I got an encouraging letter from fraternity brother Vernon Perry who lives in MA. He read the book and wants to send it to his son at Portland newspaper:

TOM:
Just completed your dad’s memoirs. To me, a strking story of a young, American man during a crisis in America. There is no pumped up hero here, just a man who decided that his duty to his country was to serve in the Army during those dark days of war. Your dad obviously was a hero, not because of his exploits on the field of battle but for the reasons he put himself at risk.

I guess I am overwhelmed how men in war can blindly follow orders that often bring about such dire consequences. For example, the orders to carry the BAR when the death rate experience was so overwhelming. Yet, your dad and others like him accepted that kind of duty with nary a whimper.

It was also interesting how the Germans treated their prisoners in contrast to how the Japanese treated prisoners. I read that, although the Germans were somewhat brutal, they never reached the level of brutality of the Japanese. A two-bit diagnosis I have read says that there was a kindred feeling of caucasion-to-caucasion which did not exist from asian-to-aucasion. It also seemed to me that the brutality the Germans showed came more from the superior race theories pushed by the Gestapo rather than the everyday German soldier fighting a war he really did not understand. I constantly got the impression that the guards did not usually go out of their way to make life miserable but were themselves victims of circumstance forced to pass along a harsher treatment than was in many of their hearts.

A solid, no-B.S. book. I will bundle the book up next week and forward it to my son in Portland, Oregon. He has been promoted to lead the Oregonian efforts in the cyber-world. The Oregonian is the largest newspaper in the Northwest with statewide readership and some readership in the state of Washington. I make no promises. I have told him of our relationship and if he finds merit in the book to please give it some kind of review or column.

Nice job, you must be proud of your dad.

Vern

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