“After dad died we put together two volumes of the V-mail he sent home.”
we have done the same thing with my Dad’s letters from the S. Pacific....they were forbidden from saying where they were however....from the combat patch on his Eisenhouer jacket I learned his outfit....from there I can match the dates on his letters with his unit history....thus I can read the letters and follow on the map as they hopped from island to island.....may I suggest as a tool:
“Finding Your Father’s War” by Jonathan Gawne published by Casemate Publishing 2006....”a practical guide to researching and understanding service in the WWII US Army”
I was able to do the same with the v-mail letters my father sent to his parents from the Pacific. Somewhere along the line my mother got them and I found them after she died. The letters are amazingly innocuous in light of the kind of hell the war in the south Pacific was like. (As if there is any other kind.) I also found the 32nd Division Association website and learned they were to have a reunion here in northern California a few years ago. I met a lot of his comrades but none who remembered him or were in his Company. I don't think many besides my father survived the war. They got stuck out in the wilds of Leyte Island without supplies and were missing for about three weeks. I might try to find the book you mentioned in your post. Thanks for the tip.