Captain and medical doctor James E. Kreisle’s Dec. 6, 1944 letter, posted from Clervaux, Luxembourg, begins with a chest thump: “Dear Mum, Dad and Peg: I’ve just returned to my outfit after a leave which allowed me two days in Paris.”

Leave? Impossible, Captain. Fall 1944’s cold, wet weather and illness kept Army doctors busy, especially surgeons in “separate” units like Kreisle’s 14th Cavalry Group. Then luck struck. The young Texan viewed his Paris trip as a wartime idyll. He hit a nightclub, the Lido. He managed “Christmas shopping”; perfume for Mum and wife, Peg, “six dishes” for the family in Austin.