I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.
This week I continue transcribing the war journal of my great uncle, Mandell Newmark. While last week he complained about his Christmas, he says his New Year's Eve was a great one. (Possibly a bit of sarcasm.)
Dec 29. It has really been raining here in fact I have never seen so much rain in one time even Calif. When it rains here it really comes down and last night we had a small river running through our tent and my bed had its share of the water.
We went on the LCI for the first time today. The sea was rough and we had to march to the beat like always and we were really wet. Because of the bad weather they did not keep us out very long and was back by 6 pm.
It was not bad except that I’m still plenty wet and have no dry clothes.
Jan 1st 1944 – This is the new year and I sure hope it a better one than the last. My New Year’s Eve was a great one. We fell out a little after 12:00 for breakfast and then we were off for another problem. We boarded LCT which holds over 100 men and we made a landing at [?], it was much like the one the week before but we did not have to march across the island which makes things a lot better. We were back in our tents by 10:30 PM and that was my New Years Eve. We were supposed to have this landing Fri. but there was too big a storm and it really rained. We fell out at 1 am just the same but then they called it off. When the army calls anything off things must really be bad and this storm was. I understand three sailors lost their life on the transport we were on last week during this storm.
I sure felt sad this day and hope we can be home by next year.
In transcribing this week's section I figured out what a few of the words I couldn't decipher last week were. I also researched some army slang.
LCI = Landing Craft, Infantry
LCT = Landing Craft Tank
If you choose to join me in Amanuensis Monday and post your transcriptions, feel free to add a link to your post below, or in the comments.
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