| War correspondence: Generations of troops and loved ones found lifelines in letters between the war front and the home front 06/01/2001 By DAVID TARRANT / The Dallas Morning News
AP
1st
Lt. Erin Shuler used e-mail to write to her family in Dallas when
she was stationed in Bosnia. One of her letters is included in
War Letters.
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War is hell, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman once said.
It's also a powerful muse.
Witness this letter written by 1st Lt. Edward Lukert to his wife, Mabel,
on Aug. 19, 1918, after watching a battle being fought in a distant
valley during World War I.
Dearest Wife:
What impressed me most, as I looked down upon them, was the
insignificance of man and all his terrible weapons of war. They looked
like toys, down there, and I am nowhere near as high as Heaven. Wonder
what we poor creatures and our murderous guns look like from up there?
The letter from Mr. Lukert, whose son, retired Army Col. Ed Lukert Jr.,
lives in Arlington, is one of 200 included in a newly published book
titled War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence From American Wars
(Scribner, $28).
The letters are brimming with firsthand accounts from battlefields from
Shiloh to Tuzla. But their words transcend the subject of war, says
Andrew Carroll, the editor of the book.
"They're about all the human emotions of love and resilience and courage
and despair. The intensity of what they're going through shows itself in
the letters. They're just that [much] more dramatic."
Cathartic and life-affirming
Mr. Carroll, 31, became interested in war letters after editing the 1997
best seller Letters of a Nation: A Collection of Extraordinary American
Letters.
Letters written in time of war differ dramatically from other types of
correspondence, Mr. Carroll says. Powerfully cathartic and life-affirming,
letters to and from war zones serve as lifelines connecting children and
parents, married couples, sweethearts and best friends.
"You're talking about life and death," he says. "You don't mince words in
a foxhole. You can't beat around the bush. You may not be alive tomorrow,
so you tell people things you probably wouldn't tell them otherwise."
Such is the case of Capt. George Rarey, who flew air missions over
German-occupied Europe from England during World War II. Capt. Rarey
could barely contain his emotions after learning that his first child
had been born. In the letter, he exclaims his joy to his wife:
Darling, Darling, Junie!
Junie, this happiness is nigh unbearable – Got back from a mission at
4:00 this afternoon & came up to the hut for a quick shave before chow
and what did I see the deacon waving at me as I walked up the road to
the shack? A small yellow envelope – I thought it was a little early but
I quit breathing completely until the wonderful news was unfolded – A
son! Darling, Junie! How did you do it? – I'm so proud of you I'm beside
myself – Oh you darling...
A somber footnote follows from Mr. Carroll: Less than three months after
writing his letter, the 26-year-old Rarey was shot out of the sky by
German anti-aircraft guns. He did not survive.
There is no amount of marble in the world that could create a more
fitting memorial to Capt. Rarey than his own words.
At the end of his letter he writes: Oh, Junie, I wish I could be
there – I think maybe I could be of some help – There are so many things
to be done – What a ridiculous and worthless thing a war is in the light
of such a wonderful event. That there will be no war for Damon! ...Oh my
beautiful darling, I love you more and more and more – Gosh, I'm happy!
– Sweet dreams my sweet mother, Love – Rarey.
"The real world"
Soldiers often refer to life back home as "the real world." In that
context, letters literally are a palpable cord connecting them to reality
– normal life, family, home. A break in that connection can cause enormous
harm. During the Korean War, a young officer wrote to his wife pleading
with her to send more letters – and to stay true to him back home. She did
stay faithful, and the couple remained happily married.
But a 19-year-old artillery gunner named Leon was not so fortunate.
After receiving a "Dear John" letter from his fiancée, he wrote back on
June 15, 1952:
"Be careful," you tell me. "Take care." I almost laughed out loud. We
wouldn't want to see me hurt, would we? There's no need to worry about
me. I'll be all right. I swear it. You have other things to think about
now. Hopes to hope. Wishes to wish. Dreams to dream. A life to live;
and, I wish you the best of all there is."
He signed the letter: "Goodbye, Leon"
Just two days later, according to Mr. Carroll's footnote, Leon
single-handedly charged a Chinese machine-gun nest and was killed in a
hail of bullets.
