3/27/1945

Dear, jimmy

I heard you may want to be a seagoing cowboy. Being a seagoing cowboy is a great adventure and it teaches you a lot of things. Well let's make you'r decision final.

One good reason to be a seagoing cowboy is you get to help pople who have sufferd and have lost many realitives. You can draft for military service, but you do have to be 18 to draft for military service. I have had the most time of any seagoing cowboy my time is nine trips. Mabye you could beat my recored one day. Besides helpig people you could have the benifit of seeing places such as Europe, China, Greece, or Italy.

When your traveling the high seas it could take a while to get to your destination. For me it took about two weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean from the eastern coast of the United States, and a month to get to China. You may have to take care of the animals for the crossings and this will keep you busy for a while. Some thing that you will have to do to take care of the animals is to feed and give them water two times a day. Also you will have to pull up bags of oats and hay from the lower holds. last but not least the stalls will have to be cleaned. once on my second trip I served as a watchman and I slid down a slippery ladder luckly a long strip of metal kept me from going into the seas.

There will be some times when you can have fun on board especially on the return trips because there wont be any animals in the stalls.

When we could have fun we would go into an empty stall and play tabble tennis, fencing, boxing, reading,whittling,vollyball, and even baseball.

But being a seagoing cowboy was much more than an adventure. It opened up the world to me. Im very gratful for this oppurtunity. It has made me more aware that others may need are help.

from Luke