Books: From Servicemen

LETTERS HOME—Arranged and edited by Mina Curtiss—Little, Brown ($2.75).

In the spring of 1942 Mrs. Mina Curtiss was in Iowa, conducting a radio program and driving around the state to find out how the families of soldiers & sailors felt about the war. When she read a shoe-box full of letters a soldier had written his mother, she “decided that there were neighbors all over the United States who not only would want to read letters from their own sons and husbands but who would be hungry, as I was, for every bit of firsthand information they could get about the lives of our men overseas.” From all over the U.S. she began to collect letters, soon had enough to fill three volumes.

Letters Home is a selection of 254 such letters from 42 servicemen. Not one of its 314 pages is dull; a few of them surpass, in their clarity, emotional intensity, and power of observation, the professional reporting of the war.

Who They Were. Some of the letter writers: a Buffalo truck driver who had been in the New York National Guard for nine years; a Dartmouth graduate of 21; a 30-year-old Iowa farmer who had been frail and sickly all his life and who had never been away from home overnight before he joined the Army; a hotel manager of 23 who had his own orchestra; an automobile mechanic; a 24-year-old reporter on the Shelby, N.C. Daily Star; a 27-year-old employe of the National Shawmut Bank in Boston; a 24-year-old fur worker from Brooklyn; a 29-year-old high-school principal from Georgia; the floor manager of the Hi-Skor bowling alley in Washington; a printer from Worcester; a lawyer; a section hand; a real-estate dealer; a professional roller skater; the 25 -year-old assistant office manager of a wholesale grocery firm in Allentown; an employe of the Arkansas Power and Light Co.; a brakeman on the New York Central; a 22 -year-old butcher from Fresno.

Sometimes the men write because some thing in Italy or Australia reminds them of something at home. More often they are reminded of home because things are so different where they are. Sometimes they write apropos of nothing: “How I would like to be back at Virginia Beach in October’s bright blue weather, to scruff through the flaming new fallen leaves with a gun under my arm.” “I remember Grandpa’s study with its old leather chair.” Where They Went. War scattered them in all directions. It picked them up out of their home towns and set them down in the middle of North Africa (“all around are dusty and rocky small hills. A little grass grows but very little”) and in Camp Claiborne, La. (“This place is about 1,200 miles from home . . .”). They found themselves, usually with irritation, in exotic and often forlorn places, without the kind of food they liked, with their girls way hell-&-gone over the ocean, surrounded by people who talked foreign languages (“You’d be surprised at how the French can get on your nerves”), with Japs and Germans shooting at them, and with the very ground dangerous and explosive: “The Germans . . . use all the devilish, fiendish devices of war, things that we don’t dare use. Poisoned mines, ones that bounce up and spread death for 25 yards; steel darts, that will go right through you; castorators, a nice little gadget that when you step on it blows your groin out. . . .”

From Ireland: “This is a pretty place but nothing compared to Iowa. I am sending you some shamrock I picked. It grows just like our clover. . . .” From Texas: “So this is Texas! You grab a towel, fumble for soap and run out of the tent into the flawless darkness of a Texas morning. And what mornings! Ten million stars an arm’s length above you. The air is brisk, often biting. The pungent smell of wood smoke is everywhere. . . .” From Italy: “Here I am in an old Italian house and we have a fire going in the fireplace, too. Now if I had some apples and popcorn it wouldn’t be so bad. …”

What They Did (besides write letters home) is harder to tell. They read a great deal, talked, went sightseeing, got religion, argued (e.g., about the proper time to feed Arkansas mules), and trained.

In two years with the paratroopers, August Falen fell into two swamps, off a cliff, and rolled down a steep embankment, got a bad scar on his head, dislocated his right shoulder and pulled several ligaments, fractured his right knee cap, busted two ribs on his left side, bloodied his nose while being scraped along the ground by his parachute. He fainted when he reported for duty, was operated on for an infection in his left leg, saw a major of the Canadian Parachutists get cut in two in mid-air and two boys drowned in the Chattahoochee River, passed his jumping, running, tumbling and jujitsu tests, was hospitalized twice in two weeks, jumped with a charge of TNT and crawled five miles through the woods to blow up a deserted house.

He learned to drive a motorboat, a motorcycle, trucks, a tank and alocomotive, married, fathered a son, won his commission, reached North Africa in May 1943, saw action on May 24, was hospitalized in August and September, made 21 combat jumps (the 21st on the day he left the hospital), was decorated, and wrote: “Over here in Italy it is very pretty. . . . There are many old historic places like Pompeii, etc. . . . But even with all this, I’d give anything to plant my feet on some U.S. dirt again. . . .”

