Treasures, carefully labeled.
Dad, building a house for Eugene and me, Eugene helping
Every house we lived in when I was growing up was built by my dad. And each of them had a good-sized attic, the kind that ran the length of the house and was high enough to walk around in. The perfect place for storing old toys, dolls, books, party dresses, holiday decorations and much, much more—all of it carefully packed and labeled by my mom.
Years passed. My sister and I left home. My dad passed away. And still my mom climbed the ladder to the attic, adding and subtracting keepsakes, keeping order. Eventually the house became too much for her, and she moved into an apartment. It was up to my sister and me to find new homes for old treasures.
One old treasure we kept for ourselves was a box of letters our dad wrote between 1942 and 1945 when he was away at war. By my count, there are 191 letters. Lately I’ve started reading them.
My dad took part in some very heavy fighting in Italy and France during WWII, but he seldom wrote about it in his letters. If he had, the censors would have blacked it out. So instead, he wrote about the people and houses he saw and the bits of French and Italian he was learning. Mostly, though, he wrote love letters, which is striking to me since my dad was not the type who talked about his feelings.
Love letters from the front.
Here are a few samples:
“Hey, Punkin, do you still love me? Please say you do ‘cause that’s my main ambition—to be loved by you.”
“Yesterday I missed and loved you a lot, but today it’s 24 hours more.”
“Honey, I love you so much that it’s coming out of my shirt sleeves, breaking my shoe laces and busting the buttons off my shirt.”
A baby and a land mine.
The day after I was born, he wrote: “Twenty minutes ago I received a telegram—the best I’ve ever received … I knew what was in it, but I had an awful time opening it, and I had to read it over 4 times before it would sink in.”
Andy Cromarty and his best friend before the siege of Monte Cassino
On October 10, 1944, after the usual loving comments, he wrote: “Incidentally, I’m in the hospital for a minor ailment. I was hit by a mine, just enough to put me here for ‘bout a week, I guess. … Sure got off easy.” (He didn’t mention that his best friend, who was only a few feet away from him that day, was killed.)
Gambling on the war’s end.
On March 27, 1945, my dad was hopeful the war would soon be over. “I’ve bet Harry $5 that this war will be over on or before the 4th of July,” he wrote. “Sure hope I win. I’ve already lost $10 to him. I bet him it would end last year.”
He would win that second bet. V-E Day was May 8, 1945.
For my father-in-law in China, the war wouldn’t be over until August 15, 1945, V-J Day. His letters to his family in Gulangyu China, had to pass through a complicated patchwork of battlefields, disputed territory, and enemy occupied cities before reaching them. I can only assume that every letter that made it through was a great source of joy to my mother-in-law.
These days we keep in touch with family members by calling, texting, e-mailing and skyping, the advantages of which are obvious. But I wonder, does this mean there will be no more “letters in the attic” for our children to read?
Do you still write letters? Have you found letters in your attic or basement or closet?
I’ve been reading letters my dad wrote home from Korea in 1948-1949. Now I’m about to tackle a stack of my grandfather’s correspondence to dad.
I expect we’ll leave more of a digital trail than a paper one. Somehow, not quite the same.
You’re fortunate, Nancy, to have not only your dad’s letters but also your grandfather’s. And yes, seeing my dad’s handwriting and holding the paper added an extra dimension to the words he wrote.
Nicki, what beautiful words those letters contained. What wonderful memories to be passed down through the generations.
I always write my grandparents letters and send them pictures in the mail. My grandmother (my mom’s mom), who has 22 grandchildren (20 girls, 2 boys) always sends each of us valentine’s in February, remembers everyone’s birthday, and keeps in contact with everyone during the holidays. I find it exciting when I receive mail from her as most greetings are sent over the internet these days.
Your grandmother sounds like a really good grandma. (twenty-two grandchildren–wow!) Like you, I’m happy when the postman leaves a greeting card for me. My grandchildren write wonderful thank-you notes and send them by mail.
I still write letters and over the summer I met one of my cousins in France. We were best friends when we were kids and teenagers. She told me that she kept all of my letters and that she had read them occasionally as an adult. I was moved to tears!
I love this post. My parents were too young to go to war but old enough to remember of it since they lived in Normandy.
It’s amazing and touching that your cousin saved and read your letters since you were kids together.
The last letter I received was from a friend of mine. We were both in the same high school.
She and I enjoyed telling each other things but we did not always have the time to sit down together and chit chat. We had our own groups of friends and were literally too busy to talk.
She gave me the first letter when we walked passed each other. In the right corner, she put a nice sticker as if it was a stamp. We kept doing it the whole year and the last envelope she gave me contained a b’day card. I still keep the letters and the card. In fact, I took a photo of it and put it on the post about b’day tradition. 😀
Hari, I looked at the birthday card on your blog. It’s very nice. Too bad you don’t walk past her any longer. Did you ever send her a letter by mail?
I do still write letters but not as much as my parents still do.
Actually my parents still have some letters saved from their youth. I remember reading a letter my father received from his grandfather in 1952, in which he received 50German Marks to go to a camping trip. I believe there are many more but I haven’t read them all yet and it is also a bit hard to read due to the fact that they are all written in one of the old German handwriting styles.
It’s good to hear that you and your parents still write letters. Maybe someone will save one of them.
Nicki–Another good memory. I, too, found “letters in the attic;” 100’s of old family comings and goings back to my brother’s and my beginnings. . . and beyond back to when Mom was a girl. Mom was the writer in the family, but Dad wrote during the war years. Mom was in Amarillo, Texas with my brother and I; Dad in Oakridge, Tennessee, where we joined him later. You can imagine what he was working on. His letters were stark and censored to the hilt, but occasionally talked of movies he could watch or people he met or, in one occasion, a co-worker who suddenly wasn’t there anymore. Keep up the good work.
I find previous generations could write more easily and compellingly than we do. Much more practice, of course. No, I haven’t written letters in a long while, and even those are sterilized by “Word” and it’s fonts, not my illegible, but personality-embued scrawl.
Chick, it’s great that you found hundreds of old letters–even back to when your mom was a girl.
I did write letters when we lived in the Philippines, once a week. I was surprised to find that my mom had saved those too. My handwriting was sure better in those days.
Oh, Nicki, those letters are so very dear – thank you to your Dad for writing them, your Mom for saving them, and to you for sharing them with your readers. And it was fun to see the picture of your Dad and see you in him..
Sheila