1942

Corporal Page having girt up his loins to go forth subsequently among the aborigines, the job of batting this bit of breeze falls to me. With the aid of Allah and the cooperation of the Post Office department, I guess I'll be able to keep everybody reasonably well informed as to who is where and what's up—lF (and let's see some action on that "if") you guys will get busy and make with the typewriters, pencil stubs, birchbark, or whatever you happen to be carrying around with you for writing purposes. I'd hate to have to get our money's worth out of this column by passing along lyric descriptions of Grand Central Station and the Empire State Building, so if you can't think of anything else, just hack your address on a rock in hieroglyphics and mail it in—we'll have it photographed.

Before Proc left for more fertile fields, he told me he had a letter from Jack Corwith, now a (jg) in the Atlantic, who wrote that Warren Kreter is engaged to Maggie Homan, of Rockville Center, N. Y. Sid Bull, the Mighty Mite, is in England, and has received his second new stripe in recent weeks, making it now read staff sergeant.

A long, '42-filled letter (more of the likes of which would do much to liven up this doddering 4F alumnus) from Bob Shoup proclaims the fact that he is now an ensign on active duty with the Coast Guard. He put in four months at the ROCS course in New London, Conn., which he vows is second only to the Marine course in Quantico, and after more training in Chemical Warfare and Navy AA gunnery, went to St. Louis as Ordnance and Chemical Warfare officer of the Ninth Naval District, taking time off to marry Betts Price last May. He ran into Gutz Curtis and Bob Strasenburg, each complete with a woman, in New London, while they were at Sub School across the river.

First Lieut. Stanley P. Wright has been killed in action in the Pacific war area, according to word received from the War Department by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. K. Wright of Hanover.

According to Ens. Shoup: Ronnie Westgate has been promoted to warrant officer and is still in Sicily. Dunbar Schuetz on an LST in the Pacific; Gove Wilkins out of the USMCR into the regular Marines, at Quantico, and "going nuts as a result." Hank Davis got his wings in August down in Texas, and is stationed there as an instructor. Hank, says Bob, lost twenty-five pounds somewhere along the course, and looks like a shadow that has been pulled through a keyhole. His wife Kiki is in Texas with him, but neither of them could make it up to Wilmington when Hank's sister Jane married Charlie Drennan, who, by the way, is now a jg stationed in Washington. First Lieutenant Larry Hennessy of the Marine Corps is back in this country on leave after spending six months in an Australian base hospital, previous to which he had several close rubs with the Japs on Guadalcanal. This is the first chance Larry's had to get those yellow spots out of his eyes since shortly after he left Hanover early in '42.

A note from Bob Wilson's father reveals that Bob is flying Navy patrol bombers m the Southwest Pacific, after getting his ensign's commission and pilot's wings at Pensacola in September. Bob's father enclosed a couple of snapshots of Bob, taken in Florida before he left. Which reminds me to urge parents, relations, and friends of '42s to do likewise. Lots of the class are too blooming busy these days to be thinking about things like pictures, and they don't have time to tell about what they're doing because they're too busy doing it.

Here and there .... Gordy McKernan is playing a dual role of teacher and coach at Pinkerton Academy, in Derry Village, N. H Al Hooker, now a stripe-and-a-halfer at the Navy's Little Creek base, sends in, along with a recipe for a delectable concoction known as Witches' Brew and/or Artillery Punch, the information that Scotty Matthews is flying with a dive bomber squadron temporarily stationed in Virginia, that Wally Farr is skippering a Coast Guard cutter at Little Creek, and that Ralph Falk has been in Africa with the amphibious invasion forces, and is now also a jg. That Witches' Brew, incidentally, is made with equal parts of brandy, rum, claret, and sherry, spiked with what you have left in the bottoms of those bottles in the bathroom—you guys who are out in the bush drooling over that semi-annual can of beer can mail me a time-bomb any time you get around to it Sam Adkins, now a corp. tech. at Camp Pickett, Va., is training a special class of termites to run switchboards. He's going into his second year behind the same desk, for sheer beauty of expletive teeth-gnashing, his epistle takes every ribbon in the books.

Marriages, engagements, and such: Ensign Donald Waesche married Beatrice Maleady in New York; Em Rice, Coast Guard (jg), married Doris Chapman in Washington; Lt. John Campbell of the Marine Corps Reserve engaged to Ensign Ann Campbell of the Waves; Lt. Wendy Neefus, who navigates for the Air Transport Command, engaged to Virginia Witham; Lt. Randolph Eddy, who has been kicking around in Greenland and the Canal Zone, engaged to Jean Clark.

The S/Sgt. and Mrs. David Healdses have a future Ail-American fullback on their hands. David Landis Heald, class of '65, let go with his first Indian yell on November 18, at which time he weighed in for the opening round at nine pounds five ounces—a real husky. Daddy, incidentally, is herding PW's around at the prisoner-of-war camp in Roswell, New Mexico. And all this brings up the still unsettled question of the class baby. Dave Jr. can't qualify, since Dave Sr. and Jane were married while Dave was still in college. So, unless I'm wrong in that recollection, the race is still open.

You may have heard some of this stuff before, which wouldn't surprise me in the least, since my "files" at this point consist of a heap of letters on the floor under my chair. But anyway, keep 'em coming, and the present incumbent will do his damndest.

ENS. ROBERT P. WILSON '42 USNR, flies a Navy patrol bomber in the Southwest Pacific.

Acting Secretary, City Room, New York Sun 280 Broadway, New York City