LETTER #22
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29 June, 1945
Dear Mother,
I have been in the Brookings Municipal Hospital since 19 June now,
and Dr. Miller says that I can get
out the 2nd of July (next Monday).
My temperature was 103.4 until afternoon of 21 June, when it rose
to 104. Then it started to come down slowly until it was normal this morning. Rev. Tennis (Lennis?), pastor of the 1st
Pres. Church, where I sing in the choir, has visited me three times. Mr.
Hubbard, the Red Cross man, visits two or three times each day, bringing books,
candy, gum, or ice cream. He furnished this stationery also. The only things I
regret are missing the chance to go home, and missing so much work. Now I will have to work hard all the
time and every weekend until the end of the term, because I would not want to
have to stay here on furlough time making up work. I have not been alone, for
two other AST boys had the same ailment and were placed in my room. One left 26 June, and the other left
today. The weather has been
beautiful ever since I became sick, which seems rather ironical.
The
"This Is the Infantry" show[1]
stopped here, and most of the company marched to the college football field,
where the exhibition was held. Each of the men participating in it has been
overseas at least two years. While they were here they stayed in our barracks,
and their trucks were parked in front. It really began to look like a military establishment.
The
hospital is right across the street from the barracks, so the corporal, and
sometimes Lt. Coppock comes over every once in a while to see the men in the
hospital. The service here is very different from a military hospital, of
course. Since there are not
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as many patients, the nurses can do much more for each
patient. I've never had so many backrubs in my life before.
I
feel pretty good, but I do feel that I will be weak for several weeks to come. However, the doctor will not send me
back to classes right away when I go back to the barracks. I will be in
quarters for a while, and then I shall go to classes, but not to P.T. and
military training.[2]
Incidentally,
the day the day before I went to the hospital, I went through an obstacle
course in a military class. It's a very good course, and should help prepare us for basic. About two
weeks ago we ran three miles on country roads for P.T. My wind is still rather
undeveloped, partly because of my inactivity when my leg was broken.
We
lost Dr. Scott, our geog prof, because he goes to school every three summers,
and this summer he is going to the U.of M., so I would like to get in touch
with him when I come home July 28th. I also want to get an appointment at the dental clinic, because I'm
getting tired of eating on one side all the time.
Don't
work too hard yourself so that you can keep up your resistance. Don't worry
about me, because I'm getting well.
Your
loving son,
Stewart
 |
| First Presbyterian Church, Brookings, SD, where Stewart says he sang in the choir |
[1] I haven't been able to find
anything definite online about this. I can't tell if it was a stage production or
some kind of exhibition. There is a video in the National Archives with this
title which gives a history of the U.S. Army Infantry, but I have no idea if there is any connection between the two.
[2]
Stewart talked about
this period of this life in the taped conversations I had with him - revealing
that his illness was more serious than he was letting on to mother:
While I was there in South Dakota, I was hospitalized with
pneumonia. If I hadn't been in the service, in all likelihood I would have died,
because they could not get my fever down with alcohol rubs and they didn't have
penicillin in that hospital because it wasn't available yet to civilians, and
that was a civilian hospital. But because I was in the service, after nine days
of my wasting away with this fever, they finally got some penicillin into me
and in two days I was over it. But I was so weak after all that I could barely
walk across the street to my dorm. So they didn't require me to go back to
class for a whole week, until I got my strength back, and I didn't have to take
P.E. for two weeks. When I got back to class there were only three weeks left
in the quarter and I had missed three weeks. But since I had already taken that
quarter, it wasn't too bad. So I finished on July 28th, and then I had a furlough
before going on active duty--I had reached my eighteenth birthday during that
quarter (the rule was that you went on active duty at the end of the quarter in
which you reached your eighteenth birthday; they didn't pull you out of school
just because you had turned eighteen. I was actually in the hospital on my
eighteenth birthday).
