Soldier Heart

05/06/2024

Six-Thirty-Report. It is the fifth of June. I am always amazed, humored and proud when I look at this photo and cover for LIFE magazine from eighty years ago. It is my dad’s—and all the boys in the Wildcat Division—big claim to fame in the war.

This magazine dated June 5, 1944, essentially announced the Normandy invasion the day before it happened. This edition had a huge feature on General Omar Bradley, talking about how he would be leading the American invasion into Europe. In the caption for this cover photo, the magazine said that these are a few of the men who will be part of the invasion. The magazines did not identify them, just said they were among the best infantrymen the U.S. Army had to offer and would be part of the invasion.

Of course the invasion originally planned for the fifth but due to a rain delay, it was the next day. And, these men did not go to Europe for that invasion. The story of the 81st Infantry Division lands them on some horrific islands in the Pacific in MacArthur’s march to defeat Japan and sit in Tokyo. And these men saw blood in Peleliu and Anguar, two islands nobody even knew existed.

More on that later.

The photo was taken at Camp Beale, California, in mid-to-late May in 1944, I don’t recall the actual day right now, but I think it was the eighteenth. Major General Mueller held a Division-wide parade to award more that eight-hundred soldiers their Expert Infantryman Badges. My dad was in the formation someplace—but not in this photo. But one of the men pictured here heard the photographer say when they marched by, “Smile boys, you’re gonna be on the cover of the magazine!”

The best I can tell is that these men probably did not know for sure where they were going when the photo was taken—although there were definite clues they were headed for the islands of the Pacific since Janurary as they moved from Alabama to the west coast for amphibious and jungle training. Plus, in June as this magazine hit the streets, they were already beginning to get on ships to sail under the Golden Gate Bridge for their adventures on those islands.

That’s it for today.

—SoldierHeart

04/06/2024

Six-Thirty Report. It is done. My workdays are over and I am on my quest for true understanding of the war. The men in that battalion gave it their all in that sh****le of a place. They did. I am a writer for the Wildcat, which was the unit newspaper for the 81st Infantry Division. Since the Division’s nickname was “Wildcats,” it was pretty easy for our Division commander, Major General Mueler, to just name the newspaper as we did. But I saw it with my own eyes and I know.

So sit back and listen. Let me know what you are thinking. Stay tuned. There is so much to tell and say, I really don’t know where to start. Do you ever have that feeling? But wherever I start, I want you to know that the day the men stepped onto Peleilu, their lives changed forever in ways that just can’t be put into words—but I am going to try my hardest to do it. I am certain others who met the enemy on any of those islands have their unique horror, but I saw it here on this island, Peleilu.

One thing is true. All their eyes became tattoos of the psychological shift that happened in our bodies. You just can’t explain it simply. But you can see the definite mark in our eyes through the distant stare. I know, I know, many men who fought in war have that stare. I am not here to explain that. I am here to explain the experience that pierced the souls of the men who ended up fighting until the Japanese commander killed himself and gave up the fight. But it was in those six weeks of pure hell from mid-October to the end of November in 1944, their hearts were seared and it was forever painted in their eyes for their loved ones to see for the remainder of their lives.

To understand this, I mean truly grasp this inner scar emerging through their eyes, you must go back to the beginning of this war that disturbed the country and jarred these men to war. So that is where I will start.

—SoldierHeart

27/05/2024

Well it is Memorial Day and my dad is dead now twenty-five years and he was a World War II combat veteran, so I might as well write. This is a noteworthy week in my life. I turned on the TV and snapped through the channels in my hotel room last night to surprise myself with the Indy 500 in the last fifty laps. For the first time in my life since being a teenager listening on my transistor radio to Al Unser and his son win these races in the seventies. Even in my youth of the seventies I felt the weight of the meaning of Memorial Day—the danger and thrill of this car race is ingrained in me.

I am reading this novel I picked up at the airport for my final flight in the military. I am more than a third through just under five-hundred pages. Yes, I am back to my home of seven years. This is an inspiring novel for me to be reading in the last days in the military as a soldier and civilian. I type this from my table in Starbucks in my old neighborhood—a familiar view of me hunched over the keyboard with my coffee and notebook. Inspiring for me because—so far—this is a brilliantly fresh book telling a human story of war, character, honor, and I suppose courage. Maybe courage most.

