Dearest Eleanor,
Hello
Sweetheart how are you tonight? Me? I'm fine and getting fat and sassy. As a matter of fact I'm getting just a wee
bit fed up. The gold braid in Washington
would have you believe that every effort is being made to demobilize and bring
the men back from overseas. Yet here we
sit. Sixteen officers and about two
hundred men are waiting for some survey board to say the Ocelot is of no
further use and may be decommissioned.
There is
supposed to be a shortage of doctors. Yet we have three doctors sitting around
with no equipment or facilities. Who
needs three doctors for two hundred healthy young men? The whole trouble is that there are a few captains,
commodores and admirals who would be out of jobs if some of these activities
were decommissioned. Then they might not
be able to retain their present ranks.
I've never complained
before. As long as I had a job,
equipment to work with and patients to care for, I could see a reason for being
out here. Now however, I have no
equipment. I've been on the beach since
the 9th and haven't done a stitch of work.
None of us are doing anything but eating, sleeping and bitching. Plenty of that.
Here is what
you can do. Write our congressman and
tell him that you husband's ship has been through two typhoons. After each storm the crew was told that they
were to return to the states. In the
last typhoon the ship was lost and the crew, officers and men are living ashore
just waiting for something to happen.
None of us are performing any function--just eating and sleeping and
waiting. From the look of things, it'll be another month before the ship will
be decommissioned. Don't quote me but
say you gathered this information from my letters. I'm looking for orders soon, but the way this
is dragging out it, it might become necessary for me to have the necessary
points to get out before I can leave here.
That would run into December.
Some of the other officers are writing home, too. Who know?
Maybe we can get some quick action.
There is a
big picture of the Ocelot in the 16 October New York News. I'm enclosing a couple of negatives. The picture with me in it was taken the day
before we abandoned ship. The other was
taken the day after the storm.
Tonight's
movie was "Why Girls Leave Home."
I went even though I saw it on the ship more or less recently. Outside of that there isn't any more news.
Goodnight
Darling, I love you and hope our days apart are few and soon we'll be together
forever.
Yours very
impatiently,
Gil
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