Marine Raiders by Carole Engle Avriett

Author:Carole Engle Avriett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery History
Published: 2021-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X On the River of Death

Men recovered slowly from the battle for the ridge. Returning to their bivouac site provided much-needed rest. And Lee, like many others, benefited from the backlog of mail to sift through and from having the chance to write his loved ones back home.

In the following letter written to his mom back in Prospect, New York, Lee shows his sense of humor and easygoing manner even in the midst of a battlefield. In all his letters home, he tried not to include anything that might disturb his mother. He knew how much she worried about him and missed him. Always good-natured, he ends this particular letter with a humorous lexicon of Marine slang:

Dear Mom:

Your loving son is lying on his bunk recovering from a terrific battle with a huge rat that was trying to steal some of my gear from our tent. Rats here are as big as boar hogs in the corn belt. A few nights ago I heard a roaring sound and thinking it was an air raid, jumped up and rushed bravely out to open fire, only to be floored by the forward echelon of a mosquito attack. It was the night shift coming on. They put on a double shift that night or I could have held my own with them.

You can see that your son is leading an especially hazardous life. We have our moments of relaxation though. We have trained a centipede to walk on 99 legs and wave a baton with his other leg. He leads an orchestra made up of flies, ants, and other centipedes. But seriously though, I am having a pretty good time.

I received your letter with two dollars. Thanks very much. Don’t send any money but you might send some other things sometime if you want to send something—Like a flash light with extra bubbles and batteries, some air mail stamps, a knife. Might also send aspirins, gauze, tape, and iodine for small cuts and bites. Things like this are hard to get.

I’m enclosing a list of expressions used by Marines that I thought would be interesting.

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