12/17/42

Dear Mom and Pop:

Excuse the paper. Ill try to clear up everything. I was commissioned 12-9-42 and started for California the same day.

We traveled by pullman, cost me $110.75 for the trip. As an officer you get travel pay, so that will compensate for it.

Arrived here in Sacramento 12-14 or 15-42 Traveled thru Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

After I arrived here I found that I had been selected to attend the Army Engineer School here (providing I can pass the entrance exams.) I had to talk my way into it. My classmates are all graduate engineers, one a metalurgist, another an aeronautical engineer.

There are 15 men selected every 3 months I believe. The classes are very small and you really get the works.

Classes are about 15 hours a day , 6 days a week 5 hours in airplane mechanic work course per day 5 hours in aeronautical engineering per day 5 hours administrative engineering per day, full schedule isnt it?

It is a wonderful opportunity and I dont see how I ever made it. I must be good and dont realize it. Seriously, I am tickled to death.

It means that the government is giving me an education, then will put me in a real job.

I will get a field or maybe two fields to supervise the engineering work. I probably will be made an assistant engineering officer until I get the hang of it.

Tell Herman I will have to be a “Baird” it is an office job but I think that Ill like it.

The quarters here are swell. Officers have the best of everything. I had to bring some more clothes here.

Well I dont have much more so Ill close be sure to write me. Send all correspondence to

Lt. William A. Shepard Jr.
Engineering and Supply Officers Training School
McCelland Field, California

Keep the home fires burning. Love to all

Your son
Bill

P.S. I graduated 441 in the class of 3620 at OTS in Miami Beach.

Please don’t tell anyone outside the family anything about the school ??st[Just?] that I am going there.