After finishing up in Germany, I was in Austria occupation wondering if we would head for the Pacific. VJ day meant we could go home. It was over, thank God.
A couple of years ago, I found a wet piece of paper that had blown into a bush on the edge of the parking lot at our manufacturing plant. I picked it off the bush and carefully spread it out to read.
It was a letter from George to Joe written in July 1945. George was in Boot Camp in WI just about ready to finish up. He was writing to his old school buddy, Joe, who was a year, or so, younger and still in high school. Apparently they’d been on the track team together. There was nothing earthshaking in the letter, except that George was anxious to get out of Boot Camp and on with his duties in the Army. He discussed track, high school, and girls a little bit.
What was remarkable about the letter was:
1) Somebody saved it for more than 60 years. Why was it so important for Joe to have saved it?
2) I found it in my tree in a town 15 miles from where both Joe and George went to high school, although I know that kids did travel that far to school back in the 1940s. How did the letter get into my bush? Did somebody die and someone else was cleaning out his papers? Did Joe move to a nursing home? Did it blow off the garbage truck?
3) The letter was written in ink in perfect penmanship and perfect English with perfect punctuation and syntax. Any English teacher would have been proud to claim the writer as one of her students.
I feel like I’m supposed to do something with this letter because, through serendipity, I found it in a bush when I was getting in my car to go to lunch. What? Should it go to the American Legion of the town where the letter was found, or the one mentioned in the letter? Do you think someone could find Joe and George in the 1944 Yearbook of Whitefish Bay on the track team?
I wonder what they did the rest of their lives?
And ball point pens certainly ruined everyone’s penmanship.