What would you write to your young wife when you enlist in the Army to fight the Nazis during World War II? This book tells that story. Bob Dalton wrote a series of almost daily letters home during his service from 1944-1946. This is not a book of combat exploits, but a true life story of what it meant to have a wife and baby at home while serving your country in WWII--and the burden it placed on GIs and their families. The letters frankly discuss the challenges of life because they were only intended to be read by his wife. We found this trove of letters along with hundreds of original photos that illustrate the book after our mother passed away in 2018. We felt that we should share their story. Each letter begins and ends with his love for his family that he left behind to fight. He shares his experiences in boot camp in South Carolina, the trip to the front, crossing the Rhine with Patton's Third Army, and then battling to the Czech border by war's end. His mission changed to demilitarization and denazification until the Russians occupied Saxony as part of East Germany. Then he spent a year as part of the Allied occupation forces in Frankfurt dealing with postwar reconstruction and the U.S. Army bureaucracy. The war changed our father, and reading these letters changed our image of him and the other members of the Greatest Generation.

A collection of letters from the Allied soldiers who fought and won World War II reveals the horror, humor, and boredom of this great conflict.

Both poignant and inspiring, these are the moving stories of men and women who met amid the chaos of the most devastating war in history and became the loves of one another’s lives. Many are now enjoying their seventies and eighties together after more than fifty happy years of marriage. They met in many remarkable ways, some in the briefest of chance encounters, and their love endured heart-rending ordeals of long separation and the constant threat that a husband or lover might not return. As these couples reflect on the profound experience of the war, the stories they most like to tell are of the deep bonds they forged during that tumultuous time, bonds so strong that they lasted a lifetime. As one man put it, “We’ve all got war stories. Some of us like to tell them and some don’t. But the story of how we fell in love with our wives, well, that’s still with us every day, and I know a lot of us can still get a little choked up over it. The war was a long time ago, one part of our lives. But we’re still living the love stories.” Bestselling author and master interviewer Larry King tells the stories of these love affairs just as the couples recalled them, capturing the special feeling of those times in their own words. The stories are complemented with a wealth of personal photographs and reproductions of touching memorabilia, including V-mail letters, cartoons, cards, newspaper accounts, and even the ticket stub from the movie seen on a first date. The stories reflect a wonderful range of experiences, from couples who met and got married within a few weeks to those who waited years after a brief first meeting to see each other again. There are stories of falling in love at first sight, stories of tragedy transformed by love, and stories of the remarkable resourcefulness that can be exercised by two people determined to be together. A treasure trove of unique reminiscences,Love Stories of World War IIoffers an unprecedented view into this personal side of the World War II experience and celebrates the incredible legacy of remarkable relationships forged in the midst of tragedy.

Leland Duvall was a now-and-again farm worker with a grade-school education when he received his World War II draft notice at his father's farm near Moreland, Arkansas, in March of 1942. He departed for training in California, where he began to write to Letty Jones, a Pottsville girl he'd had a crush on for several years. From the first correspondence through the end of the war, Leland sent Letty a torrent of letters, hundreds of careful and undeniably heartfelt missives-utterly tender but never sentimental, reliably charming and gently humorous-written daily from desert sands, pup tents, hospital beds, armored cars, and bombed-out buildings. That Duvall's writing is a tour de force of wit, elegance, and erudition is all the more poignant because he was a man who was almost entirely self-taught. The letters, discovered by Duvall's daughter four years after his death in 2010, are here enriched by his longtime friend and colleague Ernie Dumas, who provides facts about where Duvall was and the perils he endured while penning his epistles, information that was often missing in dispatches that were necessarily censored and always guided by Duvall's effort not to bore or worry his "dearest Letty." Duvall's lively intelligence and obvious joy in writing come through on every page, joining with vividness the patina of the time and the bright shine of a timeless love affair.

"Darling" is the captivating story of Frank, a WWII First Lieutenant in Patton's Third Army, who commands his A.A.A. (anti-aircraft artillery) battalion in defense of Patton's Command Posts as they push the Nazis hack to the Rhineland in a crushing defeat. Frank's letters to his wife cannot reveal his location or any battle information. Through research, author Peggy O'Toole Lamb discovers the truth of Frank's sweeping campaign, liberating towns and cities across France and Germany till he reaches Hitler's lair, the Berghof. "Darling" exposes the soft side of the war, the longing for the return to home, and the search for justice in an evil world. Book jacket.

Love Letters from the Marine Wolf is a biography of the World War II hospital and troop transport ship USAT Marine Wolf. The story is told from the perspective of Sergeant Michael Makros Jr., ship's complement surgical technician, and other shipmates under Army Transportation Command 9222 TSU TC. Their letters, photographs, documents, memorabilia, and testimonials take history below deck to find the human experience of a wartime ship at sea.