Like so many of my old friends, I left the Troubadour behind me when I entered the service. I left New Hampshire too, with a heart-abiding promise to come back.
And for a solid hour I came back in memory through the Troubadour’s leaves. I’ve seen the moon come up over Lafayette and run a band of silver across Echo Lake, reaching to my feet. I’ve shivered in the snow-chilled mist from Glen Ellis and whooped on skis down an Ossipee slope with snowflakes in my face and my heart in my mouth.
All this I have done, and did again in minute retrospect. And each month I shall live an hour again where I belong. Forgetting where I am, but not why I have to be away. Remembering acutely for an hour what we are fighting to always keep.
S/Sgt. Fred A. Franzeim
NH Troubadour
November, 1943
by Mrs. Rollo B. Potter
At a brook by the roadside I saw as many as fifty trout, or more, from four to ten inches long, huddled together in a shallow pond. Perhaps they too were holding a conference, even as Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, making their plans for the days ahead when you boys are coming back to wander along the banks of these brooks once more. Possibly the trout were planning how best to elude the fascinating lures these boys will be casting into the pools – wet or dry flies, so realistic no trout feels quite safe when a Royal Coach, a Gray Hackle, or a Mickey Finn floats temptingly within an inch of his nose.
Yes, all this beauty of New Hampshire will be unchanged when you return, which we sincerely hope will be before the falling leaves of another autumn turn cart-wheels on the lawn.
NH Troubadour
November, 1944
