September 17, 1944

Sept. 17, 1944

Dear Mother:

As you see I am back in Phoenix and at Luke again for awhile.  I am back a little ahead of schedule.

I have some very bad news from the Blaisdells.  Erma has come down with the disease called Polio which if something like Infantile Paralysis.  I was out there today and she had awful pains in her legs and arms as well as a bad head ache.  Betty put her to bed and called the Doctors.  He didn't get there till 4:00 PM and immediately called an ambulance.  He said that they had caught the case in the most early stage and I might say I don't know just what that may mean.  I hope they have it in time.

I was called upon to pilot a plane to Texas and back but could not get cleared from Luke because of weather.  We finished gunnery a day ahead and that is the reason they called upon us, meaning me and 3 others.  So seeing we are signed out of Gila Bend and yet not back to Luke we are anywhere we want to be.  I made a fair score in gunnery.  I called it fair even though the authorities think otherwise.  I am an "expert" which means I got better than 180 points.  In fact I got 250 a little more or less.  I believe that the scoring is at fault when they let a poor shot like me get an expert badge.  It is much too easy and the standards should be upped a little.  However I shall take my medal and be satisfied.  I'm not proud.

Well I guess I haven't written all I should, but for the last 10 days or more time has again been scarce. Tomorrow or the next day we see me reporting at 9AM and 2PM again a full fledged member of the "92 Club".

I had a lot of fun Sat.  We were down in operations waiting for a clearance and when we found we couldn't get one we asked if we could take the planes up.  Of course an officer's wish is a command so up we went.  We had a pretty good time for 50 min rat racing and doing acrobatics and a little formation.  When we got down we stopped a command car and requested the W.A.C. driver to take us to our B.O.Q.  We then requested she wait and we used the car to run a few errands around the post.  It sure is a lot of fun having a chauffeur et all.

Life really treats you pretty good if you know how to work it.  I am slowly but surely learning the ropes so pretty soon I should know all the ins and outs.  So until then I will have to sweat out my next assignment.

With love

Austin