Letter transcription:

Mar 26, 1943
Lieut RS Yegerlehner USNR
A.P.O. 43
% Postmaster
San Fran Calif.

Dear Mother

We’ve had rain and clear spells today and you know that means a hot humid atmosphere. The humidity is with us all time so we are getting used to that. Each night about 3 A.M. there is a steady drip, drip from the trees on to the tent. That is one clear nights on rain nights it’s a run run.

The moisture in the jungles is most depressing – You have seen pictures of jungles but I’ll give you my impressions. As we entered – First there was a barbed wire fence. That I wasn’t sure whether it was

[page 2] intended to keep the animals out or in. At any rate on the jungle side there was pretty much of a wall of growth. I had a small had [hand] ax one of the others had a regular ax and the other fellow had a large corn knife like knife only it was a good three feet long. This was the best of all for he could swing it in both directions cutting vines and all vegetation as he came to them. Of course spiders, misquitoes toads flies and lizards were very much in evidence and the pay off was the large lizard about 3 feet long. The thing was had four legs which appeared to be a good 8 in. in length and

[page 3] about half of him was tail, the body being almost as big around as my wrist. The head was a miniature alligators. IT ran up a tree ahead of me and I was pretty glad at that.

Those long vines that Tarzan swings on aren’t fiction either. Some of them were as big around as an inch rope and also as plyable. We swung on one just to see if it would hold. It did. We were only in the jungles about one hour and during that time chopped some tall straight trees for tent poles but we were dripping with sweat and all petered out because of the hot and the high humidity. The ground with the leaves was very soft and

[page 4] even hard to walk in. There may have been fruits back in there but we only went in about as far as from our house to Foulkes. To [too] much work to get a road way, and I don’t mean for a car.

Some way some how some one butchered a cow last night and we got about 10 T bone steaks. We just picked them up with our fingers and ate them in a most primitive manner. They were very good. I can’t compare them with ours at home because its been to [too] long ago to make a comparison but they were indeed very good.

Well, I about exhausted the supply of paper and subject matter so solong
Love Daddy

Russell Islands
Image by Kelisi at Wikipedia.com (Wikipedia Commons license)

© 2014 copyright owned and transcribed by Deborah Sweeney
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2014/03/09/in-the-jungles-part-ii-roscoe/