Benjamin Kratzer, a good friend of long standing, died today.

We'd known each other for well over thirty years, after being stationed together at RAF Upwood. Like many GIs of our generation, we lost contact after the service took us our separate ways, then reconnected thanks to the internet.

Many and various are the online world's sins—but this ability to put people in touch with each other, and back in touch with each other, is an unalloyed good. Human connections are fragile things. Anything that builds and strengthens and maintains them is worth holding onto.

He was a smart, funny, thoughtful, compassionate human being who dedicated much of his life to helping others. Goodbye, my friend. You deserved much more of what you so freely gave.

"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced." We'll do our best.