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-37309115453732323922013-06-23T13:52:00.001-07:002013-06-23T13:52:21.423-07:00Letter From Bob, June 1943<br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/06/23/2218.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/06/23/s_2218.jpg' border='0' width='193' height='281' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br />Dearest Rosie:<br /><br />I wish I had some sort of dramatic battle or heroic accomplishment to describe to you, but lately it's just been one long, dreary slog between us and the Japs here on New Guinea. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever retake this misbegotten island. <br /><br />So I decided that for once I write about something light, since there's little enough of that to go around.<br /><br />You've likely seen pictures of the nudie cartoons they're painting on planes these days. Some are pretty amusing, and the fellows in our squadron have been pestering me to get one and give my trusty P-38 a name. Our ace pilot Richard Bong has named his Lightning "Marge" after his sweetheart back home. He hasn't let anyone paint any cartoons of her, not that there's room on his plane's nose anyway what with all the kills he's racking up:<br /><br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/06/23/2219.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/06/23/s_2219.jpg' border='0' width='281' height='210' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br /><br />Well, I'm no slouch, but I'm no Richard Bong either, so there's a little room left on my Lightning's nose. When that copy of the Saturday Evening Post with Rosie the Riveter on the cover finally made its way to New Guinea, after all the teasing died down our resident Rembrant (who drew comic books before the war) offered to paint it on my plane. "Hell, no," I said, "My Rosie's beautiful!"<br /><br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/06/23/2220.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/06/23/s_2220.jpg' border='0' width='216' height='281' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /> <br /><br /><br />I showed him your picture. Three days later the sap had the gall to come back with a risqué drawing! The only thing that kept me from popping him one was reminding myself that he's a bachelor. I told him in no uncertain terms that even though you're the world's most beautiful Rosie the Riveter you're a respectable woman. <br /><br />Finally, he showed me the rough sketch I've enclosed. I like it, and I've agreed to let him paint it on "Rosie"'s nose. Now the other fellas, as well as the Japs, can get a good look at what I'm fighting for.<br /><br />I hope you're not offended. It makes me happy to think that the last thing any Jap I shoot down will see is your smiling face!<br /><br />All my love,<br /><br />Bob<br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-857282628870295242013-06-08T10:32:00.001-07:002013-06-08T10:32:34.708-07:00Dear Mrs. Wilcox<br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/06/08/902.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/06/08/s_902.jpg' border='0' width='400' height='400' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br /><br /><br />"Dear Mrs. Wilcox. It's hard to write a letter to someone you'll never meet, especially when it's about how her husband died. But you deserve to know, so I'll give it my best. <br /><br />Joe was in my squad, and you could never ask for a better buddy. No matter how tough things got he never complained. We were cold, hungry, and sometimes more scared than we'd admit, but Joe took it in stride. We all liked him. He was generous. He even gave one of the sweaters you knit for him to a fellow who didn't have one. I think he might have saved that man's life, as we didn't have enough supplies when we first arrived on this miserable frozen rock, and some fellows died of exposure.<br /><br />Of course Joe talked about you all the time, how he missed your cooking and your picnics near Mount Rainier. I've never been to Seattle, but Joe made it sound like a wonderful place, even with all the rain! He was incredibly proud of your work building the Flying Fortresses we see every day here in Alaska.<br /><br />But I can tell I'm stalling, and I'd better get to why I have to write this letter.<br /><br />On May 29 we thought we finally had the Japs on this island licked. Most of them were dead, and their last remaining troops were bottled up in a tiny area around Chicagoff Harbor. <br /><br />But I'm from Texas, and I know what happens when a rattlesnake's cornered. He strikes. And being the snakes they are, that's exactly what the Japs did.