Encoded for for the Veterans History Project, August 26, 2020.
All letters in the Richard Miller collection were digitized.
The following letters were transcribed from the handwritten originals by Veterans History Project staff. No alterations to this transcription has been made, although spelling errors are indicated with [sic]. Any special emphasis (i.e. underlining) is presented *between asterisks*.
Sun. Feb 6, ‘66
Dear Cathy, Billy + Lisa,
Hope everyone is feeling fine. Today is the first chance I’ve been able to write a few letters. I got up at 7:30 today. We usually get up at 5:00 oclock in the morning. Some times we’ll be getting up at 4:00 like tomorrow. The barracks aren’t as good as the ones at Ft. Jackson and neither is the food. This is an old fort and there trying to fix it up. Its going to take a lot of fixing. The fort is broken in two different parts North Fort Polk + South Ft. Polk. I’m in North, South is about eight ^(8)^ miles away. They have free busses going all over the Fort.
Well I’m glad this first weeks is over. The first week usually is a little messed up. Everybody getting
straightened out and settled. We were supposed to get paid last week but diddn’t[sic]. The weather has been good so far. It was 60° yesterday. This ^past^ week we had training on a few things. We had talks from some of the officers in charge of our company + brigade. Were shown films on different things and had classes on different kinds of radios and how to use them. Classes on map and compass reading which were pretty interesting. After the compass + map classes. The next day we were taken out into the woods. First we were in groups of three. We were given a map of the area and we had to find our way to different points in the woods. At these points were signs in the woods. At these points were signs that we had to go to and write down what was on them. This way they know you did it right. It took us about an hour and a half .Which was just
about average. Some guys took three hours and more. They missed eating chow. In the afternoon we were sent out alone with a compass. We had to find our points and write down what was on the board. I did that one right. Then at night we went out in groups of two’s. I went out with my buddy from Baltimore who I took basic with. That wasn’t very hard either. We found our way back okay. Except that we overshot our point once and wound up on a highway. We had to backtrack and then we found it okay. It was really interesting. One time when we were walking at night ^and^ there was something moving in the leaves in front of us. Every time we would take a step this thing would start
moving. Every time we stopped it would stop. Well we just changed our course a little and went around the area it was in. Yesterday we had another P.T. test just like we had in basic. We were tested on the low crawl, horizontal bars, run dodge + jump, hand grenade throw + mile run. I scored 373 on it. I ran my mile in 6 minutes 56 seconds. The first time I did it in basic training it took me 8 minutes. You need 300 pts to pass. The weather has been real good except for the first day. Yesterday it was 60° + sunny. How’s all the snow up there. There’s not much to do around here. Last night (Sat) I went to the movies. When we start getting our weekend passes (I hope). I’ll try and get into town. There’s not very many big cities around here except for New Orleans. I hope I’ll
have a chance to get there.
How’s Lisa? Give her a kiss for me. I called home this morning and daddy said the Rangers were almost in the cellar. At least I saw them when they won. Thats about it for now. Take care + write soon.
Vincent