Private First Class Joseph Lorenze was one of my infantry friends out of the First Division.  His home was at 963 Holly Street, Inglewood, California.  He was a nice, quiet, friendly fellow who worked in a furniture factory before the war.  We were together during that unforgettable period when our infantry was fighting day and night for the hills west of Mateur.  I wanted to put Lorenze’s name in one of my dispatches, but I told him I didn’t like to use names without having some little anecdote to go with them that would be interesting to everybody.  So while the shells commuted incessantly back and forth overhead.  Private Lorenze and I sat in our foxholes and thought and thought, and damned if we could think of a thing to say about him, even though he had been through four big battles.  Finally I said, “Well, I’ll put it in anyhow.  You live only half a mile from my friend Cavanaugh, so I’ll hook it up with him some way.”

You may remember my friend Cavanaugh.  He was in France in the last war when he was sixteen years old.  In this war he was serving his country by writing me funny letters about the home front, to keep up my morale.  In one of them he said:  “This is just getting around to being a fit country to live in.  No gas, no tires, no salesmen, no gadgets, and plenty of whisky to last the duration.  Money ain’t worth a damn and I’m glad I’ve lived to see the day.  Everybody you talk to has a military secret.  I have completed my plans for the postwar world, and I find no place in it for you.  Good luck with your frail body, my friend, and try to bring it back to Inglewood sometime.  And a can of salmon would be nice too.”

So someday Private Lorenze and I will take off our shoes and lie in the grass in Cavanaugh’s back yard and tell him all about our narrow escapes on Hill 428, and not even listen when he tries to get in a word about how it was around Verdun and Vimy Ridge.