Emil's Letters Home

The Letters

So where did this come from?

My grandfather fought in the Pacific in World War II. He was in his late twenties when he went to war, pretty young in my book but I guess not as young as some. He was newly married (1940) and by the time he really got into it had his first son as well. He stayed in SE Asia for many years, eventually coming home before going back in 1953 to Vietnam.

Yup, you read right. 1953. Long before our later mess. But that's another story entirely.

I never heard much about my grandfather's war experience. When I was a kid, he was radically anti-war--the only thing he ever told me about it was that I should never join the army and that he had been there a long time. I remember going to England with him and my grandmother in 1983, meeting in the Dallas airport. There were some young Republicans there in the airport and I remember him almost turning over their table because they had some war-related stuff on it. I don't remember what it was that made him so angry, but it sure impressed on me how strongly he felt about warfare.

I remember asking him when I was about 9 or so whether he had killed anyone in the war...he initially told me "no" and then changed the subject whenever I brought it up again. I remember he had a short sword he said he had gotten from a Japanese officer who had surrendered to him. That was about the sum total of what I heard when I was growing up. I never got a chance to talk with him about it when I became an adult, as he died when I was at the end of college. I never thought about talking to my grandmother about it, and she died just a couple years after.

One of the neatest things that happened to me in the last few years is that my uncle Giles (who is referred to in these letters a lot) came to my house for a visit and brought with him as a surprise my grandfather's letters to my grandmother from the war. It was in a basket with a bunch of stuff I had never seen, including some pictures, his passport, college transcript (I was happy in a sad kind of way that he had done as crappy as I had--even though his grades were not for the same reasons, but because he had had to work his way through without the luxury of student loans and a supportive family), and some other random material.

It was one of the most precious gifts he could have given me.

I've read a bunch of them...they're a great insight into what he went through and what he felt about it. A lot of this kind of stuff is around now, but it's different when it's from your own family. So I decided to transcribe some of it and share it. I hope it's as interesting to you as it is for me.