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.

In 1998, Andrew Carroll founded the Legacy Project, with the goal of remembering Americans who have served their nation and preserving their letters for posterity. Since then, over 50,000 letters have poured in from around the country. Nearly two hundred of them comprise this amazing collection -- including never-before-published letters that appear in the new afterword. Here are letters from the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf war, Somalia, and Bosnia -- dramatic eyewitness accounts from the front lines, poignant expressions of love for family and country, insightful reflections on the nature of warfare. Amid the voices of common soldiers, marines, airmen, sailors, nurses, journalists, spies, and chaplains are letters by such legendary figures as Gen. William T. Sherman, Clara Barton, Theodore Roosevelt, Ernie Pyle, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Julia Child, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Sr. Collected in War Letters, they are an astonishing historical record, a powerful tribute to those who fought, and a celebration of the enduring power of letters.

Drawn from a large archive of wartime correspondence, Since You Went Away collects hundreds of letters written by women of all backgrounds and ages from all over the United States: from Midwestern farms to the Hawaiian Islands, from young girls to anxious mothers. The letters are sometimes touching, sometimes anguished, and always packed with intimate glimpses of the World War II era.

Cronkite, an obscure United Press wire service reporter, married Betsy Maxwell on March 30, 1940. When he became a credentialed war correspondent, Cronkite would console himself during their separation by writing her long, detailed letters-- sometimes five in a week-- describing his experiences, his observations of life in wartime Europe, and his longing for her. More than a hundred of Cronkite's letters from 1943-45 survive, chronicling both a great love story and a great war story.

This is the first collection of letters by a member of the legendary 442nd Combat Team, which served in Italy and France during World War II. Written to his wife by a medic serving with the segregated Japanese American unit, the letters describe a soldier's daily life. Minoru Masuda was born and raised in Seattle. In 1939 he earned a master's degree in pharmacology and married Hana Koriyama. Two years later the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, and Min and Hana were imprisoned along with thousands of other Japanese Americans. When the Army recruited in the relocation camp, Masuda chose to serve in the 442nd. In April 1944 the unit was shipped overseas. They fought in Italy and in France, where they liberated Bruyeres and rescued a "lost battalion" that had been cut off by the Germans. After the German surrender on May 3, 1945, Masuda was among the last of the original volunteers to leave Europe; he arrived home on New Year's Eve 1945. Masuda's vivid and lively letters portray his surroundings, his daily activities, and the people he encountered. He describes Italian farmhouses, olive groves, and avenues of cypress trees; he writes of learning to play the ukulele with his "big, clumsy" fingers, and the nightly singing and bull sessions which continued throughout the war; he relates the plight of the Italians who scavenged the 442nd's garbage for food, and the mischief of French children who pelted the medics with snowballs. Excerpts from the 442nd daily medical log provide context for the letters, and Hana interposes brief recollections of her experiences. The letters are accompanied by snapshots, a drawing made in the field, and three maps drawn by Masuda.

The Battalion Artist explores the three years, three months, and three days of Nat Bellantoni's life on the Pacific front in World War II. He had known since childhood that he wanted to be--that he in fact was--an artist. When he packed his seabag and took leave of his family and his sweetheart to go to war, he knew that the best way to manage the narrative of his life and to cope with the ups and downs of his feelings was to create images--visual records that spoke of what he felt, as well as what he saw. In this stunning book filled with authentic World War II images--many in full color--we see and feel the intensity of wartime life through the eyes of a talented young artist who was also a US Navy Seabee. Natale Bellantoni, a young art student from Boston, sailed across the Pacific in 1943-45 and returned home with a sea chest of art and photographs documenting his experiences in New Caledonia, New Guinea, the Admiralty Islands, and Okinawa. His subject matter was his daily life: endless weeks at sea, harbors and ships, men at work, airstrips, the local countryside, and the view of enemy planes overhead at night from his fox hole. Now collected in a lavishly illustrated volume, his watercolors, sketches, and photographs offer a window onto one of the most significant moments in American history. The Battalion Artist explores the World War II experiences of Nat Bellantoni, but it reflects the story of an entire generation.

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.