PVT Martin E Conlon
US 51 213 731
Co. D 34th INF. REGT. APO. 24
c/o P.M. SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.
TO:
MR. & MRS. WILLIAM CONLON
9 ELIZABETH DRIVE
BETHPAGE, LONG ISLAND
N.Y.
Oct 21, 1953
Pusan
Dear Dot & Bill:
I was very pleased to receive your nice letter the other day and it was nice to hear from you again. I hope that everyone is feeling fine and in good health. By the way, how is the front lawn coming along? OK, I hope. I haven’t had too much time to write because we are doing what the Army calls beautifying the area. It all boils down to a lot of unnecessary details. When we first moved into the area there were two very large fences surrounding the entire place since it was formerly a prisoner of war camp. Well, we took them down and it made a big improvement in the area because now we don’t feel like prisoners anymore. After we got all settled down and put wooden floors in the buildings, they decided it would be best if we had cement floors. So we moved out of the buildings and started digging out the floor. The Chinese are pretty small people, so the buildings weren’t too high therefore we had to dig out the floor as much as 14 inches in some places. It took us two days to complete the job because the building is 140 feet long and 25 feet wide. Today we went out on a foolish detail at S-4. We had to move a pile of lumber to an area about 5 feet away from the original place because the boards weren’t stacked in a neat enough pile. Then they made us move another load of lumber to the area we first cleaned out. I can’t figure out why they do those things, but I guess they have a reason for it. To top it all off, they had nerve enough to give us a lecture about Re-enlisting. I tell you they didn’t have very many candidates from our company.
Winter is beginning to hit us slow, but sure. The days aren’t too bad but the nights get extremely cold. At night we use our air mattress, sleeping bags, 2 blankets and our long underwear. I hope that they give us more equipment before winter really gets here. They say we will get space heaters pretty soon and we may even get real beds with mattresses and all. At the present time they are using those canvas folding cots. They are a lot better than nothing, but a real bed with sheets and all sure would be nice.
The way things stand now, I figure I have about a year more to do over here. That will figure to seventeen or eighteen months overseas and that’s plenty as far as I am concerned. For the most part, right now, we are taking basic training all over again and it sure is tiresome. We’re going all the way back to the fundamentals that we had back in the States, such as sighting and aiming the M1 rifle, assembly and disassembly of the various weapons, military courtesy, dismounted drill and everything else.
I can’t see how the people can live through the winter over here. Some of the houses are made of cardboard boxes and some even have beer cans flattened out for a roof. i would be afraid of lighting a fire in one of these places for fear they would all burn down but i guess they don’t worry about it. Well, it’s getting late so I guess that I will close this letter for now, but I will write again soon. Give my regards to all the folks and take it easy.
Love
Eddie
