5/28/44 V-Mail, Italy
Hi Snooks:
It’s a good thing I don’t need all my fingers to type, for I have split the end of my index finger playing baseball, and it makes things a little difficult.
Sometime in the next few days I am sending home a box of stuff which I have accumulated overseas as souvenirs.
- Brazilian mosquito boots. Have a full sole and rubber heels put on these, as they are very nice for wearing around the house (unless it takes coupons or some damned thing).
- Italian shorts. These came out of a captured dump in Africa about this time last year, and all of us wore them for some time as we have no American shorts.
- Fascist formal hat. Pop Vulcano gave me this, as he says he figures he won’t have any use for the damn thing any more.
- Alpini (Jerry) shoulder patch and miniature regimental insignia of Austrian troops. Liliana was given these by her German boyfriend (who didn’t get to first base) and figured you might like them as trinkets.
- Two hunks of steel. The pyramidal one is part of a 500 kilogram bomb which was aimed at our chow line in Africa one evening, the first open field bombing I was in. The square hunk is part of an 88 mm. projectile fired at me over St. Marie du Zit, and is the first flack particle to hit an airplane in which I was flying (although not the last). You can see the green zinc chromate paint which the aluminum parts are covered with yet on the edge, as well as rifling marks.
All my love, Cy