tbuse's Full Review: War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from Ame...
A number of years ago I had read "Dear America, Letters Home from Vietnam". It was a very moving experience. "War Letters takes this further, including letters from every American conflict from the Civil War to the Balkan conflicts. The book includes letters from well known people such as Teddy Roosevelt, George Patton, George H. W. Bush, Ernie Pyle and Dwight Eisenhower. But the real meat of the book, and the really moving portions, are letters written by ordinary people caught up in extraordinary situations. The letters are not edited. The spelling, the grammar, the language is that used in the original. This is not some historian editing history, but the actual thoughts of the men and women who were there.
These generally unknown people, many of whom are convinced they will never see their loved ones again, pour out their pride in themselves and their fellow soldiers, their often unvoiced fears, their hopes, their dreams, their plans for the future. What really tears at the reader is that we must realize that the officer who has repeatedly proposed to his girl back home, who actually got engaged on his last, very brief leave, did not make it home. That the young boy who writes the upbeat letter to his parents is killed shortly afterword. What this book does, and does well, is show that wars are fought by people; real, identifiable people, not just statistics. That war has real, human casualties. Everyone should read this book, if only to understand what we owe to those who served in America's conflicts.
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