Well. I’m not sure when I got this book; the ABC Books signing event was on November 5, 2022, and the book is inscribed to me, so that was probably it, but I did not buy enough for a Good Book Hunting post, apparently. I think I remember talking to the author, but I’ve been to so many book signings over the last decade…. I had to go to ABC Books’ Facebook posts to find the date, anyway. Since the 2026 Winter Reading Challenge has an “About Family” category, now was the time to read it.
So: The named author is the wife of the person who’s, uh, telling the story. Basically, the man’s father was inducted/drafted into the Army during World War II right before the man was born, and he died in World War II when the boy was about two. So the father only saw his son two or three times whilst on liberty stateside, and then he got sent to Europe in March 1945 and died a month later, a month before Germany surrendered. After spending a year and a half stateside and going through basic training twice, mechanic’s school, and M.P. school once or twice.
The man’s mother remarried a year or so later to a man who was not kind to the boy, who spent as much time as possible with his other relations. Around the turn of the century, the mother sent the father’s effects, including his military records, medals, and these letters to him.
So the book is largely a collection of excerpts from the letters that the father sent to the mother during his service with a little bit of commentary or explanation. The book includes some family and service photos and records as well. Apparently, the father was interred in Germany, moved to Holland, and then repatriated to Nebraska, his home, at the behest of his parents, not his widow.
So, what to make of it? Well, I am not impressed by the wife much–many of the letters include reminders and eventually admonishment and threats that she should go to the dentist as she had one or more problems with her teeth who needed correcting; she’s always going out with her sister-in-law/roommate whose husband is also away at war, and sometimes it seems like it bothers him; and she often buys new shoes and stuff, including a fur coat whose price he asks about many times over the course of many months (apparently, it cost $96 in 1940s money–the author says it would be over a thousand dollars today, in 2022 dollars–which might not be today today’s money). Of course, the hero of the story is the father, so the excerpts of the letters might craft a certain point of view and clean up some of his rough edges. The daily letters, though, declare his undying love (with a little impatience) and fidelity and include details of camp life, the training he’s going through, and whatnot. The book footnotes some of the military jargon and anachronisms, but as a child of military parents and a reader of pulp, I didn’t need them. The book also takes a moment to explain that the father might prefer that a white man win in a boxing competition over a Negro, might mention when people are Jews or Japs (and Polish, and anything besides Nebraskan-American), if the father had lived, his thinking would likely have evolved to match modern sensibilities–maybe, or maybe this is just something the actual author, a former teacher, had to insert as a matter of course. Odds are that someone reading letters sent by a relatively unimportant soldier in a war eighty years ago might already have known he was a product of his time.
At any rate, an interesting book for its look at Army life in the time period from a private (later PFC) perspective.
I hope the man got some solace from this exposure to his father whom he never knew. He, the man whose wife wrote the book, went into the Marine Corps early in the Vietnam era, and he mentions going through El Toro MCAS (although it’s misspelled in the text) and visiting Okinawa. He might have been a couple years ahead of my folks, but maybe not. Also, I couldn’t help but note that the father was stationed one or more times with a fellow named Lum; I just read a book by a woman named Lum. Probably no relation, but who knows.
This is the ninth book from the Winter Reading Challenge; I have 6 more to go in February, and I’ve started a science fiction book and a translated quality textbook, and I will likely finish a collection of poetry tonight. So I am in good shape for the Whole 15, but the “In Two Time Periods” category might be tricky unless I stumble a time-traveling science fiction story. Which I probably will.