<br /><br />The night before, one of our scouting patrols made it behind the Jap lines. They almost didn't make it back, either, because the saps forgot the password when they returned to camp; the sentries didn't let them in until the patrol started yelling "Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Yankees, Joe DiMaggio!" Anyway, the patrol had a fantastic story: They saw Japs in their camp swilling sake, shouting and jumping up and down like madmen. One fellow saw them shooting their wounded. Something bizarre was happening. The patrol leader told the lieutenant, but he ignored him. Japs are always doing crazy things, who can understand them? But the patrolmen figured something was up, and they went from foxhole to foxhole telling our men what they saw.<br /><br />At about 3:00 the next morning Joe and I were in the chow line when we heard a horrible screaming racket. A thousand crazed Japs came running down the hill straight at us, hurling grenades, firing rifles and waving bayonets tied to sticks. We ran for our weapons, but a Jap caught Joe. They fell down on the tundra, kicking and punching each other savagely. Joe was unarmed, but the bastard Jap had a knife. Somehow he twisted around and shoved it into Joe's chest. All I can say, Mrs. Wilcox, is that the knife went to Joe's heart so it was over quick. I was able to grab my revolver by this time, and I shot that murderous sonofabitch right in the face and sent him straight to the hell he came from.<br /><br /><br />Mrs. Wilcox, your husband was not alone. The rampaging Japs went on down the valley, screaming "We'll drink your blood!" They found one of our medical stations and cut the ropes holding up the tents, so the wounded GIs were tangled in the canvas and couldn't escape before the Japs hacked them to death. They also bayoneted men who were in their sleeping bags. <br /><br />Finally, the Japs reached an engineering unit on the far side of the valley. The cooks and the bulldozer drivers were able to mount a defense and machine-gunned a bunch of the attackers. The rest of the Japs blew themselves up with their own grenades.<br /><br />When it was over the valley was littered with corpses. I even heard the chaplain say of the Japs, "I'm glad they're dead, really glad. How can I go back to my church when I've got it in me to be glad men are dead?" <br /><br />Well, I'm not a man of God, so I have no problem with dead Japs. My goal in life is to produce a lot more of them. <br /><br /><br />I can't tell you how sorry I am that Joe's gone, and doubly sorry that you have to hear about it from as poor a writer as me. Your husband and all the other brave men who died on this stinking rock will surely be avenged, and I pledge to you, Mrs. Wilcox, that I will do everything in my power to make that happen.<br /><br /><br />Yours, <br /><br /><br />Pfc Phillip Bolden<br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-35537324004962497572013-05-27T19:04:00.001-07:002013-05-27T19:04:02.893-07:00Letter From Joe, Late May 1943<br /><br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/05/27/2109.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/05/27/s_2109.jpg' border='0' width='250' height='187' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br /><br />Dearest Betty. I'm sorry to say I don't know what day it is here any more. One freezing, foggy, blowing hour just seems to run into another, and it feels like we've been here a hundred years instead of just a couple of weeks.<br /><br />It's an awful slog fighting the Japs. They're clinging to this miserable speck of rock as though their lives depend on it, which I suppose they do since the Japs don't believe in retreat or surrender. The Army Air Force keeps dropping leaflets on them (I've enclosed one for you). They tell me they read as follows:<br /><br /><i>"The kiri leaf falls. Its fall is the omen of the inevitable downfall of militarism. With the fall of one kiri leaf comes sadness and bad luck. Before spring comes again the raining bombs of America, just like the kiri leaves fluttering to the ground, will bring sad fate and misfortune."</i><br /><br />A lot of silly words wasted on a lot of paper if you ask me, but I'm only a private and not a general, so what do I know?<br /><br />Actually I do know one thing the Japs understand, which is a grenade. Since I last wrote to you we fought our way out of the aptly-named Massacre Valley and up onto the high ground. The Japs were dug in on the valley walls, but we got a lucky break. The artillery gunners behind us fire smoke-screen rounds. The Japs thought it was poison gas, and scrambled for their gas masks. That gave us time to lob grenades into their positions and do a little bayonet work.<br /><br /><br />A photographer got the enclosed picture of some of my buddies in action:<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/05/27/2110.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/05/27/s_2110.jpg' border='0' width='231' height='281' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />This is pretty much what it's like all over the island. We've been in shallow trenches like this one at times:<br /><br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/05/27/2111.