It made you wonder how they
were taken into the service. There was one, Cliff Boll, who could
neither read nor write so he got several of us to write his letters to
his girlfriend. He was a real character so we wrote torrid love
letters and included all the fantastic things he was doing. When he
got a letter from her, we would all gather around and read it to him.
I often wonder what happened when he went home on leave. I was
accustomed to writing a lot of letters an I wrote to my dad, four
sisters and three brothers. I also wrote to Duke and Mabel Montanye
and Mabel's letters back were the longest of any I received. She would
write about everyone in Cheshire, especially the Bunnell boys, who
were always getting into trouble. Their barn burnt down, the house
burnt down, the tractor tipped over and they would wreck cars. When I
read her letters, all the guys in the barracks would gather round and
I would read them aloud. Just like a serial on TV. Mabel wrote long
letters in such a delicate hand that it must have taken her forever,
but she wrote every month.
Marion Bunnell was in the service and he was home on leave when he ran
into a wooden guard rail on the curve south of Cheshire and the rail
went through the windshield. He was hit in the head and should have
died, but after much surgery he survived. He was left retarded and was
given a 100% disability from the government. I can't remember the
year, but soon after the war Al Bunnell and another guy held up a bank
in Rochester and were chased all the way-back to Canandaigua before
the police caught them down on Coach Street.
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