My father died twelve years ago and I doubt this story will interest you, but here goes.

            Do you recognize the man in this picture? On the back, in my father's own hand are the words: My Friend, Ernie Pyle, some place in Normandy, 1944.

            As the years go by, I have developed a keener interest in my father's war. He left our home in Paterson (NJ) in January 1942. I was nine, he was thirty-one. He wrote letters everyday. Those fragile documents would arrive two or three at a time and mom and I would sit in the kitchen and she would read until she couldn't see through her

tears, then I would finish, as best I could. Each one ended, "Thinking of you, love Donald."

            When my Dad returned to New Jersey in November, 1945, he had four things he called his wartime treasures. First there was a red Nazi banner with a swastika in the center of a white circle. Eventually Dad used that flag to polish the car. "I don't want anything around here to remind me of those bastards," he would say. Second, was a watch that he wore until he was well into his fifties - I never saw that watch again until we cleaned out his top dresser drawer in 1990. Third was a heart-shaped medal on a purple ribbon. It was years later when I learned how he received that purple-heart. The last of the four items was a plastic sleeve with three photographs. There was one of me and mom - I remember the day it was taken at Palisades Park. Another was of a group of ten men - my dad was second from the left, and the third was the picture of the man on which he wrote, My friend, Ernie Pyle.

            I still have the photographs, I don't know what happened to the watch or the Purple Heart. But get this - two months ago I found this postcard at a show in New England. On the back is written, My Friend Ernie Pyle.