TWICE or three times a week Dietz wrote his children. They were informal letters that began Dear Girls and ended Much Love From Dad. He liked to describe the country and the hotel in which he lived, and at every opportunity he wrote about the various animals he saw. Around the corner from the hotel was a crippled vendor with a monkey and once a month he'd visit the zoo. The zoo's attractions were a single Bengal tiger and two mangy elephants. The tiger he called Charlie and the two elephants Ike and Mike. In his frequent trips to the countryside he'd see water buffaloes and pigs, and once he'd taken a photograph of a Marine major with an eighteen-foot anaconda wrapped around his neck. Dietz hated snakes but his children didn't. He invented wild and improbable stories about the animals, giving them names and personalities and droll adventures. From time to time he'd give the girls a glimpse into his own life, opening the door a crack and then shutting it again. He thought the letters and his motives for writing them were straightforward, but his former wife did not. On one of Dietz's visits home she told him that the letters were interesting, but not much use to the children. "You're really writing those letters to me," she said.

Dietz was very serious about the letters; in three years in the war zone he missed a week just once. He wrote the letters early in the morning, before he began the day's work. When he expected to be out of touch for any length of time he'd leave several letters with the concierge of the hotel, with