I just feel the story is deeper. Don’t get me wrong, and maybe this is my mistake. I mean, how does a writer really get to telling the true grit story so that the reader can feel it with all the senses? Kristin Hannah is tremendous in this book—and I know I found a new writer to read. And I still have two-thirds to go, but this is not the point. The point is, how do you spill the story onto the pages of a book in such a way to actually get to the depth you need to get?

08/05/2024

Six-Thirty Report, May 8, 2024—When I came home from the war, I only cared about one thing. I wanted to never have another thought about the sh****le of Peleliu. You need to listen to this because it is opposite. When I was drafted, I wanted to remember every experience I had in the Army. We, each of us knew we were in for the adventure of our lives. Most of us were in our twenties. We had not seen the world beyond the farms we grew up on. And we were never a part of a larger cause. But this changed the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. You know all this. But it is deeper. Most of the men in my outfit walked five, ten, fifteen miles to get onto buses to take them to the train station where they’d board a train to the induction center.

And they’d never ridden a bus or train before. So even before they laid their heads on the bunks in those hastily built barracks on Fort Rucker out of patriotism to beat evil in the world, they were on an adventure that summer of forty-two. Even the knuckleheads who learned to hate the regimented life of the Army, deep down they loved the excitement found in someway inside the things we did. Don’t get me wrong. We went through brutal road marches and drills and all those things. But we marched in parades with women and children cheering. We boxed. We drank. Oh, we drank and danced and played baseball; had banquets, special parties, and celebrated our becoming an elite, disciplined, and proud group of Wildcats.

When we arrived in Hawaii—not far from Pearl Harbor where men lost their lives that fateful Sunday—we were still on this adventure of a lifetime. I remember seeing where the ships were attacked. We knew as we stood there looking that this could happen to us—any of us—and that our nation had called us to this. But the reality of it actually happening was so far away that we could not even imagine. When we got onto the bus to return to the barracks, word spread that President Roosevelt would be coming through to visit the Wildcats before we shipped off—finally—to whatever our own fate would be. My buddy Joe Viola and I huffed it as soon as we got off the bus to the front of the troop line waiting for his convertible to arrive.

How would the two of us redneck kids from Missouri ever end up with an audience of the President of the United States had it not been for this war? You see? Are you starting to get the picture? Oh, none of this was easy. It was hard to be a soldier in wartime. But there was glamour that came with it. But when we saw the red-stained water at our feet, there was absolutely no glamour or glory in that because the men we went out with to dance and party with the girls—we got drunk with them and lost our virginity—those men were dead.

Tomorrow, I will tell you about Red.

—SoldierHeart

08/05/2024

Early Report, May 8, 2024–Tune in in two hours. There is someone you need to meet.

07/05/2024

Six-Thirty Report, May 7, 2024—It is hard to explain to anyone who has never been there. I don’t even think that I can do it now as my faculty is over one-hundred years now. I am a dying breed. But I am determined to try to help you understand it as well as I understand it—and I saw it. I guess we learned something age old about war that every soldier has faced since warring nations. Men die. They die. And somebody kills them. But something in me tells me that the depravity we saw on that island went far beyond.

The story I will eventually get to telling is about the first battalion in the three-twenty-third. We were one of three battalions in the regiment that finally put an end to the enemy on Peleliu. Don’t let anyone fool you. The Marines did not end that battle in October and turn it over to us to do mop up operations. No, not at all. The enemy was determined as ever to fight to their own death and kill as many of us along the way when we took over—and they stayed that way until their very end when the commanders committed su***de.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Remember, I am an eye witness. I was talking to a man—a Marine—who was attached to the three-twenty-first when the Wildcats in that regiment attacked Anguar just days after the Marines hit the beach on Peleliu in mid-September. He was a first lieutenant serving as an advisor. He was in the seventh wave to storm through the water on Anguar. His name was George Schultz—yes, that Mister Schultz who would later become the United States Secretary of State. But this is what he saw: Wildcat soldiers falling into the now-colored water wounded and dead as they stormed the beach.

And there it is. They were fresh to war after training for a couple of years in the most realistic as possible training they could undertake, but they were unprepared to see their brothers killed—hurt—by bullets fired by an enemy. They had been put through as many tests their leaders gould think of to prepare them for war—and they were ready for everything except one thing. That was to see the life go out of their brothers in battle. I am not being harsh. This was real as the ocean water stained with their blood. It is hard for me now to write this as I am sure it is hard to read.