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/05/27/s_2111.jpg' border='0' width='281' height='188' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />But we've also got tents, and hot food and fuel. Heck, the Army's even trying to boost our morale by taking us to the movies, if you can believe that! Here's our "limousine" from the front to the movie tent:<br /><br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/05/27/2112.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/05/27/s_2112.jpg' border='0' width='271' height='281' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />Betty, I've got to admit that Hedy Lamarr is almost as beautiful as you! <br /><br />Well, that's it for now. We've got just a few remnants of the Japs bottled up around Chickagoff Harbor. Our sergeant says we'll likely be going at them to finish them off in a day or two, so with any luck this will be my last letter from this frozen lump of dirt.<br /><br />Give my best to Rosie, tell her I see lots of P-38s like her lounging, coconut-juice drinking husband Bob flies in that tropical paradise of New Guinea (she knows I'm joking). <br /><br /><br />See you soon. All my love,<br /><br /><br />Joe<br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-68603485909937420452013-05-19T21:06:00.001-07:002013-05-19T21:06:35.724-07:00Letter from Joe, Mid-May 1943This is a horrible place. <br /><br />Betty, I don't know how to sugarcoat things since I don't have a lot of fancy words like the college boys, so I'm not going to try. You'll just have to hear it like it is, but I know you can take it.<br /><br />We were pinned down in the Massacre Valley for days after we landed. We only got a little way inland before the Japs started shooting us from the hills. We had beach artillery that fired back, but the ships in the bay couldn't do anything for us because it was too foggy. I spent the most miserable night of my life lying in a freezing, muddy streambank trying to stay out of the machine-gunners' sights. Some fellas a few hundred yards away tried to keep warm by setting fire to the stocks of their rifles, the only thing they had that would burn. They were dead by morning. I heard one of the officers say the Japs have fur-lined boots and uniforms and plenty of kerosene. All I can say is, I hope they'll all stay nice and warm in the hell we'll send them to.<br /><br />We slowly made our way up the valley, a few yards at a time, holding on to each other's cartridge belts. We're supposed to be linking up with another unit that landed in the northern part of the island, but it's been unbelievably slow. A buddy told me he heard that when that Northern Force got to a camp the Japs had abandoned, our fighter pilots didn't realize they were our boys, and killed a bunch of them by bombing and strafing. He said he also heard the Japs killed their own wounded by injecting them with morphine and throwing grenades into their medical tent.<br /><br />Thankfully we've got what you might call a camp set up now. We've got a little stove, but the mud floor's pretty nasty. It's been tough getting supplies in because the vehicles keep getting bogged down in the mud and the muskeg, but it seems like we're secure for the time being.<br /><br /> Don't you worry about me. I got those socks and sweaters you knit me and they sure feel good. I'm putting all my mind to staying safe and winning this thing. I've got to go now, but I promise I'll write again as soon as I can.<br /><br />Love, Joe<br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-22401602266904225962013-05-13T20:09:00.001-07:002013-05-13T20:14:29.100-07:00Letter from Joe, May 1943<br />
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Dear Betty<br />
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Just a quick note to tell you we've arrived at Attu Island. I thought when we were building the Alaska Highway last year that I'd seen the most Godforsaken country in the world, but the Army's determined to prove me wrong. After we're done here the only worse place they could send me is Hades.<br />
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Actually Hades might be a bit of an improvement; at least I wouldn't be shivering as I write this the way I am now. The Army got it wrong about how cold it is here. Most of us are still wearing the uniforms we had when we left California, which are feeling pretty flimsy when it's blowing forty miles an hour and sleeting.<br />
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We came ashore at a place called Massacre Bay. A lovely name for an equally lovely place. So far the landing's been a perfect example of what the fellows call FUBAR, since everything in the Army must have an acronym. It means "Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition." We have maps that only go a thousand yards inland, and only a few photos of the interior of the island since reconnaissance planes can't exactly take pictures through the eternal fog here. <br />
