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.
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.