December 17, 1944

                                                            Frederick Okla.
Dear Folks:                                                17 Dec 1944
            The weather was nice this weekend so we flew this morning. It was nice Sat. afternoon, too, but no one flew because of the weekly retreat parade. I have one student who is too nervous and will send him up with the flight commander for a ride. Another one made 2 nice landings.
            Got 2 Christmas boxes from Marvel Lee. Your insured box hasn’t come yet. The AT-17 is a twin-engine trainer like I flew at Lubbock. One half the field still uses them so I checked out in it again for fun. The other half of the field where I’m assigned uses B-25. When the present upper class graduates the field will use all B-25. The course is 8 weeks long and we get a new class on the field every 4 weeks since the lower and upper classes are staggered 4 weeks apart. The present upper class graduates Dec 23 and my class then becomes upper class and graduate in Feb. To “shoot” landings is to practice one after another. Is Merrill telling bigger stories than I did? Could you send me some more vitamin pills? Squibb’s “Vigram” – ABCDG. Yes Arlan’s car should be better than most used ones.
                                                            John