Posted on 07/12/2015 3:34:47 PM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
Edited on 07/12/2015 5:58:18 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
For years the letter lay in a box in the attic. It was postmarked in April 1945, just before the Nazis
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
FROM ARTICLE:
“In the Army,” she said, “they all believed in God. They had to believe in something.”
We typed and printed all of the letters from my uncle who flew a B-26 in Europe. He sent one to my grandmother virtually weekly from October 1942 through May 1945. A truly great report on the life of a pilot.
In foxholes there are no athiests,,,,not sure who said it first.
I have a box about the size of two shoe-boxes with my dad’s letters to my mom. He was on a small mine sweeper - I think in our harbors and sweeping them for any enemy mines that they might sneek in. So pretty safe. He never saw any action, but they were always itching to come across a submarine.
My daughter has that on her list of things to do - scan them in and sort them by date. I imagine that will never happen!
We read them once-in-awhile. Pretty mundane. Although he did write about a Marine that came on board. He was the brother of one of his guys on the ship. The marine spent the night, and was commenting on what a cushy job they had to spend the war on a cruise ship. (My dad knew he was lucky too.)
The marine had just come in from a battle, and was heading out the following day to another battle. “I’m sure you’ll hear about it in the news in a little while.”
I looked up a timeline - the letter was sent a little bit before the invasion of Tarawa where we lost so many men. I wondered how that marine fared.
I look forward to a book from these letters!
Bookmark
The first guy to dig a foxhole
I remember a time, when I was about seven, sitting at his kitchen table after lunch. My brother and I were astonished and amazed when he pulled the majority of his teeth out of his mouth to clean them. We had never seen dentures before. He said he had lost them in the War. Nothing so gallant as combat, but instead it came from losing a bet. He was an officer in the mounted engineers and had bet his buddies he could jump a trench on his horse. He said he still came out better than the horse, which broke its leg.
All the animal lovers can slam him for getting that horse killed, but I remember this quiet, little old man, with a big denturey grin, that at one time must have been quite the hell raiser.
BFL
I have letters from my GGGF from the Civil War and his wife’s letters back to him. He was serving in the US Cavalry from Tennessee. His letters and hers back to him give me an entirely different attitude about the Civil War that are much different from the history books.
More info please!
We’ve just recently completed scanning my Marine grandfather’s letters home from Guam in ‘44 & ‘45. He was too old for the front, and spent his time either in the infirmary or the quartermasters’ corp. He wrote virtually every day, and I understand my grandmother did the same from the home front. Unfortunately, those letters did not survive.
I imagine the guys on the front line seeing all the action didn’t have a whole heck’uv a lot of time to write!
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