Saturday, I decided to explore a different story for the time being. I read the letters some soldiers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade wrote to a 14 year old New York girl named Marjorie Polon. These correspondences presented a new and unique angle on war-time correspondence and the thoughts and feelings of the soldiers. The men had never known Marjorie, which gave the letters a different tone, especially those of Bill Bailey, the chief correspondent.

Bill Bailey's letters were both honest and romantic, qualities which I feel lacked in the Gordon letters. In a letter to Marjorie on September 16th, 1938, he describes how the soldiers marched toward the River Ebro without knowing where they were going or what they were doing. He describes how he has to fight lines of Moors and says that after the fascists charged with a front line of Moor soldiers and then retreated back, "we found that they had left plenty of their dead behind." He answers her questions about Spain honestly and thoroughly. Answering her questions concerning the relations between the soldiers and the farmers, he writes "we learn their songs and they learn ours." He says the one word to describe Republican Spanish/American relations is "healthy." In a letter a week later, Bill describe for Marjorie an air raid that "killed and wounded hundreds, mostly women and children."

It is clear that Bill uses these letters as his outlet for romance and comfort. He romanticizes the situation, pretending that he writes to a great love, thereby giving more beauty and joy to his tough army life. He writes beautiful things like: "What a coincidence we must of had, me reading about you paddling a boat and not knowing where you were going to stay the night. And me, the same way, of course we had a little idea that we were going to sleep among the Angels, or on some cold ground underneath a Olive tree." He also signs the letters endearingly, for example with "Loads of Love."

In his later letters to Marjorie, after the war, the bitter tone reflects his resentment of the unrequited love. Marjorie was writing to other men as well as Bill, out of curiosity and compassion. After the war, she went to Vassar College, built a career, married, and created a life for herself. It was rather sad reading Bill's two bitter, lonely letters to Marjorie after the war.

By contrast, Syd Levine's letters were brutally realistic. He facetiously attacks all of Marjorie's questions about himself and about Spain because, he explains, "from your letter, I gather you had a romantic idea of Spain." In answer to her query as to his age, he writes that "every day in Spain is equal to a year in some former life- if that is so, then I am over 400 years old." In answer to her query as to why he left for Spain, he writes "I leave that to be answered if I ever see you personally." Syd does not use correspondence with Majorie romantically to satisfy some inner longing. He is completely realisitic. This shows how psychological reactions to war time conditions can vary from person to person- from personality to personality.