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At least the Japs are leaving us alone for the time being. They're hiding up in the hills like the cowards they are. And a good thing, too, since we all were supposed to be ashore today and the boats are still unloading.<br />
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I've stuck a few photos in here for you. I don't know if the censors will let them through, but what use any Axis spies would have for pictures of scruffy soldiers on muddy rocks and snow is beyond me.<br />
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Don't worry a bit about me. When the cold and the scenery get me down I just pretend we're having one of our picnics on Mount Rainier when a summer squall come through. I imagine your face under that silly knit hat of yours, and the basket of huckleberries you always pick. <br />
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Well, I've got to go as there's a lot of work to do. They say we'll lick the Japs here in just a few days, so with any luck this letter will barely beat me to Seattle.<br />
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All my love,<br />
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JoeRosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-31270643727438493822013-04-20T10:53:00.001-07:002013-04-20T10:53:04.895-07:00Letter From Bob, April 1943<br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/04/20/1136.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/04/20/s_1136.jpg' border='0' width='254' height='178' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br /><br />Dearest Rosie:<br /><br />Something huge just happened, and I was a big part of it, but the censors won't let me tell you what it was! You cannot imagine how hard it is to keep the secret, but I've got to trust the Army when they say there's a good reason not to tell. All I'm allowed to write is that I hope you'll read something in the papers later and think of me.<br /><br />The other thing that's tough is the knowledge that it's our second wedding anniversary, and once again I'm not with you. I'm sure you've had the same thought I have - we've been apart longer than we've been together. It's not the worst thing the Japs have done from the world's point of view, but it's the worst thing they've done as far as I'm concerned.<br /><br />It's been a little bit of "Old Home Week" here at the base. One of the pilots in our group, a fellow by name of Rex Barber, turns out to be a fellow Oregonian. Not from the "big city" of Portland where we were born, but a tiny town called Culver in the sagebrush country east of the mountains. Exactly why is a military secret for now, but mark my words, he'll be famous someday.<br /><br />Turns out there's also a fellow from Seattle at our base. Of course the Negroes are in separate quarters from us, but out here the far corners of the world people rub shoulders more than they would back home. I got to chatting with this Al Hendrix, who tells quite a story. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. to a family of vaudeville performers who settled in Seattle. He misses his wife Lucille something awful; they were married a year ago, just three days before he shipped out to Georgia for basic training. At least you and I had six months together before I joined up! He says the very worst of it was when his son Jimmy was born last November. He couldn't get enough leave time to get back to Seattle to visit his family, and his sergeant threw him in the stockade to boot to keep him from going AWOL. Now he's stuck out here in the jungle 10,000 miles from a son he's never seen.<br /><br />It hasn't been any easier to find you an anniversary present this year than it was before, so I hope you'll forgive me for repeating myself. I've enclosed another watercolor of the local scenery. There are several fellows around here with real talent, not that they've got a lot of free time to use it. I have another piece of artwork that may amuse you, but I'm saving something for my next letter.<br /><br />They showed us another one of those "Why We Fight" movies at the base the other day. Of course we all want the same thing, but I can tell you that every man out here has his own private reason for fighting as well. Mine happens to be pinned inside my P-38's cockpit, next to the altimeter:<br /><br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/04/20/1137.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/04/20/s_1137.jpg' border='0' width='80' height='80' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />Happy Anniversary.