We ordered room service and Sabrina finally pulled out the diary.

"I can't believe we had the willpower to resist looking at this last night," she said.

"I'm glad we waited," I responded. "We are both much more awake today."

We sat next to each other at the table by the window and started to read. At first we were a little disappointed, as it seemed to be only a log of his missions during the war. But the more we read, the more we were hooked. The first entry was dated December 14, 1943, the target Bremen, and it was a fairly dry account of his first mission:

We took off at 0830. Left the coast at 12,000 and climbed on course. Our bombing altitude was 22,000, so we had to use oxygen. Our course took us over the North Sea. We made a 90o turn to the South and attacked the target from a Northerly direction. There was a 10/10 cloud coverage, going and coming. We didn't meet any enemy fighters due to the fact that the cloud cover was so low. It prevented them from taking off. It didn't prevent the flak from coming up however. The flak was extremely heavy and very accurate, and although we didn't lose any planes from our group, most of us came home with damaged planes. Some of the other groups weren't as fortunate.

Honeycutt's oxygen mask was leaking and he passed out a couple of times. I had to wake him up just two minutes from "bombs away."

It went on like that for another page, describing their return home and some of the damage they received. Frankly, I found it fascinating, and was almost a little jealous. I had thought about joining the service when I graduated high school, but since my father worked at the college, I was able to go at no cost, so there was no way I could turn that down. But I envied the camaraderie that people like my grandfather experienced during the war. Obviously it was dangerous, but that made it even more exciting.

I could tell that Sabrina was finding it interesting as well. I only wish that my grandfather's log had been in with his things.

The next few entries were similar to the first, with each one corresponding to a mission. The entry for the fifth mission took on a different feel, however. While the account of the mission itself remained fairly straightforward, he started adding more conversational tidbits, such as Honeycutt offered me $10 to clean his gun. He said he could make more than that spending the time playing poker. Sounded like something a relative of mine would do.

By the tenth mission, the descriptions had shortened considerably. After a while they must have become old hat. It meant his entries were becoming shorter as well, but more space was given to funny happenings and everyday events. But the tenth was also where we found our first clue to Ray's involvement. It was just a throwaway line at the end: Honeycutt was talking about his father today. Interesting story. I need to learn more.