Relatives and friends could communicate with us by V Mail. Now a days it is E Mail. It was one page, photographed and sent overseas on a 4 x 5 inch format. Sometimes the writing was so small we could hardly make it out. But it was better than nothing.

* * * FUNNY MONEY * * *

After sixty years, this is some of the script that survived. It was issued by our government. This was our pay in which France, Belguim and Germany accepted as legal money. Privates got paid fifty dollars a day-----ONCE A MONTH.

QUAD MACHINE GUN (50 CALIBER)

Ready to be towed to be mounted on a railway flat car. The operating crew had to keep the ammunition coming, remove and change the hot barrels generated by the high heat and calculate the range and distance of given targets.

MULTIPLE QUAD (four) MACHINE GUN MOUNT

The quad 50 caliber capible of firing over 500 rounds per minute and an effective range of over a mile. Mounted on flat cars to ward off the straffing German Stukas.

A portion of the bombed out railroad tracks in France.

Train Wreck --- Our biggest worry was sand washing over the tracks.

Victory in Europe day.

We stand at attention at Charleroi, Belguim.

Site of Napolions Defeat at Waterloo, Belguim. Ater the battle, the women got their baskets and scraped the blood soaked top soil and made this mound.

Over 200 steps leads up to the monument on top. You can see the whole layout of the battle ground. We visited the monument after the Battle of the Bulge.

SURDON, FRANCE --- October, 1944

We could smell them before we could see them. Along came two Frenchmen with a donkey pulling a fish cart.

VICTORY SHIP

The TUSCULUM, not unlike the restored Lane Victory ship, harbored at San Pedro, California, carried us home from the ETO (European Theator of Operations). Specifications: length--455 feet, width--62 feet, speed--15½ knots, propeller--19 feet in diameter.

* * * TUSCULUM * * *

Here I am aboard the Victory Ship Tusculum, after leaving France. In a few days we will be back home. It will be a lot faster than going over, which took us thirteen days on a troop ship with thousands aboard. World War One was called the war to end wars. World War Two----------NO MENTION ! ! !