I remembered that I had found a photograph of two soldiers that was taken in France on September 6, 1945.  I was one of the soldiers, the one on the right and Pvt. Ray Gulick was frozen by the camera talking to me while we were strolling on la Rue Canbrere in Marseille.  We were on a pass and I have no idea where we had just been or where we were going but there we were in uniform and looking pretty good for young men who were freed from fear of going into battle for the European War was over.

I see in the picture that I was wearing sun-glasses and was carrying a rolled up piece of paper in my left hand while my right was in my pocket.  Both Ray and I were wearing parachute boots (which were the rage back then) with trousers tucked in.  We had no ties on but were wearing caps properly centered but slightly tilted to one side.  There were civilians in the background and I am sure the photograph was taken by some enterprising photographer who promised us immediate processing for I do have the picture and although developed with a white light through the middle, it is a picture of Ray and me looking young and professional in our uniforms in Marseilles, France – on the rue Canbrere.

I write this because today is the anniversary of the disaster brought about by the machinations of the Imperial Japanese Government in attacking Pearl Harbor.  I was in Europe because of that bombing of the port city where so many of the U.S. fleet was anchored unsuspecting. We have had so many wars since then that the soldiers who were either drafted or enlisted as I was, have been dying off and soon there will be no more veterans of that war engulfing the “Greatest Generation”.

1945 was six years after my first Bar Mitzvah and my graduation from High School.  I did not go directly to college because as soon as the Navy rejected my enlistment (I wore glasses) I got even by enlisting in the Army where, because the Army needed to gift me with a pair of G.I. glasses, my life was probably saved.  That is a story I think I have told before.

Carol and I took a cruise last October through the Eastern Mediterranean and on the way back stopped off in France.  We went to Province, although I had an idea I would like to go back to Marseilles.  It was there I met the artist, Maurice De Benedetti whose left profile sketch I just came across among my art “stuff”.  I realized that he would have been gone long ago.  He was in a concentration camp because, despite being a national French prize winner for his depiction of Le Pont de Sospel (the Roman bridge destroyed early in the war), he was Jewish and was slated for death one way or another.  I think I have the one remaining copy of this etching. But, that, too, is another story.