Just recently, by air mail, I received an invitation to a wedding that will take place in England on April 18th.

It happens to be a wedding I'd give a lot to be able to get to, and when the invitation first arrived, I thought it might just be possible for me to make the trip abroad, by plane, expenses be hanged.

However, I've since discussed the matter rather extensively with my wife, a breathtakingly levelheaded girl, and we've decided against it -- for one thing, I'd completely forgotten that my mother-in-law is looking forward to spending the last two weeks in April with us.

I really don't get to see Mother Grencher terribly often, and she's not getting any younger. She's fifty-eight. (As she'd be the first to admit.) All the same, though, wherever I happen to be I don't think I'm the type that doesn't even lift a finger to prevent a wedding from flatting.

Accordingly, I've gone ahead and jotted down a few revealing notes on the bride as I knew her almost six years ago.

If my notes should cause the groom, whom I haven't met, an uneasy moment or two, so much the better. Nobody's aiming to please, here. More, really, to edify, to instruct.

In April of 1944, I was among some sixty American enlisted men who took a rather specialized pre-Invasion training course, directed by British Intelligence, in Devon, England.

And as I look back, it seems to me that we were fairly unique, the sixty of us, in that there wasn't one good mixer in the bunch.

We were all essentially letter-writing types, and when we spoke to each other out of the line of duty, it was usually to ask somebody if he had any ink he wasn't using.

When we weren't writing letters or attending classes, each of us went pretty much his own way. Mine usually led me, on clear days, in scenic circles around the countryside.