My generation came home from this war in the Pacific believing there are some things that must remain deep inside us. Watching our brothers die—and our reaction to it—was the thing that we tucked deep, deep inside us. This is why I am in my final years of life putting these things on paper (so to speak). And it is why you are reading the words.

—SH

07/05/2024

Early Report, May 7, 2024–If you don’t know yet, I hope you will see the pattern by the end of the week. Everyday, I intend to write for about thirty minutes on my book about the 81st Infantry Division Wildcats in World War II. You will see this in my Six-Thirty Report.

I hope to tell you something in these posts that is powerful—more powerful than I have ever read—that you don’t get from history books about the war. This “something” changed the men of Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation who defeated enemies on the European and Pacific fronts. There is no doubt they were the greatest generation. I do not question that. But I am convinced there is something deeper about this story. Yes, while our Nation’s leaders prepared family members for the sacrifice of war and we trained men unskilled in the art of war into being tough, determined fighting men who killed and defeated their enemy—they experienced something that changed them.

A reader of this new effort of mine asked the critical questions: “What is the central theme that you want with this? Is it the soldiers of the 81st Infantry Division, their personal stories? The aftermath of the war and their lives and the impact of the kids -- since most of them are gone?”

I will answer thes in what I write the Six-Thirty Report. Oh, another part of the daily pattern you will see is this Early Report where I will give some explanation. Normally, you should see these everyday a couple hours beforehand.

06/05/2024

The Six-Thirty Report, May 6, 2024—So there we were in California, high as a kite. We knew we were the best Damned fighting men in the world. We knew it. We were happy men—boys who grew up on farms mostly who were tough as nails. LIFE Magazine had it right about that. They sure screwed up about saying we were gonna be part of the glory in Europe, but they were correct that we were an elite group of men ready to fight the enemy wherever we found them. And yes, we were gonna go to them before they came to us where our wives, children lived.

I am going to get to the brutality of war. You can’t get away from it. All of us boys were born around the decade after the parades in New York and Paris celebrating the end of the great war, World War I. It was supposed to end all wars. Our parents were hard working people who were bringing us through a great depression. We had no plans whatsoever to leave our farms, families and whatever we as young men and boys could do to help our families survive. I am trying to give you the picture of how we felt about ourselves before we felt the heat of bullets. I want you to know the whole story.

But we had no idea what we would be called to do. We had no idea. How could we? Or even our families back home, how could they know what we would face? All of us, to a man, were determined to win. This determination came to us that night—it was Sunday, remember?—that the President’s wife spoke to us after Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan. For the next six months, we thought about the sacrifice she asked all of us to be ready to make. Then most of us were drafted into the Army not knowing our fate. We were not anywhere near being soldiers when we boarded trains and buses that took us to the red clay of Fort Rucker in the summer of forty-two.

We became Wildcats! There was an innocence we had in those days about what we would finally be called to do just over two years later. Our leaders turned us into tough soldiers. But it was all under the watchful eye of that great war that was supposed to end war—and somehow we were being called to fight in a war to once again end wars. And, for us Wildcats, we believed we were going to be a part of the victory in Europe following our Division’s heritage of fighting our way to Paris once again!

Still as we stood on the shores of the Pacific and sailed under the Goldn Gate Bridge with the realization that we’d be fighting the enemy who bombed Pearl Harbor weeks after LIFE said to the world we’d be at Normandy, we had not yet tasted the blood of war. We had no idea. For two years, we trained hard. We became friends—brothers—who were physically and mentally tough enough to do what soldiers had done since the beginning of America’s history back to the American Revolution. We were ready to meet the enemy.

We were not ready to see the cruelty of war.

Until tomorrow … SH

06/05/2024

Early Report, May 6, 2024–Read this. I received this note on LinkedIn after my first Six-Thirty Report. Stick with me. It will all become clear the deeper we go. It’ll be fun.

“Good start—I think you have a passion for this story. If you look at some of the books ‘The Things Our Fathers Saw,’ you will note that someone is gathering the stories of the people that actually fought in that war. But no one is really telling of the stories of the aftermath.