Private Vincent Forret wrote: “We get off the trucks and about that time a red flare was shot in the air by the enemy.

We were told to dig in. … We were seven miles up too far. Right up by the enemy. . . . The enemy artillery was whizzing over our heads. Machine guns were firing at us. … They blowed our kitchen up and it burned, killing one of our cooks and mess sergeant. I layed in the hole for twelve hours. Our artillery shot at us. Our tanks shot at us. … It was getting dusk and our tanks and artillery finally drove the enemy out of town. So that night we went back about five miles and ate and slept. …”

Corporal Arthur Madison: “We went down to the 628 tank destroyer outfit and had a class on how to drive a tank and they let us try it out. . . . We would be cruising along peacefully like when all of a sudden we would be flying through the air and when we came down, what a jolt ! Now there is a difference between a tank destroyer called a T.D. and a regular tank.

You probably wouldn’t know one from the other if you saw them. Anyway a T.D. is lighter and faster. We started across this big field headed for the woods. I watched the speedometer 45-50-55-60-65, full speed ahead. I saw that woods, believe me I said a prayer. We were right at the edge of the woods and there was a ditch about 20′ wide and 6′ deep. We landed in the middle of the damn thing, took one bounce and was in the woods. . . . Well we sighted the tanks and they were running like maniacks up over a hill. . . . There were fifteen tanks so we started blazing away with the 75-mm. blanks. When we were within 300 yards of the tanks they started firing back, what a noise. The tanks aroaring, the 75’s going off, and the machine guns started. … I am sore today. My arms and body, just all of me. I wouldn’t be in that outfit for a million dollars. . . .

The boys are beginning to play now so I’ll close and join the fun. …”

Sergeant Samuel Allen Jr.: “Then on May 7 at 7:10 a.m. we jumped off. …

We had only gone a mile or two when the captain called us and told us we were to take Bizerte and hold it until the infantry moved in. My heart jumped right out I think. … I had no sooner gotten started down the street when machine-gun fire started flying around and then we could see across the channel up on a hill behind it, gun flashes. So I stopped right in the middle of the street and started shelling the gun positions. By this time they were giving it to us hot and heavy, but we were giving plenty back. Each tank was down a street and shelling the hill.

While all this was going on there were snipers in the buildings near us and they kept things from getting dull. George Waitman, my gunner, knocked out the two guns that were bothering us most and we moved over to another street looking for some targets.

“Pulled down a side street and started again. This was a nice quiet street without snipers or machine-gun nests. After we were there for awhile an old lady and four men came up. There we were in the middle of the street, motor cut, shooting away.

It’s sort of funny now that you think back on it. The town itself was deserted and had been heavily bombed, and to sit there, everything sort of quiet and deserted, ruined buildings all around you, shutters banging in the breeze. By this time it was getting very hot and stuffy in the tank so we climbed out and took a smoke, cleaned the brass up in the tank and stuff. Then one of the Frenchmen comes up with a bottle of wine and we all had a smoke and drank the bottle of wine. A shell lands behind the tank and sort of makes us mad so we get back in and start shooting away again. And the people just standing there on the sidewalk. . . . P.S. My company has the credit for taking Bizerte and the airport and some five hundred planes and equipment there. No other company holds such a record!”

Religion and Homesickness. Sometimes there is religion in these letters. Wrote Corporal Vernon Sonnier, of Crowley, La. : “Father Luis said in his sermon that he was amazed at the boys who told him they wanted to pray but felt that they couldn’t or had no right to pray. Then he emphasized the fact that we all have the right to pray, regardless of our past lives and how long it had been since we’d prayed. I felt somewhat as the boys did that he mentioned and was considerably overjoyed to hear him say it. But when he said that when we pray we move the hands that move the world, I cried a bit and resolved to try harder than ever to pray in the manner he said we must pray — in other words, with confidence, perseverance, and faith. He is a nice fellow.”

These letters are also full of love and homesickness. Wrote Private Eric Golub on Jan. 30, 1943: “Baby dear: The feeling of loneliness is so sharp it’s hard todescribe. Sometimes while just sitting around doing nothing it gets you. Despite the fact that you’re never really alone it gets everyone. It grips you in the pit of your stomach, crawls up your spine and probes right into your brain. It’s such a helpless feeling. I try to stretch myself across thousands of miles to reach you, but how? . . . I’ll close leaving unsaid the things that can’t be put into words. I love you.”