"Why letters?" a young Iraqi man named Ammar asked when I told him I was traveling the world in search of wartime correspondence.
We met while I was waiting for a ride to the Baghdad airport, and somewhat rushed, I replied that letters written by those who have experienced war firsthand describe it with unrivaled intensity and intimacy.
Ammar was not convinced. "My brother fought against the Americans in 1991," he said. "He sent letters home, but no Iraqi soldiers could say how they truly felt. I am not sure how such letters could be of much value to you."
While we were talking, my military escort arrived, and I had to cut our conversation short. As I stared out the open window of the Humvee, I thought of the longer reply I wish I could have given Ammar. I wanted him to know that I had launched an effort to preserve war letters, the Legacy Project, after a fire destroyed our family home in Washington, D.C., in 1989. Nothing was more devastating than losing all our personal correspondence, and it inspired in me a greater appreciation for letters and a desire to save them for posterity.
After a "Dear Abby" newspaper column announced the creation of the project nine years later, I was inundated with tens of thousands of American letters, including originals dating back to the Civil War. Yellowed with age, and often bundled together with frayed ribbons, many were fragile and required great care. It seemed impossible that these delicate pieces of paper could convey the fury and bloodshed of warfare.
But in countless letters, especially those written hastily in foxholes, trenches, and the bellies of warships, the faded words would suddenly flicker to life and describe a moment in time with breathless urgency. "Dear Sis: It is now 9:05 Sunday morning and we've been bombed now for over an hour," a sailor named William Czako wrote on December 7, 1941, from inside the U.S.S. New Orleans. "We were just struck by a bomb near the bow. I can hear the various stations screaming orders at one another. A man just brought us our gas masks." Letters like this represent the first, irreplaceable drafts of history—immediate, raw, unfiltered.
For years I traveled throughout the U.S. speaking with veterans, and time after time I heard the same appeal: Expand the project. Seek out letters by veterans from different nations. At the very least, they said, foreign war letters would offer a fresh perspective on familiar battles and historic events.
Before embarking on my global search, anti-American protests flared up around the world because of the war in Iraq. I braced myself for the possibility that in such a contentious atmosphere few people would be willing to assist me, and I would return empty-handed.
The response, in fact, was overwhelming. In every country people could not have been more hospitable or generous. Veterans shared letters they had not shown to their own families in years—if at all. Archivists spent days sifting through stacks of correspondence deep within their collections to find previously unpublished material. And my indefatigable guides scoured antique shops with me to salvage letters that might eventually have been thrown away.
The letters were breathtaking. We uncovered riveting accounts of the fighting at Verdun, Leningrad, Berlin, Pusan, Saigon, Sarajevo, and many other cities whose names are now synonymous with ferocious battles and sieges.
What makes the letters so powerful is not only the history they record but also the common humanity they reveal. The homesickness felt by Civil War soldiers who thanked their sweethearts for sending them "likenesses" (their word for photographs) was echoed in the letter from Michael Kaiser, a German peacekeeper who served in the Balkans in 2000. The anguish felt by a Hungarian mother named Anna Koppich who had lost her son in World War II was as unbearable as the despair experienced by an American woman, Gloria Caldas, after her son, Ernie, was killed in Iraq in 2003. The depth of conviction articulated by a young Jewish soldier named Joseph Portnoy in 1945 was as heartfelt as the faith of Muslim Turkish troops at the battle for Gallipoli. And when I met Chuck Theusch, who corresponds with Vietnamese veterans, I thought of the British and German soldiers who spontaneously stopped fighting on Christmas Eve 1914. Theusch and the Vietnamese now build libraries together in the country where they once faced each other in battle.
Erase the names, dates, and geographical references in these letters, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine the nationalities of the writers. Their words transcend boundaries, offering insights that are timeless and universal. They reflect the full range of emotions, made more vibrant and poignant through the prism of warfare. Both a warning and an inspiration, the letters remind us of our capacity for violence—and of our potential for compassion. They're a searing reminder as well of the profound and often lasting effects of war on every individual caught in its grasp.
Perhaps what struck me the most was that many of these letters were written at all. Some are private admissions of fear or loneliness. Others are graphic descriptions of combat that evaded the censors. A British prisoner of war named Clifton Johnson-Hill even risked his life to write a series of short messages to his wife while he was held captive by the Japanese during World War II. Had he been found with the letters, which detailed the brutality of prison life, he could have been tortured or executed. Such letters are a testament to the desire among those directly affected by war to ensure that the sacrifices it imposes, and the trauma it inflicts on troops and civilians alike, are never forgotten.
Several months after I spoke with Ammar, a Kuwaiti scholar showed me a letter written by a soldier to his mother during the gulf war. "I've never forgotten your face....How much have you suffered and are still suffering for years. Please have mercy on me....Had it been in your hands you would have taken me out of hell." The soldier was an Iraqi, and the letter, found on his body, was his last message home.
