Germany

May 5, 1945

Dear Mom,

At last I'm caught up again and can breathe easily for a while. We were moving so fast these past weeks that my reports were way behind. But now I am pretty much up-to-date.

We've just had a unique experience. An entire German armored division surrendered to us. It's no slouch outfit, either. The men look pretty good from all reports and their officers are first rate. It will bring our prisoner total over 80,000.

The situation is breaking fast. It appears to be just a question of time. We still have some fanatics in front of us, however.

I'm sending you two pictures which came to me recently. The dressed up one was taken in England during the time I was in Birmingham when I first arrived overseas. The other more recent was taken not long ago. I don't recall the exact date.

It was good to hear you had such a marvelous vacation. You ought to take time off more often. Our weather has been much the same as yours - cold, rainy, disagreeable. Even some snow flurries once in a while. It's a rather damp climate.

This town has a fine little motion picture house and we've been running our films there for the soldiers. I took a couple of hours off the other day to see a U.S.O. show there - my first that I have had opportunity to see. It was quite good and since I had met all of the performers I enjoyed it that much more.

We've had a wonderful place here in our present location. It's an office and house combined and quite nice. For the first time we had running hot water. After a few days we got the house lights going. And there are three or four flush toilets, which are more common in Germany than in France, but not is such great numbers here either.

Your letters have been coming along fairly well in spite of our rapid movement but there have been some periods of delay. I hope I can write a little more regularly from now on. In my last two reports I've had to write something like 30,000 - 40,000 words, so you can appreciate that I get "written out."

The air mail TIME has just begun to arrive and is coming in regularly. Many thanks. I certainly enjoy it a lot. One of the few things I get a chance to read.

This is some air mail paper I picked up at our present place. How do you like it?

Love,

Bob