Pfc. George Dicus 34700627
859th Chemical Co. A.O. (M,H,L, or D)
A.P.O. #149
c/o Postmaster, New York, N.Y.
France
Tuesday October 17, 1944
Dearest Anna Ruth,
We have moved again since I have written to you. I had planned to write another letter to you pretty soon, after that poor excuse last time, but when you are moving around all of the time, it is hard to find time to do anything.
Do you remember old man Charlie Hickenbotham? One of his boys is around here somewhere. I don't think I know him, but will look him up anyway. I saw a boy that lives in Arab that I use to know, and he was telling me about him.
We haven't had mail for nearly a month. After we do get it, it will take a month to catch up, but it sure would be good to get a little mail now.
When I came in the Army, G.I. shoes were awfully heavy. After wearing over shoes that come half way up your legs, and plug through mud half way to the top of them all day long, G.I. shoes seem pretty light when you get your boots off at night. It rains most every day, and there is no end to the mud.
What did you do while mother was up to see you? She was probably so interested with the baby that you couldn't drag her away.
Martha must be getting pretty big by now. She has changed a lot since I have seen her I know.
I think I told you that in my next letter that I would tell you a little about England.
We were in Wilts County near Gillingham first. That was too far north and we didn't see much there. Then we moved down south to Kent County close to Ashford. There, German planes were over head every night. They dropped a bomb or so now and then but the main thing we had to worry about was them shooting them down on us. They were trying to dump everything on London. The fun really started when the flying bombs sstarted to come over. We were in the direct route with them, and they literally rocked over our tent. The first night was a honey. No one knew exactly what was going on. They came over at interviles of 3 to 5 minutes. They threw up everything at them except the tent pins. Tracer bullets filled the sky. You can't imagine how it looked unless you saw it. We thought planes were strafing the field, and a million other things. Later on that night they told us that there had been landings, and they took us out on the field to guard the planes. That is one night that I will never forget. We were there through the worst of the raids. Those darn things hit on all sides of us. We were lucky. Only one fellow got bumped off in my camp and that was from a stray bullet. We had to dig holes and put covers over them and sleep in the though. We were up in Essex county near Colechester just before we came over here.
Everything has been O.K. here so far. I hope we get up where we can see something sometime. We have seen one of the original beach heads, Saint-Lo, Versailles, Paris, and a few more towns. Back in England I saw Oxford, Brighton, Hastings, Folkestone, Dover, London, Aylesbury, South Hampton, and lots of other towns.
[NOTE: I'm not sure if there is a missing page or if he just ran out of paper and stopped writing, but that was the end of the letter]
