Newsweek has a letter, written by Kurt Vonnegut and dated May 29, 1945, from a new collection of the late authors writings entitled Armageddon in Retrospect. The letter details his time as a P.O.W., which would become the basis for his most famous work: Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death.

On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. Their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden—possibly the world’s most beautiful city. But not me.

After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation. Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city.

Reading the letter in its entirety it was interesting to note that, even in his personal correspondences, he employed the repeating “tics” that can be called a hallmark of his work.

Slaughterhouse 1945 [Newsweek] : growabrain

“I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.”

George Carlin, Splenetic Comedian, Dies at 71 [NYTimes.com]