Letter transcription:

Sept. 14, 1943
Lieut. R. S. Yegerlehner USNR
F.P.O. San Fran. Calif.

Dear Mother,

I don’t know if I mentioned it before but we recently received a new doctor boos boss here and he is interested in taking care of the natives so he has deputized me to go with him one day each week or rather he has ordered me to do this and so far he has gone with me. You will note the pictures. We didn’t know the pictures were being taken except of course the group picture – There are eight pictures in all and I’ll send some each in the next few letters. They aren’t good of me or the other Dr. but some of the natives are good. I will comment some on them but not too much. You can easily see our operating table and some of our

[page 2] patients. In one you can see a dog under the table chewing on a nasty old bandage we removed after one week’s time. We rushed the dog away as soon as we saw him but the picture was taken before we knew it was there. The building back of us is the church. The picture with the light streak was the one I wanted to turn out good. I got clear over on the end and tried to get between two women but one woman is completely blocked out by another just in front of her. What do you think of the South Sea Island Glamor girls?

Many of these natives have Yaws, a disease that resembles syphilis and that is what we are treating and we seem to be getting good results. We spend about 2 hours there each week. They are not on the Island we are but on one of the neighboring group.

[page 3] You will note the date of this letter is Sept. 14. I’m writing this at night because tomorrow is inspection day of other camps and in order to finish in one day I’ll have to start early and be gone most of the day so I’ll just add a note in the morning.

Sept. 15. A.M.

Just happened to think I’m the one without the cap in case you can’t tell me from the other Dr. or the natives.

I’ll send you a check in a day or two so be on the lookout for that and more pictures.

Must get going now so
Lots of Love
Daddy

[Editor’s note: None of the photographs that Roscoe mentions appear to exist in the family papers.]

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

©2015 copyright owned and transcribed by Deborah Sweeney
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2015/02/11/yaws-disease-roscoe/