Another Dad story.

I never set out to be a curator of curious, cryptic tales but this appears to be my destiny since I fell into the Parallel Universe.  I had just finished giving Paul's book proposal a scrub (at his request), when I reconnected with a long lost BFF, first met in the early seventies when we were young analysts working for the DoD.

Her father had passed away a couple of years earlier and she was now interested in researching his WW II history and subsequent career.  J Q. knew that he had been a Tech Sergeant and radioman in the Signal Corps, but almost nothing else. At the behest of her more mystical sister,  she made a telephone appointment with one of the psychic medium participants in a University of Arizona research project. 

Some of the clues to Dad's history that came through the  telephone reading were easy to validate.  For example, "someone named Paul would be a help" to her quest.  Presumably that help was I, now historically hooked on the SIGINT entity (that  sprang forth, like The Alien, from the breast of World War II), and just about to embark on research for The Good-bye Man..

The medium also told  J.Q. where she would find Dad's secret diary from the spring and summer of 1944. It was indeed in the promised location and hough he fulfilled his pledge to divulge no secrets, he managed to leave some more hints to his Army career.  Other clues took more time to unravel. 

The first question Dad asked of his daughter when they met in the session was "Have you broken my code yet?" (Apparently,  ingrained habits of speaking cryptically are as eternal as life itself).  I  expanded my  research to incorporate the Army crypto side and found  confirming records of his 1944 tranfer from the European theater to Arlington Hall. That and a certificate of appreciation from Military Intelligence for February - April, 1945, indicate [to me] that he might have been part of a peacetime transition planning effort for hand off of vast communications networks, systems, and codes.

Rich fodder for the project that would follow The Good-Bye Man. And it was all served Medium Well.