“I having read some of the stuff you did in the past and the paintings you have I guess the question is: ‘What is the central theme that you want with this? Is it the soldiers of the 81st Infantry Division, their personal stories? The aftermath of the war and their lives and the impact of the kids -- since most of them are gone? Your own individual therapy to deal with it all and show others how to deal with it?

“I think you are on to something that could be essential to others too. I also see it as a follow on to present day soldiers and what they deal with.”

Why Are You Writing?

05/05/2024

The Six-Thirty Report, May 5, 2024—Old sarge called last night and told me to get off my ass. Time to write. And write everyday, a little at a time. It will come to you, he said. Just write. You’ve put this off for too long, he scolded. Your body will give out with your mind fizzled. It’s been nearly fifty years since you dreamed of this freedom. Now you have it. So write, Gawd Damn It, he yelled in a voice I had not heard for years. It—his voice and words—jarred me to action; jarred me to that island.

The world needs to know about the boys of the summer’s hot simmering heat on that island—that pitiful, s**tty piece of land there in the middle of the Pacific, an ocean most of us didn’t even know for sure it existed when we came back from our last time home for the holidays before this hell that torments me to this day. It was January, 1944 when we made our final push for war that brought us to Peleilu. We were still in Alabama—Fort Rucker—with boys fighting in Europe to kill the N**i dream and the crazy islands with bastards from Japan. In fact, we all thought we were going to be part of the invasion of Europe with the elite fighters on D-Day at Normandy when we opened our Christmas presents in the warm living room with our nervous families on farms across the midwest of America.

That wasn’t to be. There was nothing romantic or glorious about our war. We had no idea what was before us in those days. There is so much to tell you so you can understand what we went through in that war. Let me tell you right from the start of this novel I am writing that I am telling you the truth of what happened. And it was nowhere near the image of cheering women and children hailing the victorious, heroic saviors in the streets of Europe after a thunderous march to victory over Hi**er that began with the invasion of airborne troops that summer. Oh, we thought that’s is what we were headed for, that is for sure. But it was nowhere at all like that.

Let me slow down. I am trying to introduce you to my story about the boys who were part of the 81st Infantry Division, The Wildcats. They are pictured in this LIFE Magazine cover dated June 5, 1944. I will tell you more about it as we go along. But LIFE wrongly wrote that these soldiers would be part of General Omar Bradley’s push for victory in Europe. The truth is I suspect most of us in the Division parade the day the photo was taken in May, 1944–along with our families—believed we were supposed to go to Europe. We had trained since the summer of forty two thinking that. We had hints that things changed when we came back from holiday leave in January, 1944, and shipped off to California.

Until tomorrow … SH

04/05/2024

So I should explain. Many of you have been loyal followers of my page here over the years as I have researched my father’s World War II experience. I have not really put as much effort into keeping up to date with posting, and I go long periods without saying anything.

My intent is to write about World War II and other things I find in my research about America’s military history. So now that I will have more time to focus on my writing now that I will soon be retired, I will be posting more here.

I have also created I, Edgar, a page where I will post my work on Edgar Allan Poe being a sergeant major in the Army in the early 1800s. I am creating a fictional diary that explains his service and why it matters. You will see me share some of the posts on this page—I am hoping you will check it out and then follow that page as well.

I am trying to build audiences on both this page and the I, Edgar page as I go forward. Both pages will be similar in that I will use them to post my writing and paintings about World War II and Edgar’s timeframe. I hope you will want to watch and read both as I now have a focus.

Standby.

04/05/2024

For those of you who have been following me for some time, here is a new page I am experimenting with. Check it out.

Why does mother’s tears bother me? Oh, it is in my soul. Deep, deep in my soul. You know I am Edgar. So why? I really cannot answer it. I tremble as I write these words thinking of my mother in her despair.

I was only three—not even—when I last saw her in her beauty. Oh, she was beautiful. The most beautiful woman in the world. How can the memory from so long ago linger in a man nearing fifty years of age and close to his own death? And it is a memory of what I saw as a baby without my faculties. Oh, it lingers like a cloth covering all that I do.

How could she leave me, a toddler who needed her more than ever? How? She was my mother for God’s sake! I remember the moment she kissed me, her last kiss. She knew she would never hold me again. She knew. Oh, she knew. And I knew. I never saw her again after we left that boarding house as she lay on her bed. But it was this kiss in that moment of her tears that told me of my pending loss, although I did not know it.

