Well - to get on with the story - we took off on January 15 `" and landed in Monrovia, Liberia, and stayed there just overnight. The next day we took off and went up the coast to Bathhurst in Gambia. We had a little trouble with the ship there and stayed over two days. We left there on the 18'" of January for the long hop to Marrakech. That was one of the most interesting hops of the whole trip. About three fourths of the trip was over the Great Sahara Desert, the most desolate spots I've ever seen. Right at the end of the hop we climbed to 11,000 feet and flew through a pass in the Atlas mountains. Going thru the pass, we were hemmed in on both sides by snow-covered peaks and right on the other side lay the beautiful green fertile valley with the city of Marrakech right in the center of it. We landed there, and due to some mix-up of orders, stayed there until January 23rd. We got to see a lot of Marrakech and found it to be a very interesting city. I'll try to describe it in detail in a later letter. On the 231 we took off and flew up to La Senia, the airport just about 7 miles south of Oran. That's the day I finally caught up with the rest of the boys and picked up about 75 letters that were waiting there for me. It was really a great feeling - up to that time I hadn't had any letters at all.

The boys had been practicing combat tactics there and were just waiting around for orders to go up to the front. You see, we were practically as safe there as the folks at home. We were 800 miles from the front, although they did come over and bomb the harbor at Oran several times while we were there.

I started working at this combat raining the next day and where I came pretty close to the exit again. There must be different types of malaria, because they told me later on that I had the one type which can prove fatal and that I was just on the verge for two days. Of course, I didn't know anything about it, again proving the old saying that what you don't know won't hurt you. Then I got that spinal meningitis business and didn't get out of the hospital until the 7" of March. In the meantime, the boys had moved to Tafaraoni, about 10 miles south of La Senia and were going on sub-patrol missions in the Mediterranean. That was during the time we were running in such large convoys to North Africa and they had to be protected from the subs. Our outfit got 2 subs, and Carl Lehman was the bombardier that got both of them.

Because of the malaria and the spinal meningitis the medicos never thought I'd fly again - so they assigned Little Joe as Karlowitz's bombardier. After I got back to flying, I got Carl as bombardier and he really is tops. I couldn't ask for a better bombardier and companion, because we work well together and get along just fine in every way.

Well - to get back to the chronological order if events again - we fooled around at Tafaraoni for a long while flying simulated missions and practicing combat tactics so that when we finally got to move up to the front we were a pretty highly trained outfit. We moved up to the front on April 17`". We're still at the same field, so I can't tell you exactly where it is. It'll probably be enough to say that we're within thirty minutes flying time from Bizerte and Tunis. We spent the first few days digging in and making things as safe as possible. Just as a little added note - we've never been bombed so far and we're still keeping our fingers crossed.

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