No. 160

Dear Billy:

Hiya, Honey Chile:

I mailed your package yesterday. I had it all swathed in brown sticky paper and all ready to mail, when I decided I had better weigh it before I took it to the post office, lest it be too heavy and, of course, it was. It weighed six pounds so I had to take it all apart and take the jar of olives out. Was I mad! I’ll put the olives in the next package I send.

A friend of mine got me tickets for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade so mother and I are going. The seats are in the reviewing stand between 65^th and 66^th Streets and Fifth Avenue. I’ve always wanted to see the parade but have never been able to get tickets before and it’s really not much fun standing in the mob along the curb to watch it. I hope it’s a nice day because I certainly wouldn’t want to sit in the rain to watch it and it will just about break my heart to let the tickets go unused.

As you know, Johnny Sauerwald is a prisoner of war in Germany. Well, last week Vera had a card from him and he said he came very near being liberated, that the Russians had reached the place where his camp was located but the Germans moved them to another place so that when the Russians arrived, the camp was empty. Vera’s other boy just went into the army last week and I guess she feels pretty bad about it. He was just 18 in January.

I had lunch with Ham’s sister yesterday and she was telling me that she had been to a Red Cross Rally for the families of the boys in Stalag 5B which is the camp where Ham is. They had several boys at the rally who had been prisoners but had been liberated. They all gave talks on conditions in the camp, etc. One of the boys said that when he was taken prisoner, the Germans asked him what he had some in civilian life. He went on to tell the people at the rally that he had worked on the docs, but he decided he wasn’t going to tell Germans that, because then they’d really put him to work, so he told them he was a musician and played the drums, which he said he really did as a hobby before the war. They gave him drums to see if he really could play and when they found he could, they put him with the band. It seems they allow the prisoners to have a band for entertainment. They gave the band some German music to play and it happened to be very slow. This fellow asked if they didn’t have some livelier music and they said they didn’t. Finally he persuaded them to let the band play an American song. Guess what song they played---“Right in Der Fuehrer’s Face”. He said there is no telling what would have happened to them if the Germans had found out the words to the song, but since they didn’t, the band kept on playing it, day after day. Bye for now, Honey Lamb. Let me know if you want anything special.

Squeels