Louis Winsauer
Co. B - 45th Med. Bm.
3rd Armored Div.
Camp Polk, LA

Miss Jeanne Johnson
Sheboygan, Wis.

Dear Jeannie,

Here it is over two weeks since I left home and you and I haven’t even dropped you a card I’ve meant to, dozens of times, but something always came up and I just couldn’t seem to stay put long enough to take up pen and paper and write. I wrote you a postcard while we were at Camp Grant but never mailed it, and started a letter here at Camp Polk, but never finished it—darling, please forgive me.

These past two weeks, Jeanne, have seemed more like two months; and my not being able to see, talk to, and hold you is the main, and practically only reason that I dislike this G-damn army. The life itself isn’t half bad—we get plenty of food, plenty of sleep and plenty of fresh air. We also will have lots of time to ourselves beginning next week, when we go on a regular army schedule. But if I was to list every good point I could think of they’d never make up for the fact that I have to be over a thousand miles away from you. 

We arrived here at Camp Polk last Thursday morning after a 42 hr. train ride from Camp Grant, Ill.—and boy, that was some train ride! We couldn’t move from one car o another and weren’t allowed to leave the train during the whole trip down. We had our meals and slept in the same damn car from Tuesday evening until Thursday morning—and that was no picnic. I got into a poker game and we played continuously (on the train) for nearly eight hours—naturally, I lost, and it didn’t make me feel any better.

This Camp Polk is a new camp which was built for the newly formed 3rd Armored Division of which we are a part. It (the division) is really a tank corp, and there are only two other such units in the country. When we arrived here last Thursday (June 19) there were only about two thousand men in the camp, but over a thousand more have been coming in every day, and eventually there will be 50,000 soldiers here. 

We are about 70 miles S.W. of Camp Beauregard and Livingston, and 20 miles from the Texas border. The nice thing about this camp is that we live in wooden barracks, instead of in tents as they do at Beauregard and most other camps.

I haven’t seen Sammy since a week ago last Friday when we were classified and put into different companies. They put me in the Medical Battalion—but where in hell they put Stan I don’t know. I do know he’s in this camp, but in what company I haven’t the slightest idea. I’ve tried to locate him, but it’s like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack—it just can’t be found. I’ll have to write home and have his parents send me his mailing address so that I can locate him. This camp covers 12 square miles and the different companies are spread out over the entire area so you can see what a tough job it would be to find him.

How’s every little thing in Sheboygan? Did you have a good time at the commencement ball? And what have you been doing with yourself these past few weeks? Do you ever run into any of the Dawn Club boys? If you do say hello for me.

The other day I heard a band play “Oh, Look at Me Now” on the radio, and Jeannie, hearing it and seeing your picture above my bed brought back all the fun we had together and made me realize exactly how much I’m missing (They just turned off the lights in the barracks so I’ll have to finish this letter in the latrine where the lights stay on all night—guess what I’m sitting on now—and it’s not even a Kohler product).

Darling, again I say, please forgive me for not writing sooner. I wanted to, and know I should have, why I didn’t I don’t know—but it surely was not because I haven’t been thinking of you or have forgotten you—that would be impossible, as you know. To say I miss you would be a gross understatement, to say I love you would be pure and simple fact—so goodnight and goodbye now for a few days, when I promise you I’ll write again.

Love,

Louis

P.S. — Here’s hoping you don’t wait to answer this letter as long as I did to write it. — Once again, goodnight, Jeannie.