02 June 1945

V-MAIL

438^th AAA AW BN

APO 339 % Postmaster, N.Y.

2 June, 1945      0800

Leipzig

Good morning, sweetheart –

I’m off to an early start and probably a busy day. It’s Saturday again and although we are living a good bit in the garrison style – where oh where are those weekends off?? A week-end off – over here – would mean nothing of course, but it’s nice to think about, anyway.

About two years ago this time I was on leave at home. I was dissatisfied, unhappy – and a lot of other things, darling. And just think – it was all leading up to my meeting you – several weeks later. That was a lucky day for me! Sure – and I’ve been loving you for about two years, now, dear – isn’t it about time we did something about it!! Yes! Yes! Meet me at the docks!

Well, excuse it, darling, but it’s early in the day – and I love you – and love makes a guy balmy. So that’s it for now, love to the folks and

All my deepest love.

Greg

* TIDBIT *

about Strange Fruit

In yesterday's letter, Greg mentioned that he thought the book "Strange Fruit" by Lillian Smith was banned in Boston. From eNotes comes this...

Lillian Smith’s first novel, Strange Fruit, tells the story of an interracial love affair in the South between a white boy and an educated African American woman. The novel contains several descriptions of sexual intercourse and masturbation and ends with a murder and a lynching. Massachusetts state authorities banned the book, but the literary scholar Bernard DeVoto challenged the ban. A judge found that Smith’s book violated the state law barring material that either was “obscene, indecent, impure” or that tended to “corrupt the morals of youth.” In his view, the work raised “lascivious thoughts” in the mind of the reader and aroused “lustful desire,” so it should not be sold in the state. When the U.S. Post Office tried to prohibit shipping the book between states by mail, Eleanor Roosevelt intervened and got the order rescinded.

A few years later the author and her sister, Esther, adapted the novel into a play, which had a successful run on Broadway and in Canada. Irish authorities, however, refused to let the book be sold or the play be performed in Dublin. The original novel sold more than 200,000 copies in the United States, though most bookstores took it off their shelves after the ruling in Massachusetts and refused to sell it any more.

The book was re-published in 1992.

Here is how it was more recently described:

When it was first published in 1944, this novel with a curious title - taken from a Billie Holiday song about a lynching - sparked immediate controversy: It horrified some critics, prompted booksellers in Boston and Detroit to ban its sale, caused the U.S. postal service to seize copies, and tempted the public enough to make it the years's No. 1 fiction best-seller.