To celebrate the upcoming Memorial Day I thought I would share some letters that were sent to my mom and dad from their Venango Co. friends who were serving in the Armed Forces. This first one is from Walt Shook. Date: Sept. 15, 1944 From: Pvt. W. A. Shook – 13057335 Hg., 317 Troop Carrier Group APO # 565 – San Francisco To: Harry and Betty Haylett 1541 Elk Street Franklin, Penna. USA Greetings, Had a V-mail from you yesterday that took only 27 days in contrast to most of my airmail that has been arriving in from 7 to 10. Recently I had a letter from mother in six days – And then they try to encourage the use of V-mail – "because it’s faster". Your canned peaches don’t even sound appetizing. I think I’ve had them on an average of two out of every three days since I’ve been in N.G. and in spite of the fact that I used to think they were delicious. I’m almost as tired of them as of bolly beef. Here our food is decidedly better than where I was, chiefly because we have a plane which goes to Australia every week and brings back fresh meat, vegetables, etc. Tonight I drank nearly a quart of fresh milk with my supper and I can’t describe the enjoyment of it. It was the first milk I ever had in N. G. Say, come to think of it you also mentioned canning spaghetti sauce. Now there you’ve got something. We get spaghetti frequently but never with a real sauce and many of us often talk of how we’d like to go somewhere like Savoldi’s and eat till we couldn’t get up. That’s just one more thing I intend to catch up on when I get home. Thanks for asking me about something for Christmas. Mother and Kitty have also done that and, believe me, I can’t think of a single thing that I could use here now. I have everything around and a lot of superfluous junk, including one whole barracks bag of photo stuff. I do enjoy the "Life" very much and eagerly look forward to each copy of it. In fact I think every copy is read by at least 15 men before it is discarded. Not more than two or three copies of it have failed to arrive and so if you do not want to get me something I’d appreciate that magazine more than anything I can think of. Today has been my first really busy day in this outfit. I did some work in the .. (tear in paper) this morning and this afternoon I helped remove most of the radio equipment from one of our planes to clean it up, check it’s condition, and in general see that it is all in good working order. This is done every 100 hours that the plane is in the air. When I came back to my tent I was quite happy that I hadn’t stayed there for the afternoon. The trees in the jungle are all rotton and often when they look as if an earthquake couldn’t move them they’ll come down in even a light breeze. Well, that’s what happened today. A large tree fell and hit the corner of our tent and one large limb went right across my cot. When I saw it I took one big swallow – then the first thing that came into my mind was that air mattress. It was quite a relief to find it O.K. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to that. That’s about all for now. I want to write to Elsie and then I think I’ll go to bed early. Did you know that Elsie is planning to get married next month. She wrote me about it and I was happy to hear it. Love, Walt