How could a young boy know he would be torn by death in that moment?

No. Why would she leave me, abandon me when I needed love?

Did she know the theater would burn? She was the star of the show for Christ’s sake. The star! Killed in flames.

16/09/2023

I should remind you — you would be disappointed if I did not — that the battle on Peleilu began mid-September 79 years ago. This is when the Marines assaulted the beaches of Peleilu while the Army boys in the Wildcat Division stayed on the ships to watch before going to Anguar, Ulithi and other places. But it starts here and all comes back to Peleilu in September, 1944.

29/08/2023

Here’s a working design for a book I think I am drafting. It follows two storylines, one in 1953 in a wheat field in Salina, Kansas and the other on the coral of Peleilu in 1944. I have told you parts of the stories over the years — the Wildcat fight in World War II and the heroic rescue of the airman trapped under the burning B25.

13/05/2023

Here are my latest paintings on my “I, Edgar” project. Here i am telling the story of Edgar Poe becoming an orphan in Richmond, Virginia in December, 1811with the death of his mother and the 1811 Richmond Theatre Fire — along with his baptism and taking his Christian name as Edgar Allan Poe in January 1812.

11/05/2023

This morning I dropped these off as donations to the Pentagon as part of the Patriotic Artist Program. The original works were recently accepted to go on display in the Marks Center Conference Room. Stars symbolize the five wounds of Christ. Starfish nailed to trees symbolize odd behavior of a combat veteran who has PTSD. Children and spouses wouldn’t know what to do with the pain caused, so they’d take the starfish down to beautify the garden.

Later in life after speaking to many children of combat veterans from World War II, Korean War and Vietnam, I came to learn that many of them felt this way. So I painted these images, called “Hidden Wounds of War” to try to illustrate this. And even though the family members constantly remove — and forgive — the behavior, it continues. Until, eventually, the parent is alone still nailing starfish to the trees.

The purpose of the Patriotic Artist Program is to honor the men and women who served our country in the military. I am proud of my father and all those who have served in our wars.

20/04/2023

Proudly presenting soldierheartimages.com. Check it out and let me know what you think! via

Get to know me as a visual storyteller! Come join my my journey in photography, and writing.

20/04/2023

I have done a make over on my website. Take a look. Let me know what you think. SH

17/04/2023

Gravedigger’s Song

Today a year ago, a brother died
He was a boy named Johnny Ray
Now we finally cry, deep pain still remains
It took a moon-ride to get here from there
Look at our scars for what still endures
We really have so very much to say
But tears wash all human words away

So walk among many dead of our wars
On dark Arlington National Cemetery
Pre-dawn Easter morning lights the way
Pass the gravedigger’s grave
He sings words no one else can say

See a monumental cross that is far away
“Stop my friend — you can listen to me!”
His voice startles the quiet wake of day
A marker among them says James Parks
Born a slave on this property in 1843
Free in 1862; sacred ties to hollow land
He dug the first graves for Civil War dead

Walk on until the holy cross is out of view
“Come back my friend,” he whispers
Resisting, yield to his soft yearnings
Buried among thousands in these graves
The gravedigger alone born on Arlington

Hearing him, view again a glorious cross
“Have hope in despair when all is lost
In broken lives — difficult — we must go on
Our fathers fought through and brothers too
So did I when digging graves for our dead
We can never quit the fight, not ever!”
He sings these melodious words of hope

Beyond the majestic cross, see orange glow
It shakes our inner souls just to truly know
The story told of the gravedigger born here
Majestic trees stand strong guarding stones
Above men and women brave all the years

So this day, feel peace given from a slave
He earned it for me; yes, I know he did
He dug those graves for Johnny Ray
And you and me and all mankind we know
Yes he did, the gravedigger buried near
Give him a living prize among mighty trees
Let him sing for you and me at our cross

Turn to walk from the gravedigger’s grave
He proclaims in song about Johnny Ray:
“Our Lord is risen — go in peace
Gone are wounds of his father’s war!”
The gravedigger sings it for all to know
—SoldierHeart

06/02/2022

I finished my work to draw attention to veteran amd military su***de.

