it helped to obscure some of his other, lesser defects. For example, he was only good looking and a little weak, but he appeared to think of himself as handsome and virile; he'd only been through high school and a year of college, but he acted like he considered himself educated. He was innocent when he joined the Corps, but pretended to be experienced. He kept his chin tilted back and his head canted slightly to one side when he talked; this may have been no more than the result of his years of playing the violin. But he tended to look over his nose through half-shut eyes-soft eyes that he was trying to make hard -when he talked, and he thought all this contributed to an appearance of sophistication; but obviously it only made him seem arrogant. So his pride and his arrogance kept him ignorant of his innocence and naivete, and there was a kind of backward appropriateness to the name "Cornball" after all.

Well, what about the "Kid Pro" part? Another meaningless nickname that Cornball, as a matter of fact, grew into. I remember how it started. Cornball was the kind who always had a few dollars left before pay day, and this made him a natural target for all the men who were broke. When they came to borrow money from him for that last necessary liberty before pay day, Cornball would put it to them: "O.K., but what's the quid pro quo?"-What's the exchange, what'll you give for what you get? Or, what are the terms of this contract, Mac? You can see how his using a phrase like that would add to the picture Cornball had of himself. So Cornball became the "Quid Pro." And then because that name didn't seem to make any real sense, someone changed it one day to "Kid Pro," and the name stuck, though that didn't seem to make any sense either.

But if you think about it a while, you'll see how accurate it was, after all. Because what's a "kid pro" but a kind of "boy man?" And that was Cornball; that was the way he grew. You see, everything has to be turned around with the fellow.

So I knew all this; and had other reasons, too. I knew as soon as I saw that phrase "psychological whore" in the last letter that I'd better not let it pass without giving it some thought. Thinking about it, frankly, took me a long, long way back. It got to be a pretty long story, but I'll tell it briefly.

A few weeks after basic training, in the days before Pearl Harbor, when a serviceman in civilian clothes could still get across the border, Cornball and six others piled in an old Hupmobile sedan and toured down to Ensenada. They got there in time for a meal, and then went over to a little joint on the waterfront with a three piece band: trumpet, piano and bass drum. There was a large, red-headed fisherman from the States buying champagne cocktails for the girls. One of the girls gave her name as Maria de los Angeles, and Cornball thought it was the loveliest name he'd ever heard. She was so young and pretty that it was hard for a person to think anything bad of her. Cornball liked Maria and Maria liked Cornball. So pretty soon they went up the street to Maria's place, the last door in a whole string of doors; but Cornball didn't notice. When they came back, Cornball was obviously in love. He got Hernandez, who could speak Spanish, to translate for him; and then the three of them, Cornball and Maria and Hernandez, took a table by themselves and talked.

It was all right for a while, but then the fisherman learned we were servicemen and insisted on keeping the drinks flowing to the boys who were defending

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