Found some old letters Dad sent home from boot in '41.
They censored them so much you can't read them or at least make sense of them. I have some from P.I. before he shipped out. Pretty cool .
Paul...that's a great link to your dad's past. It could stimulate a high interest in learning more about his full circumsances at that time. Good luck!
Co-incidentally, something somewhat similar happened when I received a phone call from my deceased dad's old co-worker friends from pre-WWII. They both worked together before 1942, but my dad ended up in the navy aboard an armed guard ship escorting war armmaments vessels and other Allied supply merchant ships across several seas, including the Pacific, Atlantic, Black Sea, Caribbean Sea, and around Australia's waters.
Dad's friends wife phoned me saying she had in her possession 13 letters my dad had written to her husband during the war...and would I like to have them now that her husband had died.
Naturally, I was more than pleased to get these onion thin paper pages which were used because of low weight. Each of his letters were at least 10 pages, typed, single spaced, and full of information which dad had kept quite from his family throughout his "after war" years.
I made copies and gave my four siblings each a copy of the letters. These letters provided a lot of insight into what he was thinking onboard his ship whenever he found time to type them. He wrote that he had to discipline himself from thinking about what was going on back home where we were (in Kansas).
As a Lt. Jg officer he mentioned in one letter that he had to discipline a sailor caught sleeping during his watch duty. Obviously, that's a serious breech of duty during wartime in unfriendly waters. I think the sailor spent some time in the brig over that infraction.
Some parts of these letters were published in the El Dorado(KS) Times newspaper when their editors became aware of them. Historically, the letters were an usual discovery worth studying because they provided insight that hadn't been expressed before about the war.
After he was discharged in 1945 he rarely talked about his naval time...but he often wore his heavy duty parka coat which he had worn for protection against icy cold winds onboard his ship during severe cold days and nights. He also brought home his navy issued binoculars.
When my mom passed in 01 I found letters they had written while he was overseas in WW2 and recovering in Florida from wounds received in Italy.
I found them very endearing and had never seen this side of them.
I also found gifts that they had sent to each other and mentioned them in letters.
I shed tears reading these exchanges of loving endearments, and gave a lot of time to letting these words etch into my consciousness.
After reading them several times I destroyed them for they were the foundations of a love that I cannot put words to.
I still have the presents, a green fountain pen that she had sent him, and a mother of pearl compact with a palm tree inset with like material that he had sent her.
He had to hide the pen, he said his roommate was a thief and would have stolen it if he saw him using it.
I can look at these items and feel the closeness they had to each other across the miles.
These are wonderful memories, thanks for the reminder. (sniff)
__________________
Your so ugly, your mama must have been smoking crack, drinking whiskey, and eating paste...
My Dad left his girlfriend (my Mom) to enlist in the Navy with his cousin Jack. My Dad came home, his cousin Jack died at Leyte Gulf. My Dad was but kilometers away !! I have been the keeper of their letters home to their Mom's all these years. The sights they saw, and the killing they witnessed was beyond my wildest dreams!! My Father never talked about his service, and we meet almost yearly to place flowers on young Jack's grave. My father has the plot right next to him. So it is a very special place to stand for me... I always salute the hallowed ground I stand on... and I always cry...
__________________ I keep tellin ya Doc, I'm in pretty good shape considerin the shape I'm in !!
Last edited by SwedeSteve; 11-07-2009 at 01:34 AM.
When Dad passed away in '03, I got all his books/diaries/memories from his service days.This included his orders while stationed in Lousiana, tickets for train rides home,(PA), tickets to the movies, etc. I also have menus from Thanksgiving and Christmas, and to my astonishment, the menus were almost identical to my service menus when I was overseas.Of course, I have all his medals,(8), but the most cherished item I have is a recording made on a small, 45rpm-size record.If anyone here is older than me, you may remember they used to make these recordings at 5&10 stores, or even on base. The label on the record says "From your serviceman".I haven't played it yet....someday when I can handle it better.
