My sister has been the keeper of Dad’s WWII letters. I didn’t read them until a few weeks ago when we were driving north through Skagit Valley on our way to Chuckanut Manor for lunch. On a straight stretch along I-5, Sue reached behind her for a Manila envelope. “Dad’s letters,” she said. “I’ve read them, but I want to see what you think. Why don’t you read a couple of them out loud.”
Okay. Why not?
They were still in their original envelopes, neatly opened, read, and then slid back in. Mom must have kept them in a box in the attic. When she died, Sue was interested in keeping the scores of photo albums Mom had put together over the years along with the box of letters and also Sue’s favorite old dolls.
The first envelope I opened was a letter to our grandparents, Rose and Bill. It was written while Dad was in bootcamp.
So, what does a young soldier write to his in-laws?
He started by telling them he was about to go on bivouac. French for a camping trip, he explained. Then he commented on their problem with chickens that wouldn’t lay. “Gosh,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He suggested wet mash and crushed oyster shells. “Are they still eating their own eggs?” he asked. “They don’t seem to realize there’s a war on and everything is rationed.”
He warned that his younger brother Joe was “coming up to see you-uns. He probably wants one more good meal before he’s drafted. Look out, Rose!!” (I suspect “you-uns” is something Dad picked up from a movie.)
Next he made sure to thank them for taking care of Mom. “It makes me feel like pitching in and getting this war over so I can get back and do something for you, and I will.”
Then he described the weapon the recruits were studying, a carbine. “It’s sure a cute lil’ thing. It weighs 5 #, shoots 7 rounds to a clip. The shells are the same diameter as a 30 cal. But are much shorter. It’s good up to 300 yds. But it’s not accurate.”
These are only excerpts from what was a long-ish letter.
After reading Dad’s letter, I was surprised by how revealing it was—what he chose to say and how he said it. I recognized his handwriting, but I’d never appreciated before how even, smooth, and well-formed his masculine-looking cursive was.
Photos are only a moment in time, a shadow seen from the outside. Letters are more intimate.
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Do you have a box of letters in the attic?
Will anyone save your letters?
Oh! Wait! Does anyone even write letters anymore? Is there an adequate substitute?
P.S. The letters to Mom were quite different. As were the letters from the front.
Nicki, what a precious collection of mementos from your father – the photos and letters are a wonderful and powerful memory of him. I love the details, the everyday in them and also how you are taken with his handwriting. My mother has her parent’s letters, including from my grandfather when he was on the Swedish/ Norwegian border during the war – I’ll have to ask her if I can take a look at them!
Yes. I think you should ask your mom to look at the letters, especially if you knew your grandpa.
I wonder if people will find a way to save some of the videos they get on Tiktok or Instagram from loved ones. I’ve been watching the videos Ukrainian soldiers make. Many of them are not what I would have expected. They do a lot of dancing and singing. They lie in bed with kittens and puppies and cellphones. They show themselves chopping and stirring the next meal. And they run through the woods with their rifles or sit in vans with their computers looking for drones to shoot down. Their grandchildren wouldn’t have imagined.
One of my writing students collates these war letters into books. They are an important chronicle of lived history. Such a privilege to peek into the past and a dying tradition.
My sister is putting excerpts from Dad’s letters, diaries, and photos together with relevant history of WWII into simple books for the family. It’s a lot of work.
First, OMG do you look like your dad. Second, yes, I have a box of letters from my dad during the Korean War. Those found letters were what sent me on the journey to write my first novel, Return To Sender.
You really made good use of your dad’s letters, Mindy.
My dad’s letters made me wonder what we will do without boxes of letters. Ian McEwan’s latest book complicates that problem by sending us 100 years into the future after a nuclear accident and a semi-flooded England. His main character, a professor/scholar, looks for old letters and searches through archives in Scotland for a famous poem that has been lost to the world.
A classmate has a friend whose father fought in Malta during WW2. The daughter found her father’s diary and wrote a short book about it. Very interesting.
Interesting, Susan. I wonder if the father was a soldier or a civilian. They have different stories, but both are interesting.
I love this! I have some letters and postcards that my mother saved. They were written during the early 1900’s by my maternal grandparents and her siblings who lived in Colorado and neighboring states. They are mostly about land and livestock purchases, and include some copies of Bills of Sale and currency. Before technology, my family and I were avid letter writers. I have saved many. When I re-read what seem to be ordinary letters, a rush of memories and emotions are unlocked. I regret the letters I hastily tossed in my decluttering efforts. I continue to write letters. Please keep me stocked with stamps!
My sister is like a detective. She takes comments about things like land and purchases and then does more research to put the whole story together. She lives in Ballard, and she was excited to figure out that our grandma lived there when she was young. She thinks she was even able to locate the house.
When we lived overseas, phone calls were too expensive, so my mom and I wrote to each other every week. She saved all my letters. I have them now, but I haven’t looked at them for a long time. I may have a few letters from my husband if I can find them. I should have kept more. I guess I felt that it didn’t matter. I’d see him again soon anyway.
My dad and grandfather saved lots of letters . . . including some from ancestors as far back as the Civil War. I shared a number of my dad’s from the Korean war on SLTW. I have quite a few in 3 ring binders along with typed summaries. My siblings have the same summary and a sprinkling of actual letters.
Letters provide an intimate glimpse into the past. I also love epistolary novels, like Ella Minnow Pea, and A Woman of Independent Means.
Like you, my sister has been good about saving and making sense of old family letters and pictures, some that go back to the Civil War. Now she’s coordinating Dad’s letters and diaries with historical records of the war and especially of his military unit. She going to have books made of the highlights for family members.
I can’t follow the link, but will try again later. In any case I’m sure the letters are priceless
I have letters written from an ancestor in WWI. He was assigned to guard German POWs in Arizona, and one POW recognized the German last name of said ancestor and what part of Germany his ancestors emigrated from : “Ya, ya, Lippenhold.”
The reason my German forefather left for the U.S.? He was furious with the rise of German nationalism and fascism in the 1800s.
Wow! Good for him. He caught on early. Are you the one in your family who saves things like this?
My uncle sent me quite a few items. My brother has a few others. But I think it’s mostly the two of us.
You are lucky to have these. I don’t have a lot of mementos from my parents. I have some of my mother’s cooking utensils and jewelry and that’s it. I still use my dad’s hammer. He passed in 1958, it’s that old!
I don’t think I have any of my mom’s cooking utensils, but I do carry around little bits of her cooking advice, and I have some the china-painted plates she did. It’s nice to have some of those things around.
What a treasure to have your dad’s letters! I don’t have any of my dad’s letters. I have my mom’s mini-bio, which she wrote by hand. It is only eight notebook pages.
Sometimes a friend and I will exchange notes. Other than that, I don’t have many letters.
A young, newly married woman, a husband at war. It’s the most romantic time to save all his letters. For years, when we lived overseas, my mom and I wrote every week. I appreciated her letters, but I didn’t see any reason to save them. Maybe I would have appreciated them years later. I guess I’m not a big saver. My mom, on the other hand, saved all my letters and later gave me a box full of them.
I meant to publish this post next Sunday, but I marked February instead of March. I took it down, but too late. You’ll get another notice on Sunday.