I remember there was a piano bought along with all the other
furniture. When we were back in Atlantic City waiting for discharge, I
met him standing on a street corner looking very dejected. His girl
had married someone else and used his money to furnish their home.
I can't remember receiving much mail but I must have gotten some.
About once a month we were allowed to send a letter home through the
Red Cross, but I didn't know whether they went through or not. My
father sent me two cartons of cigarettes every week but I never
received a single one of them. I imagine that they were taken by the
Germans as they opened our parcels before they came into camp. There
was so much dehydrated food that seasoning was one of the things we
missed the most. One time the two higher ranking officers in our
barracks had received a parcel with some dried onion flakes in it.
When they cooked with them about a 100 guys would go stand in the hall
outside the room to enjoy the smell. It was almost as good as eating
them!
It was too bad that there was no way to tell the people back home
about the things that we would really like instead of cigarettes, soap
and other non-essentials. The parcels had to travel so far with so
much handling that very few ever reached the camp. By this time the
German people were so short of everything, including food, that they
must have made off with a lot of it.
The washroom in our barracks contained a row of sinks where we washed
and shaved.
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