BIB_ID
381020
Accession number
MA 5026.126
Creator
Cheever, John.
Display Date
[1942].
Credit line
Gift of the Family of Carter Burden, 1998.
Description
1 item (4 p.) ; 25.3 cm
Notes
Part of a large collection of letters from John Cheever to his wife, Mary Cheever. Letters are described in individual records; see MA 5026 for details.
Written while Cheever was at Camp Croft, S.C. (based on his reference to Spartanburg), but he doesn't specify a place of writing.
Written while Cheever was at Camp Croft, S.C. (based on his reference to Spartanburg), but he doesn't specify a place of writing.
Provenance
The Carter Burden Collection of American Literature.
Summary
Describing what it is like to be on guard duty; remarking that "the army is practically a vacation without [Sergeant] Dunham"; discussing his evening at a hotel and the men he met there; telling her that "the company commander told [his] this morning that [they] would be here for another seven weeks"; commenting on a newspaper he saw with reports of the progress of the war, and observing "that soldiers know and care very little about the course of the war they are about to fight. We worry about keeping our guns clean and about getting up at 5:30 and that's as far as it goes"; addressing various rumors about when different groups of men will be sent into combat; noting that "nearly sixty percent of [his] platoon signed up for officers training school but ... very few ... will be taken"; adding that a second lieutenant was picked up by a Jeep without any warning and taken "to the station at Spartanburg where he caught a train to Boston where he boarded a you-know-what"; mentioning a letter from Flannery [Lewis].
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