Dearest Gee,
Well, I’m still among those present and accounted for. Still feeling tops. There really is so little a guy can talk about that it almost seems useless to write.
For one of the few times in my life I took up the well known crap game. I guess I’m just no gambler tho. Picked up twenty bucks and then dropped six of it later, then quit. Think that will be the extent of that. This boat is just like Monte Carlo, you can play most anything you want to. Money sure changes hands fast. Haven’t anything to spend money on here on board except cigarettes, which I told you cost 45¢ a carton. Sure is a break there. Don’t believe there will be anything to buy at our stop so I’ll just save it. Don’t have but about forty bucks anyway. Your money belt that you bought me comes in handy. The forty bucks allotment should start next month but I don’t know for sure whether it will or not since my individual pay book is horsed up some. The first sergeant says it will be straightened out alright so you will evidently get it sooner or later.
Saw four whales so far on the trip. Couldn’t see much of them except for the spouting of the water and some of their backs.
I keep thinking of you all the time and miss you like the dickens. Hope you have some kind of happy anniversary. Can’t even send you a card, dammit.
Well, guess this is all for now. Sure love you.
Snook
The prolific gambling on the boats and at the Amchitka encampment in the Aleutian Islands is well-attested in the Burhans and Adleman/Walton’s books, both mentioning the cautionary tale of “Sugar” Kane who legendarily won somewhere between $1000 and $10000 then buried it in a can under his tent on Amchitka, only to leave it hidden there after deploying for Kiska (Burhans pp 66; Walton pp 99). The boats landed at Amchitka Island in Alaska two days after this letter was written.
Letters From Snook 