Photos That Reveal More About The Past

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Sergeant Praytor and Miss Hap

Cloudfront

This is a photo of Marine Sergeant Frank Praytor feeding an orphan kitten in the middle of the Korean War. He adopted the two-week-old kitten and gave her the name “Miss Hap” because she was born at the wrong place at the wrong time. It was circulated at the time that her mother was killed by a mortar barrage near Bunker Hill but Praytor, in a 2009 article for the publications The Graybeards (which is the official publication of the Korean War Veteran’s Association), said that Miss Hap’s mother was shot by a Marine up the line because of her yowling. Since that would have caused negative reactions, the Corps publicity told the mortar barrage story instead. Miss Hap was one of two surviving kittens; Praytor took care of her, while the other was given to another man who rolled over in his sleep and accidentally suffocated the two-week old kitten. The photo above shows Praytor feeding Miss Hap slightly watered-down canned milk with a medicine dropper. It was circulated and published in more than 1700 American newspapers in 1953, including the New York Times. After Sergeant Praytor went home, Miss Hap was left in Korea, and became a mascot in the Division PIO office. Praytor even saw her one more time when he returned to Korea briefly, and she was under the care of Cpl. Conrad Fisher of Cicero, Illinois. He likes to think that Fisher was able to take her home with him to the US.