<br /><br />All my love, Bob.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*Image: Watercolor by James S. Crafts, Milne Bay, New Guinea, April 1943.<br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1935122278477101228.post-63551953296439146512013-03-11T13:37:00.001-07:002013-03-11T13:37:33.361-07:00Letter From Bob - The Battle of the Bismarck Sea<br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/03/11/1790.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/03/11/s_1790.jpg' border='0' width='214' height='281' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br />Dearest Rosie. <br /><br />It's a long trip over the Owen Stanley Mountains to the Bismarck Sea, especially when your beloved P-38's cockpit cooling doesn't work. Like most of the fellows here I've been flying in nothing more than shorts, shoes and a parachute, but it's still a sweaty business.<br /><br />As you may imagine, though, the perspiration isn't all from the jungle heat. Our CO says the newspaper boys have been crawling all over MacArthur's headquarters, so I expect you've already read about our big scrap with the Japs last week. How they were trying to ferry thousands of fresh troops to New Guinea from their big base in Rabaul, and how we stopped them.<br /><br />But I doubt those newsboys wrote much about what we really did. They like to make everything look easier and simpler than it is.<br /><br />A lot of the work was done by the fellows in light bombers like B-25s, A-20s and Bristol Beaufighters, retrofitted with heavy guns so they could attack like fighters. The Aussies and Americans flew right at the Japanese transports a just a few dozen feet above the waves, veering back and forth so their guns raked a wide swath of the ships' decks. At the last instant they'd drop their bombs, which had fuses just long enough to allow the bombers to escape the blast.<br /><br />My buddies and I were mostly protecting the big Flying Fortresses, which dropped bombs on the Japanese transports in the more usual way. I have to tell you, Rosie, things didn't go all our way the first day. A pack of Zeros jumped one of the Fortresses and damaged it so badly the crew bailed out. And what did the godforsaken Japs do? Why, they shot the crewmen as they parachuted down. Three of my squadron peeled away to go after the Japs, and they were shot down as well. These were guys were my friends. We ate together, played cards together in the barracks during thundering jungle downpours, drank beer together and talked about what we'd do when we got home. Now they're gone, and I watched them die.<br /><br />I've enclosed a picture of one of my buddies. His name was Bob, too.<br /><br /><br /><br /><center><a href='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/show_photo.php?p=13/03/11/1791.jpg'><img src='http://photo.blogpressapp.com/photos/13/03/11/s_1791.jpg' border='0' width='281' height='227' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br />Capt. Robert Faurot with his P-38, before he was shot down in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea.<br /><br /><br />But I had no time to mourn. We were back at it the second day. I remember thinking of my buddies as we flew back over the mountains, my heart hardening with each steamy mile. I'd be lying if I said revenge wasn't on our minds.<br /><br />This time the convoy broke formation when the bombers arrived, which made the transports' anti-aircraft defenses less concentrated. The ships twisted and turned violently, trying to escape. We saw two burning transports collide. The bomber crews saw Japanese troops on the ships' decks lined up with rifles, but the guns on the planes had greater range so the Japs were mowed down before they could fire back. <br /><br />It was over in 20 minutes, most of their fleet sinking. We returned in the afternoon for another 20 minutes and finished the job. Eight transports and three destroyers went to Davy Jones' Locker.<br /><br />Now comes the part that's harder to write about: For the next couple of days, we had orders to "mop up." This meant shooting up any lifeboats, barges or rafts we found. Our guns raked the sea whenever we saw anything floating that looked like it had Japs on it, throwing up red fountains. I didn't enjoy it, but whenever I hesitated to pull the trigger I thought of my dead friends. <br /><br /><br />I suspect the Japs will never try big convoys like this again; I suppose they'll stick to submarines, though how they'll be able to move large numbers of troops that way only Hirohito knows.<br /><br /><br />I'm sorry to write such grisly things to you, but war is changing all of us here, as I imagine it's changing you. I only hope we can forget all of these things when it's over.<br /><br />Love,<br /><br />Bob.<br />Rosalind Sinclairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12224356642461271107noreply@blogger.com0