Here is the next letter in the Stewart series. He is still at home, waiting for a 2nd physical exam for the Army (after they found a broken bone in his ankle in the first exam - six months old and not fully healed).
September
10, 1944
Dear Dad,
Just
to be sure when I could take my physical over again, I went to down to the
Federal Offices Building and asked the man who took care of my mental
examination. He said that I was not eligible for re-examination until Oct. 22
and since I want to get my dental work done at the U dental college, and there
is nothing else to interfere, I am going to wait until then and take it over
again then, since I will be able to pass it then instead of starting in at the
U Oct. 2. I am planning to do a lot of reading in the next few weeks since I
will have so much time for it. Already I have read The Undertow by E. E. Knowles,[i] and I have read over half of Lincoln
Steffins autobiography, starting from the beginning.[ii]
Mother
has not yet received the hundred dollars you sent at the beginning of
August. She has received the
regular check, however.
The
first two terms of ASTP reserve training are the same for ERC and ACER members,
but at the end of the second twelve weeks or at the beginning of the third
term, the courses are divided between those who are members of the ACER, those
in the ERC who were chosen in the second term for premedical training , and
those chosen for engineering training. I am going to try very hard to be chosen
for pre-medical training, for I would prefer that to the others. Of course, you
understand, this training does not assure me of being allowed to participate in
the ASTP in the regular army, but it gives me a better chance for having had
the extra training. I must trust to my own ability in hoping to continue in the
regular army, and, by the way, I probably will be in line for induction even
though the war is over, because after the November election, it is likely that
a law will be passed to draft young men as they graduate from high school to
replace those that have been in the army for many years.
Fall
has come at last, although the weather has not changed perceptibly in
acknowledgement of it. Larry has started at Marshall, taking up where I left
off.[iii]
Choir practice will begin again Wednesday night. and it is a good thing,
because my throat has been getting sore every time I had to sing two or three
verses of a hymn, simply because I
am not used to it.
In
just four years I will be able to vote in the national election, and I will, no
doubt, be vitally interested by that time; of course, I am interested now, but
not quite as vitally as adults, since I cannot vote, and I am busy getting my
education.
I
believe that the American public should go on in their work as if the war were
sure to last in Germany at least two more years, and then it would probably end
much sooner than they are speculating, for, if we cannot think about Victory
without becoming slack in our duty, then we have no right to think about it,
even though this is just about the only country in the world where we can be
slack and still win a hard war.
I
know that I will hardly be able to wait until you can tell the full story of
what you are now experiencing. There are, no doubt, many others who are having
experiences just as interesting, but these are happening to you, and therefore we are extremely
interested.
Do
as much as you can to keep well with all the means at your disposal.
Your
loving son,
Stewart
[i] The Undertow was published
in 1906 by Robert E. Knowles (not E. E. ) who was at that time described
as "Canada's most famous novelist." It was his second novel, the
first being St. Cuthbert's. He was a
Presbyterian minister. He died in 1946. The
Undertow seems to be available online as an e-book. Knowles is the subject
of a fairly recent blog post:
 |
| Robert E.Knowles, author of The Undertow |
"Robert
E. Knowles is the very sort of fellow one would expect to have been the subject
of a biography. I'm thinking here of those dry, polite stories of a life, often
penned by friends, that were published in the early half of the last century.
Not only was Knowles "One of Canada's Best Known Novelists" – this
according to the March 1909 Canadian
Bookman – but he was once Canada's preeminent Presbyterian preacher, a man
renowned throughout the Dominion for his sermons and oratorical skills."
[ii] Lincoln Steffins was a
journalist, one of the best known of the "muckrakers" of the
Progressive Era of the early 20th century. His Autobiography was published in 1931.
 |
| Lincoln Steffins |
[iii] I started 7th grade at
Marshall the Fall of 1944. The Junior High and Senior High were housed in one
building. My career at Marshall was interrupted when mother and I moved to
Kentucky in the fall of 1945 to join dad at Camp Breckinridge, and then was
ended when we moved to Anamosa, IA in summer of 1946.
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