October 11, 1943

Dear Wanda,

I am writing this to ask a favor that shouldn’t be hard to do. This is my last letter to you and I don’t want you to write anymore. Your letters were very nice but they were too far between and I felt worse than if I didn’t get any so don’t send anymore. I still think you are the swellest person I know and hope to look you up when I get back. It would be nice to do as I had planned but I am afraid that is out. I have asked my sister to let you know if anything happens to me over here though.

Here is a poem another fellow and I wrote the other night and when I write a poem I know I am crazy but I hope you like it. The name is left out for obvious reasons.

Our Heroes

On ________ with sands stained red

We pause, pay tribute to the dead

Who shed their blood as free men must

For a cause they knew was just

They heard the whine of a mighty shell

That turned the jungle to flaming hell

They knew the screams as shrapnel hit

But still fought onward bit by bit

They fought thru jungle steaming wet

With rifle, knife and bayonet

They saw their comrades falter, fall

But still drove on thru deaths dark mall

Relentlessly they forged ahead

Thru grove and jungle strewn with dead

Always searching for the foe

To deliver deaths swift blow

Though this island they have won

We know that we have just begun

This isle is but a stepping stone

That leads us to the despots throne

And so it seems they have not died

But still fight onward by our side

To free the people that still feel

The crushing weight of tyrants heel

They not us the heroes are

Theirs is the greatest price by far

Buried ‘neath the jungle moss

Grave, haloed by the Southern Cross

That’s all

Love

Bob

Pfc. Robert L. Parry