Love Letters

It was 6^th grade. My friend Paul and I were looking through old boxes in the basement. We found a stack of love letters my father had written to my mother during World War II.  We were fascinated by the ‘mushy’ parts, laughing quietly as we read them, until my mother discovered what we were up to and put an end to it.

Not so long ago I reread those letters. I transcribed them and arranged them in sequence. I wanted to get a glimpse of my father as a young man. I wanted to construct a narrative of my father’s war experience.  I wanted to understand my parents’ courtship, the months and circumstances immediately preceding their long and often unhappy marriage.

In 1943, my father received his commission as a 2^nd lieutenant and was sent to bombardier school at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado.  That’s where he met my mother.  Ninety days later he was transferred from Denver to Euphrata, Washington for B-17 flight training.  That’s where the letters begin.

In December, my father was sent overseas to England with the 8^th Air Force, 91^st division.  Between January and April 1944, he flew 25 missions over France and Germany.  Among his medals, he received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart.

Researching official military records, I found reports from each of my father’s 25 missions, including dates, details of the intended target, the number of airplanes lost, the number of airmen killed, and the number of airmen missing in action.  In his letters, my father did not (and perhaps could not) mention any of the details of these missions.  The most he said was, “It was rough, but don’t worry.” Sometimes, when the missions were particularly difficult, he didn’t write at all.

My father was a Jewish airman fighting against the Nazis.  Strikingly absent from his letters was any mention of Hitler, or Germany, or religion, or country.  The letters expressed no philosophical, political, or patriotic thought. He began each letter “Helen Darling,” and wrote about returning home to the girl he loved.  A few times he added a romantic verse of Robert Burns’ poetry.  Occasionally there was a request for some hard-to-obtain food item. Otherwise he wrote with immaculate penmanship in a tone of resolve and reassurance.

In one of my father’s letters he wrote that there were stories from the war he would one day tell his children.  He never told us those stories.  

Before being sent into combat, my father had known my mother for only a few months.  Was he really writing to my mother or to a fantasy, the girl he needed my mother to be?  Perhaps being in love was my father’s necessary distraction from the horrors of war.  Confronted with a terrifying present, there must have been some comfort imagining a romantic future.

After completing his missions my father was transferred back to the states.  One month later he and my mother were married.