from And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles J. Shields:
To dull the ache in his belly and sharpen his wits, Vonnegut, like everyone else, bartered smokes for food and vice versa. A good touch for food was Private Edward "Joe" Crone from Rochester, New York, because he would always swap his portions for smokes. Feeling a little guilty, the other prisoners took his bread, cheese, or soup in exchange for cigarettes, which he constantly craved.
In fact, there was something unworldly, and definitely unsoldierly, about Crone all around. Just a glance at his childlike face framed by big ears said he would never have a nickname like "Rocky" or "Brownie" the way two other guys in the Arbeitskommando did. He told everyone he was going to be ordained an Episcopalian minister when he got home. Before the war, as proof of his seriousness about his ministerial calling, he had listed on his application to Hobart College the dates of fives years of perfect attendance at St. Paul's Episcopal Sunday School in Rochester. His high school assistant principal, wondering how to praise a youngster who had a reputation for being physically awkward and shy, recommended Joe to the admissions office at Hobart as a young man "possessed of great moral courage."
In his sophomore year at Hobart, he was drafted and Joe made an uncomplaining but terrible infantryman. On long marches, his assigned buddy in the 423rd regiment would get fed up having to "walk behind him and pick up all the utensils falling out of his backpack. He could never do it right." He seemed unwilling to believe that his survival would largely depend on what he carried. Observing him, Vonnegut realized, "Joe didn't understand the war and of course there was nothing to understand. The world had gone completely mad.
In this bewildered young man who kept expecting a rationale that would explain to his satisfaction the ultimate bedlam that is war, Vonnegut later found the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, for his novel Slaughterhouse-Five.
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