11/11/2021

Listen to the words of this soldier who was eye witness to a scene more than 100 years ago on the battlefield in France. It was the very first Armistice Day, a day we now know as Veteran’s Day.

Read this:

“The night ot November 11 stands out unique in the history of mankind.”

Let that sink in and continue:

“It was the most memorable night since the dawn of the Christian era.”

And now, read this thrid sentence:

“It is hardly possible that man will ever again witness an event of more transcendant importance and significance to the entire world than the cessation of hostilities on November 11.”

We have had quite a bit of war since that war to end all wars. Yet here we are. We should really consider the weight of this day. It is not about war. It is about peace and the sacrifice to keep it.

12/10/2021

Well it is Tuesday morning after a Monday off and we are not sure if the garbage man comes today because of it but I still put the trash bin out, so you know I am going to write. I am supposed to be off work today so don’t think I am screwing off — plus the coffee is good and strong this morning at the coffee shop where I like to go in my neighborhood. You know I don’t write this stuff for money, right? Anyhow, this is a big week for the Army boys with my dad sitting on Ulithi in the middle of the Pacific 77 years ago. The Marines over on Peleilu rebuffed their Army reserve regiment as they were determined to win the battle on their own. So dad’s regiment, the 323rd, was sent over to Ulithi, an island captured without a battle and the boys got to sun themselves on the beaches of tropical paradise for a few week.

But things had gotten pretty bad on Peleilu and the American casualties were piling up. While taking Peleilu was a strategic failure in my view, the tactics in taking it were as well. We bombed the s**t out of that island before the assault. How anybody could have survived the bombardment for days of na**lm and such is beyond any common sense. But what is interesting is the the first George Bush was part of Operation Snapshot (or named something like this) when he and several other pilots flew reconnoissance flights with cameras set up on the aircraft to take images basically in stereo of the island in July to prep for this assault. By using the two negatives of the same shot, analysts were able to show the terrain — that it was mountainous — with paths that indicated a network of caves.

Ignoring this intelligence would prove a tactical error as the enemy simply hid in the more than 500 caves during the bombardment and maintained the high ground in the battle pretty much until the end. So when Chesty Puller — a man of great fame — predicted taking the island would be a matter of hours, he did so absolutely believing it but sadly for whatever reason not accounting for the intelligence provided in part by our future President. There is even an argument for Peleilu and the whole island hopping effort being a grander strategic failure, but I will spare you that for now. The key point is that bravado mentality, not recognizing the significant enemy presence in the high ground and a shift in tactics from the Japanese resulted in a short fight being extended into its second month.

As a little boy — believe me, I am doing this research as a little boy even though I am in my sixties — it is so important for me to understand this context. Remember, my little boy question is why is this man that I love so much, my dad, why is he a nut or a knucklehead sometimes? And believe me when I tell you this, just about every child or spouse of a combat veteran who suffered from PTSD in World War II, Korea or Vietnam asks the same question. We desperately want to know why — what — could have caused this. Of course Dad has no interest in explaining something he desperately wants to forget. So, for me, his death 22 years ago prompted me to a quest to figure it out from intellectual and emotional levels.

So let me tell you. This week and next 77 years ago were critical in answering my little boy question. The real story will come next week. But this one I am about to briefly tell sets the stage for it. So on Peleliu, the Marines are fighting but losing honestly. An Army battalion was brought in to help from another regiment in Dad’s division — since they were in the area and the reserve was sent to Ulithi — but by early October, the Marines were no longer an efficient fighting force. I will have to go back to check my notes for specific dates, but the Marine general was relieved and the Army’s 81st Infantry Division commander was put in charge. Dad’s regiment was called to take over the battle on Peleilu and, on October 10, 1944, Dad’s 1st Battalion, 323rd Infantry Regiment, was on the USS Rotanin bound for Peleilu.

They were going to battle. The arrived four days later and, at 1130 a.m. on October 14, they stepped foot onto Peleliu. I have written enough for today. I will write again Saturday. Just know this level of detail about understanding my dad’s trauma has taken me a lifetime in general and 22 years of digging out facts as I am trying to grasp the intellectual and emotional aspects of it. I am convinced that what happened to my dad over the next two weeks many years ago is the primary traumatic event he had nightmares about until he died in 1999.

Sorry for the long post. My coffee is cold. I like that.

—SoldierHeart