(editors note: I appreciated this reviewers harsh assessment of my grandfather's situation, because it puts it rather bluntly while giving him the respect and integrity he deserved having risen above his shady origins.)
P.S. KISS THE DUCHESS FOR ME
I had a book sent to me that was written by the grandson of a WWII army infantry soldier. A soldier who was dead on the battle fields of France before he was in-country thirty days. The book is "“P.S. Kiss the Duchess for Me" from Hats Off Books (www.hatsoffbooks.com). What was different about this soldier was that fact he was thirty three years old when he entered the army and his wife kept all the letters he wrote home, right up to the last ones written from a fighting position in France. His grandson Joe Rossi found the letters and used them to create the story. The average age of a soldier in the US Army during WWII was twenty six years old. That seems old by Vietnam statistics, where a GI was between 21 and 22 years old. Private Joe R. Moss was an "“old-man" by WWII standards. He was born in Ottawa, Canada to Romanian-Jewish immigrant parents. His family moved to Detroit in 1920 and there are questions as to the legal situation of the family's immigration status. In the body of the book you discover Private Moss did not get his legal status as a resident until he was in army basic training. His family was in illegal gambling rackets in both Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. The impression I got about pre-army induction Joe Moss was he was bit of a loser. He was smart enough to get into college in California, but did not stick it out for very long. He married his high school sweetheart and had a daughter in the second year of marriage. The daughter is the "“Duchess". He worked in the family business of illegal gambling but never amounted to much. He was always borrowing money from older brothers also in the family business. When WWII came alone he was a married man with a daughter and the draft was not looking hard at that category of potential soldiers. In 1944 Joe Moss is in the army. The family does not know how he got there. Was he drafted or did he enlist at the age of thirty three, deliberately leaving his wife and nine year old daughter? I suspect he enlisted and there was some underlying feels of abandonment in his family. He never seemed to finish or accomplish anything in his life, perhaps the military was something else he was running to or what was it running away from? The book is based on the 150 letters he wrote home to his wife and daughter while he was in army training and during his few days in combat. This is an important note; the saving of these letters is why this combat killed veteran is remembered by his family and now the readers of the book. Too many veteranÂ’s stories and history have been lost because no one kept the correspondence from the veteran and no one documented the personal military history. As I have said before in my column and I say yet again, we must remember. When that veteran is gone he or she is only as good as the memories we have. If they died on the battlefield we have even fewer memories. As you read the letters mailed home by Private Moss you find a man who like all new military members is in a world completely out of his normal elements. And what you discover is the loneliness that sets in very early for a new recruit going through basic military training, knowing he is headed to combat. As I read it I remembered my days at Officer Training School. The first six weeks they kept you so busy you were too tired to be lonely, but as things loosened up in the second six weeks you had time to dwell on what you missed back home. Also I knew I was going to see my wife in a few weeks and I was not headed straight into combat. I had no daughter at that time, where as Private Moss through his letters was most assuredly missing his child. He got a ten day leave prior to shipping out to France and was able to see his family for the last time. The book is only 100 pages and an easy read. If you have a deployed GI in your life, read the book to learn, then start documenting and saving the history of your veteran. We must always remember. Memorial Day 2006.
24 May 2006
Major Van Harl USAF Ret.
vanharl@aol.com
