June 8, 1951 Letter from Jay

Camp Polk, LA

Dear Bob,

I was very glad to receive your letter today as your where abouts after Leonard Wood was somewhat of a mystery.
I surely was surprised to hear that your folks had a business of your own, the last I knew, your Dad was planning to work for J.P. Koestner, Inc. I bet he likes it much better than when he was at Daleiden's, doesn't he?
As yet Bob, I have not been home, while at Fort Hood, Texas, my folks dropped in on their way back from Florida, so that helped quite a bit.
We are now being given furloughs every few days so I expect I will be leaving some time this month.
You wrote that you met Terry Elliot in Chicago, he now is assigned to "A" Company of our 193rd, and I guess he is one of the crew of five on one of their tanks.
Your basic training sounds similar to ours, we had the 6 weeks of infantry basic and then 8 weeks of groups, on the job training and none are in the advanced group training.
At the present time, the 193rd and 322nd tank battalions are listed as the two top trained tank outfits in the U.S. So there is some chance of overseas service for us.
My particular job is parts man for the Battalion, we take care of the vehicle parts and materials and it keeps up constantly ordering parts, which we do not have on had.
It may interest you to know that the M46 Med. Tank has one, 810 H.P. engine, and is equipped with Dyna flow drive. It burns about 8 gallons of gas for one mile of running. We sure are lucky we are not furnishing the gas.
It sure would be swell if we could have furloughs together, I'll have to keep in touch with you on that.
Well boy, I am on guard tonight so I guess I had better get a little shut eye before my shift comes around.
Your buddy,
Jay
P.S.
There also are quite a few fellows from Kazoo here but most of them are in the line companies, so do not get to much to see them.
Imagine you are behaving yourself as usual?