Dear Willard and Grace;

This morning things are kind of light around here so I thought I’d drop you a line and tell you a few more things while they are fresh on my mind.

In this morning’s mail I got a letter from Howard, but that’s the first I’ve had from him in quite a while. He’s had his furlough and of course told me of that.

Sunday I was down to Heidelberg which is the old university town about 60 miles from here. I remember back home we always associated Heidelberg and steins of beer and old beer halls. We only spent a few hours there and didn’t have time to investigate the beer hall angle, but we did see the university after which we went up on the hill behind the town to the old castle, which I now have a picture of, and will probably send the negatives to you so that you can have printed. It’s hard to get prints over here unless you do them yourself. The town was beautiful though and showed very little evidence of having been in a war. About the only thing showing were a few demolished bridges which the Germans themselves blew up.

Our old German guide was typical. He was dressed in an outfit that would remind you of a taxi driver; he was short and chunky with a handle-bar mustache. He spoke English with a nice German twang, if you know what I mean, and on top of it all he had a sense of humor.

If a civilian back home were to come in here, he would be surprised at what he saw walking the streets. You see German soldiers in full uniform along with their officers walking the streets just the same as we do. Only we have the guns and they don’t. Of course, the main reason for the Germans walking around in their uniforms is that they probably don’t have anything else to wear. But it sure is peculiar now that they have surrendered.

You mentioned about Don having his last furlough. I gathered from that that he was on the move somewhere. Have you heard anything from Jack lately. Keep me posted.

I want to mention that the magazines are coming in swell right now and I have an issue of Collier’s dated June 2nd.

Guess that about covers things for this time.

Russell

Bad Homburg, Germany