Just a private note to you alone. There’s a fellow in my squad named Richard Hook and with a name like that, you might guess we’ve become rather close. He’s a true orphan. He was born in Waco, Texas, his mother died when he was four and his father—often referred to as “that no-good, drunk son of a bitch”—put Richie into the Jewish Children’s Home in New Orleans, with a promise he’d fetch Richie once he was back on his feet. Richie never saw him again.

So Hook is a river rat like me, but our lives are nothing the same. Once out of the children’s home, he had a rough start. Fell in with the wrong sort of people and started dealing in petty crime. Right when Pearl Harbor happened, he was facing charges of forgery. He could go to jail or join the Army. He didn’t think twice. He enlisted the next day and the military life has been nothing but good for him. Here’s a fellow dying for discipline and structure, for rules to define the edges of his life (as you once said) and most of all, for father figures and surrogate brothers. He’s found it all in the Army.

Anyway, all this to say that he’s a good egg. For the first time in my life, I feel like I have a best friend who isn’t a brother. Yet he feels like another brother and it bothers me that he’s got nobody at home worrying about him. Which brings me around to the point and a favor I need to ask my old man. I need you to find a fish hook and… I don’t know, keep it close? When you put the gold chain on first thing in the morning, put the hook in your pocket. When you take the chain off at night, put the hook with it. Adopt my friend Hook as a son for the duration and give him a little worry if you can. He deserves it.

Your gullgosse misses you.

Love,

Kennet

The 21st Armored Infantry Battalion crossed the English Channel on December 15th. That same day, Kennet began writing in his notebook. The Army officially frowned on soldiers keeping diaries, but many did. Kennet appreciated the disastrous consequences if a journal with future missions fell into enemy hands, but he wasn’t an officer with knowledge of future missions anyway. Grunts didn’t know where they were going until they got there.

He wrestled a bit with his patriotic duty, then decided if he kept his diary on the down-low and kept it to events well in the past, the Army could turn their frowns elsewhere. He told no one of the notebook’s existence except Hook, because he told Hook everything.

“Anything happens to me, send it back to my folks,” Kennet said.