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Letter #21
Ch.(Capt.) Barney C. Crockett Pvt.
Stewart C. Crockett
1314 Engrs.
A.P.O. 513______ ASN
17183138__Co.B_ASTRP
c/o
P.M. New York,
N.Y._____ Box
217, Brookings, S. Dak[1]
30
May 45
Dear Dad,
I
have finally decided to stay in the A.S.T.R.P. When I was at the Lincoln Air Base Hospital, I felt very
bitter, because I had missed finishing the second term just because the doctor
at student health thought that I had gonorrhea.[2] And then when I had to stay there for
two weeks because they seemed to forget about me for a week, I was very
disturbed. Not until I talked to the commandant here, Captain Olson, did I have
any argument against leaving. He said that if he were my father, he would not
give his consent for my release. Then after I had sent the release papers home
to mother, and she had sent them back, Sergeant Treacy (?) talked to me about
the choices I would have in basic if I quit now. After thinking it all over, I
decided to stay.
This
post is very different from Lincoln. The barracks are located in a men's
dormitory, with two to a room, two latrines to a floor, and innerspring
mattresses. My roommate is a Methodist Chaplain's son who formerly lived in
Pittsburg but now makes his home in Colorado Springs, south of Denver. We have
separate closets and separate drawers for everything.[3]
I believe also that I shall be able to learn something even though I am taking
the second term over again. However, I would have liked to go to Lansing,
Michigan, for a third term with my buddies from Lincoln.
Page 2 (cont.)
I can understand the analytical geometry much better now,
and also the electricity in physics.[4] We do quite a bit of homework in all
our classes, too, and that is something which we didn't do at Lincoln. We also write themes in English
regularly, while we had to write only one or two during the whole term at
Nebraska. Our P.T. here is Monday,
Wednesday, Friday, which is regular compared to our schedule at Lincoln. Also we have two hours of
military training three times a week, while at Lincoln, we had only three hours
on Saturday afternoon. We are off
at 1200 Saturday here.[5]
I
was home for 60 hours at the end of April. The unit at Lincoln was closed, and
we could not leave until the Monday after the end of classes. On Monday
afternoon, we carried one hundred double-decker beds with pillows and
mattresses over three blocks to the Nebraska field-house, because they had been
sold to the university earlier in the day. I was home also last weekend for a
day. I hitchhiked from here through Mankato, and made it in nine hours. That is
very good, considering that the distance is 220 miles, and that I only made 30
of them during the first three hours.
I
am feeling well,[6] and looking forward to the end of the
term, when I can be home for two weeks, and also because I am curious to see
what basic training is like.
Your
son, Stewart
[1]
Quite a bit has
happened since Letter #20, dated March 25th. Stewart was in the hospital twice, causing him to miss a lot
of classes, and on top of that, his unit at Lincoln was closed at the end of
the second term and sent to Lansing, MI for a third term. But because of his
hospitalizations, Stewart was not able to complete the second term, and thus
could not go to Lansing for a third term. He was separated from his unit
and sent to Brookings, S.D., and South Dakota State University, where another
unit was starting the second term, which he then repeated. As he indicates in
this letter, all this upset him very much, and he considered pretty seriously
leaving the A.S.T.R.P. But he was eventually persuaded to stay. In the memoir I
published back in 2007 (Remembering With
My Brother Stewart), based on tapes of long conversations we had, Stewart
describes these hospitalizations.
"Stewart: While I was there (at Lincoln) I was hospitalized
twice, and when they sent us to a hospital, it was at the Lincoln Army Air
Base, outside of town. The first time, I had "acute nasal
pharyngitis."[1] I was just
plugging along and the commanding officer decided I was too sick and needed
attention, so they sent me out there.
Larry: What were the symptoms?
Stewart: It was like a sore throat. But it was the pharynx,
not the larynx. I remember the way they treated it then, they would take a
canister that had a hole in the bottom, with an attached rubber hose; you would
fill that with warm salt water and get over a tub and spray that salt water
against the back of your throat several times a day--as hot as you could stand
it. That was the basic treatment. And it worked! It wasn't quite the same as
gargling. You would spray it in and it would run out of your mouth."
[2] In the above-mentioned book,
Stewart describes this in detail also, but it's so personal that I will not
duplicate that here. Suffice it to say, the army doctors acted pretty stupidly
before they realized their error.
[3] This is a significant improvement over Lincoln. There, the
unit was housed in the newly constructed
Love Memorial Library, which of course was never intended to be used as
a dormitory. Scores of bunks had been set up in a large reading room, there was
no privacy, virtually no room for personal belongings and very limited toilet
facilities.
[4] Stewart is now commenting on
new courses he is taking at South Dakota State University.
[5]
It seems pretty clear
that Stewart is happier with the situation at Brookings than he was at Lincoln.
[6] Unfortunately, Stewart got
pneumonia before the term was over!
 |
| The campus of SDSU |
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