John Kincaid's World War II mementos consist of only a few faded photos, yellowed papers and a shadow box full of ribbons from his service in the Merchant Marines.

But two images have stayed sharp and clear in his mind for over 50 years. Those are the faces of two American boys that he transported from an internment camp in Texas to a prison camp in Germany back in 1946.

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Kincaid often wondered what had happened to Arthur and Lambert Jacobs, who were only a few years younger than he was. Earlier this year, he and the Jacobs found each other on the Internet. It turns out that Arthur and Lambert made it back to this country in 1947, and their memories of Kincaid remain as strong as his for them.

Arthur Jacobs has written a book about his family's experiences during the war: The Prison Called Hohenasperg. In that book he mentions John Kincaid as one of his heroes.

This particular chapter of that tale is about a different kind of courage in war. Here is their story.

Kincaid had left Kincaid, W.Va., at the age of 15 in search of adventure. He lied about his age, and the Merchant Marines signed him on.

Kincaid found plenty to astound a teen-ager from a coal town of 200. He never spent much time in port, but signed on with a ship as soon as one voyage was over. He liked the nooks and crannies of the ships, where he worked his way up from mess boy to eventually serve as quartermaster. He was working as a maintenance man on the SS Aiken Victory in January 1946 when he first saw the two Jacobs boys.

"They were about my age. They didn't know anybody," Kincaid said. "They just picked me up all of a sudden and stayed right with me."

The boys and their parents were being transported back to Germany as suspected enemies of the United States. Lambert and Paulina Jacobs had come to the U.S. from Germany in the late 1920s.

Both of their boys had been born here, thought of themselves as Americans and couldn't understand what was happening to them. None of the charges were ever proven.

In a phone interview, Arthur Jacobs, who lives in Tempe, Ariz., described his relationship with Kincaid.

"He was like a brother," he said. "I didn't have any fears, but I was lonely for my friends."

Kincaid taught the boys to walk on the rolling ship. Between meals he would bring them pies and cakes to satisfy their sweet tooth. He walked them to the smaller galleys where crewmembers played cards.

Most of all, he never seemed to tire of their company.

Seeing boys, not enemies

We often celebrate the sort of courage that it takes to walk into battle and face the constant threat of death or injury. But there is another sort of courage that we talk about far less frequently. That is the courage to be kind: To see two frightened boys rather than two powerless enemies to be bullied.

Kincaid grows rather impatient with questions about the friendship he showed the boys. It all seems so basic to him.

"These high-ups in other countries make a decision on whether we're going to go to war or not and we don't have a choice," he said. Each of us, however, has a choice about our actions toward those we come in contact with.

"It was the Kincaid code. Their code was live and let live," he said. "We're good people. We were just brought up that way."

When the ship docked, Jacobs and his brother were taken on a crowded boxcar across Germany in subzero weather and thrown into a prison camp near Stuttgart, where the U.S. Army was holding high-ranking officers of the Third Reich. American GIs constantly threatened him with death. He and his family eventually settled with his grandparents in Stickgras.

In 1947 the Jacobs brothers left Germany. A couple from America arranged for them to be sponsored by a couple who owned a ranch in Kansas. They were reunited with their parents in 1958. Arthur Jacobs now owns part of the ranch and retired as a major in the U.S. Air Force in 1973.

He says he's not bitter about his experiences but felt it was important to track down Kincaid and thank him for his kindness.

Neither man is the type to analyze their bonds to each other, but when you hear their story you can't help but be amazed by the affect that even our smallest gestures have on each other.