I found this among my father’s papers. He wrote it as a 20-year old infantryman who had been in combat for about six months.
I am struck by the eloquence, and doubly struck that he managed to be eloquent in the medium of pen-and-ink, with no copy/paste/delete and not even any crossouts:
Monday, Jan. 8 (1945)
Dear Mother and Dad:
Well, the new year has arrived and with it, sadly enough, have come no great changes. The war is still being fought, I and millions of other boys are still several thousands of miles away from home and our loved ones, and it almost seems as if there will never be an end to this useless, heart-breaking, killing war.
Whether a man is German, American, or French, he looks just the same when he is wounded, dying or dead. The battlefield bullet is a great leveler; it can make the biggest man very small or the weakest man a hero, but in this war most of the heroes are dead.
We who are actively engaged in defeating the enemy would not hesitate to lay down our arms and surrender if we thought that the people who make the peace will fail to make it permanent. The mere thought that our comrades may have died for nothing, that we may have a brief pause from this war so that we can raise sons to fight another war would cause us many sleepless nights. The last thing one dying soldier said to me was that he was dying on the battlefield so that his son would not.
I may sound very bitter and full of resentment and frankly I am. This war should have been averted in 1918 and the ensuing years, but instead of preventing war, the American people actually encouraged it by ignoring everything that was going on around them. For the sake of all the men who have gone through this hell, we must not let this happen again. We must not have allowed so many of our boys to have died in vain.
I can’t possibly express the resentment these boys feel when they hear about these “Victory in Europe Celebrations”, and when they hear about the lotteries that are held to determine the date of the European victory. Here their own sons are being killed, maimed and crippled for life, and they trouble themselves with such trivial tripe. What is the matter with the American public? Is it entirely aloof to this war?
Perhaps I don’t sound like a twenty-year-old kid anymore, but I’ve seen things that I shall never forget, ghastly things that I shudder to think about. I think that a just punishment for any of these “Victory in Europe Celebration” planners would be to pick up a soldier’s boot on a battlefield and find the foot still in it, or sweat out just one artillery barrage. If they could just realize what is going on they would spend all their spare time praying for the safety of their boys and thanking God that America has been spared everything but an army.
Aside from being a little angry, I’m feeling fine. I’ve received several of your packages and everything is swell. I know that God has been answering your prayers, and he will continue to watch over me.
Love, Norman
That is indeed a very eloquent and moving letter.
I am currently reading (or rather listening to):
https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress-ebook/dp/B075ZGBY6Q
and it gives me some hope that some of your father’s concerns have actually been addressed since then – but still some way to go.
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Wait a great writer! I can see where you get it from.
WWII is romanticized a lot, and it’s good to be reminded that it was an awful, awful war.
Very moving writing.
*pebble*
Steve, your father’s letter is so eloquent and moving. He was such a humble man…I knew he was very intelligent but I am so awed by his writing abilities. I didn’t see your mom and dad often growing up, but when I did they were always so lovely. You mom told me all the time that I was “special.” And you dad always had a joke for me. I thought he was very funny.
You have been so blessed to have him. May his memory be a blessing.
“lotteries that are held to determine the date of the European victory” — that’s the first I’d ever heard of that. Does he mean that people in the U.S. had betting pools on when victory would be declared in Europe? (I couldn’t find anything about that on Google.)
Wow… Just wow!
Amazingly powerful .
“Peace: A period of cheating between two periods of fighting.”
—The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce (a Civil War veteran)
I am the same age as you and knew virtually nothing of my Dad’s wartime experience. I knew he had a purple heart because he lost his leg in the war and was high up in the DAV.
It was my brother, 9 years younger than I, who had the curiosity to ask the questions the rest of us did not. Much was lost when I, normally a insatiably curious questioner failed in what I do best.
A warning for those much younger…you never get access to that wisdom once they are gone.
Powerful and insightful.
May HASHEM comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.