From the cobblestoned streets of newly liberated Reims, Private C. Hooks of the 328th Ordnance Heavy Maintenance Company scrawled a brief, homesick note to Nina back in St. Louis on May 28, 1945 — just weeks after V-E Day — choosing a striking photographic view of the ancient Porte de Mars, a Roman triumphal arch dating to the 3rd century AD, its massive arched bays now half-swallowed by trees and its stones darkened by two millennia of French history, including the devastation of WWI bombardments that had leveled much of Reims just a generation earlier. "How is everything in St. Louis?" C. writes; "It has been cold here but is warming up now. Some funny weather this year. I sure would like to be home." The card bears a clear US Army Postal Service cancel dated May 1945 and was sent via APO 513, PM NY NY — a poignant artifact of an American GI's occupation-duty days in one of France's most historically layered cities, addressed to 4399 W. Pine, St. Louis, MO.