In the 140 years of warfare covered in this collection, a major theme is
the yearning for news from home. A Union soldier, Pvt. Columbus Huddle,
chastised his father in Ohio for not writing him more often.
"I have sent two letters to America and received no answer yet," he
wrote on April 10, 1962. "It is such a pleasure to get a letter here in
this foreign land." At the time, Pvt. Huddle was in Tennessee.
Patience Black wrote to her husband, James, a Confederate sergeant major
from South Bosque, Texas, reassuring him how much he was still part of
her everyday life and thoughts.
"I see so many things to remind me of you every day. I walk the same
road that I have walked with you, though by myself," she wrote. "I have
knit for you two pairs of socks."
James responded with a swelling ardor meant to allay any suspicion that
he was being unfaithful.
"If I had never known you, that flame would have been unkindled in
this bosom, but once set burning it will burn forever. You are
associated with every thought and every action of my existence."
In the Civil War, a soldier might be lucky to get one or two letters a
month. In Bosnia, soldiers could get several e-mails a day. The means of
communication might be different, but the message was essentially the same.
Writing from Bosnia, 1st Lt. Erin Shuler e-mailed her family back in
Dallas from Eagle Base in Tuzla.
Hi all,
I hope that everybody had a nice weekend! I just want to thank
everybody for their messages of concern. It makes me feel really good to
know that everybody is out there thinking about me and the welfare of
all the troops stationed in this area. I know all this Kosovo stuff
sounds pretty bad on the news, but just know I am very safe."
Mr. Carroll readily acknowledges he is no historian. His passion for
letters began with a personal brush with catastrophe. Near Christmas of
1989, his family's suburban home outside Washington, D.C., burned down. No
one was hurt, but everything inside was destroyed.
"What hit me most was that all my personal letters were gone," he says.
He became interested in letters and began collecting them. Eventually,
he decided to publish a collection of letters from ordinary and famous
Americans, which led to his first book.
Preserving a legacy
At first, his interest in war letters was strictly preservationist. He
started the Legacy Project with the goal of preserving the letters of the
nation's soldiers and sailors.
In 1998, an item in "Dear Abby" mentioned the Legacy Project, prompting
a huge response from widows, parents, children and grandchildren of
Americans who'd served in wars. They sent in originals or copies of
letters found tucked away in long-forgotten trunks or dusty corners of
attics, basements or closets.
Of the 50,000 letters that poured in, Mr. Carroll chose 200. They
include dramatic accounts of major historical events from the point of
view of the rank and file.
Several letters reveal the horror of those first American soldiers to
discover the atrocities committed at Nazi-run concentration camps.
Another letter is from an American medic writing to his parents from the
hospital bedside of Japan's wartime prime minister, Hideki Tojo, after
Tojo's failed suicide attempt.
Generals and presidents and other distinguished Americans are also
represented, including a letter from President Theodore Roosevelt to a
Mrs. H.L. Freeland, who had sent her condolences after his son, Quentin,
was killed in action in World War I.
Roosevelt wrote that his wife had been moved by Mrs. Freeland's letter.
Quentin was her baby, the last child left in the home nest; on the
night before he sailed, a year ago, she did as she always had done and
went upstairs to tuck him in bed – the huge, laughing, gentle-hearted
boy...
He wrote of Quentin's engagement "to a very beautiful girl, of very fine
and high character." And then, in words of Shakespearean eloquence, he
wrote of his youngest son: He had his crowded hour, he died at the
crest of life, in the glory of the dawn."
The Legacy Project is an all-volunteer, nonprofit effort. (Mr. Carroll's
paying job is running a literacy organization that distributes free
poetry books throughout the country.)
"I promised the families who contributed letters that all of my earnings
from the book, including the advance, would go to veterans groups,
memorials and similar nonprofits," he says.
The lessons
Two lessons, in particular, have emerged from the war-letters project, he
says.
One is that nearly all of the letters – 95 percent – that he received
are written by men. But the vast majority of those letters were sent in
by women.
"I didn't realize how much women were doing as the family historians for
the country," he says. "They're saving and preserving and sharing
letters. We have a lot of people who are reading these letters to their
children and grandchildren."
The other lesson is that "war is infinitely more horrible than I ever
imagined. My image of war was always abstract, distant and remote. These
letters make [war] real. Nothing describes the reality of war more
powerfully than letters. Nothing."
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