Letters from the war

As I sort through the dozens of letters Dad wrote home from Europe during World War II, I gather glimpses of different sides of him - sides that I, as a son, never saw once he returned home.

These are the letters of a son to his parents, of a man in love to his sweetheart, of a brother to the siblings back home on the farm. Different voices, but all from the same man.

In the midst of the carnage of war, he spends much time striving to calm the anxious hearts back home.

With death all around him, he talks frequently of life upon his return to Kansas. It can be easy to forget that he turned 21 in combat. Or that he was a classic foot soldier in so many ways, whose letters home reflected how much even the smallest things could matter when you're under fire in a strange land.

He wrote with enthusiasm about such things as a cup of fresh milk, a bottle or keg of beer, a home-cooked meal or a dry place to get some sleep.

This passage, in a letter dated Feb. 20, 1945 and written somewhere in France, made me laugh. He'd already been in the front lines for nearly a month:

I don't give a darn for their whiskey. They call it comish or schnapps. We use it in our cigarette lighters and it works as good as any fluid so you can see how strong it is."