The War in Iraq
Gloria Caldas dreams about her son, Ernie, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. "The dreams are so vivid," she says. "His voice is crystal clear. He tells me that he's ok." Ernie's voice is also preserved in dozens of e-mails he sent her, the last discussing his upcoming wedding. For generations, wartime letters passed between those on the front lines and loved ones back home have often provided the clearest views of armed conflict. Whether scribbled in a foxhole or composed at a kitchen counter, each serves as a reminder of the mark war leaves on every human swept into its path.
Grief is a very selfish, lonely thing. Nobody teaches us how to do it properly. So we just have to make up the rules as we go along ... some days are OK, some are bad, and sometimes they're just awful. But we learn to go on. I've had to redefine "normal."
Normal will never be the same. —Gloria Caldas, to her son's fiancée
The Korean War
Bob Wada regularly visits Bat's grave in Redlands, California, where the two grew up riding bicycles and hunting rabbits among the orange groves. "Bat and I used to ride up here to the cemetery at midnight to test our courage," remembers Wada. "I've always felt guilty that I asked him to join the Marines with me. I still don't understand why he died and I lived. I figure God had a reason."
I loved him like my own brother and I never let him leave my heart....I think of him every day and still cannot believe he is gone....Goddamn, Rudy, we are leaving the ground we just took, the hill "Bat" was killed on and everything. — Robert Wada, to his friend's brother, Rudy
World War Two
After 15 months of patching up wounded men on Europe's battlefields, Joe Portnoy came home to his beloved wife, Ruthy, packed away his Army uniform and Bronze Star, and embarked on a 40-year career as a Jewish cantor, leading synagogues in prayer and song. God had little to do with the war, he wrote to Ruthy. "Wars will go on as long as men's hearts are as they are."
Ask God to give you what you want. Help him to justify your wants by the way that you live, and then having given him your prayer, have the faith and courage to rely on his power to do the thing that is right in his eyes. — Joseph Portnoy, to his wife, Ruthy
World War One
A cadet from the Royal Netherlands Air Force Academy reads some of the 54,896 names carved in the stone facade of the Menin Gate. Erected on the road leading to Ypres, Belgium, the scene of savage fighting—including the war's first poison gas attack—the gate stands as a monument to British Commonwealth soldiers, including many from India and Africa, who have no known graves. More than 700,000 men were killed or wounded in the struggle that raged intermittently from 1914 to 1917 for this swath of farmland, the last sliver of unoccupied Belgium.
We used the bayonet and the kukri, and the bullets flew about more thickly than drops of rain....in some places men had lost their eyes, in others men without legs, but what could one do, as is in one's fate so it will happen. Such is the scene and one was powerless. Now I have not any sure confidence that I will see you people again, there is nothing but hopelessness. —A wounded Indian rifleman in a hospital, April 1915
Persian Gulf War
In 1990 Lynda Severson sent Christmas gifts to Marines serving in the Persian Gulf war. Capt. Steve Belgum wrote a thank-you note, and a romance blossomed. The couple married in 1993 and today live with their two sons in California. Still in the reserves, Steve was called to serve stateside in the buildup for the Iraq war and could be called to duty again, perhaps overseas. But wherever he goes, he carries a special message from Lynda engraved inside his wedding ring: "pen pals forever."
Happy Valentine's Day!
... Thank you for keeping all of us servicemen and women in your thoughts and prayers. We really appreciate the support; it does make a difference over here. ...My unit has not seen any action yet, but according to everything I have heard on the news, a ground offensive is necessary. In the meantime, the aviators continue with their bombing, which is fine with me. Not knowing how you will react to this candid discussion on my part makes me a bit nervous. ...Hopefully, you will tell me what you think in your next letter....If you care to write me back, I would like to hear from you....—Steve Belgum, to Lynda Severson
War in Afghanistan
Childhood photos of Masuda Anna Mohamadi and her father remind her of peaceful times in Afghanistan. In 1979 she and her family fled the Soviet invasion and settled in the U.S., but Masuda and her father returned in 2002 to help rebuild their shattered nation. From Kabul she e-mailed friends about reunions with lost relatives and her work as a teacher. "It was like a huge wound had healed in my heart," she says. Tragically, her father died in a plane crash while there.
Well, darlingest one, I can't possibly tell you what a relief it was to know our child was born alive and that you must have recovered from it sufficiently to have him christened Alan, a name I like immensely....I am simply dying to get your first letter to hear all the details. As you can imagine what a hell it is to be a prisoner of war under Japanese hands, not even allowed to know the sex of one's child until he is over 14 months old.... Oh for your letter, Beloved. —Clifton Johnson-Hill, to his wife
War in Kosovo
A drawing of a nude woman transports Michael Kaiser from his Nuremberg apartment back to Kosovo and the armored vehicle he shared with 30 other German peacekeepers in 1999. "We were there to collect evidence of mass killings and rape," he says. Taped inside their armored vehicle, the self-portrait sent by Kaiser's girlfriend back home became for him and his men a symbol "of normal women, without destroyed souls."
Our thoughts drifted toward another world.... Thus the picture from far away Nuremberg provided us with a few hours which the members of this illustrious crew will never forget. —Michael Kaiser, to his girlfriend
The Vietnam War
Blind children "see" Chuck Theusch for the first time. In 1970, as an 18-year-old U.S. infantry private, Theusch fired mortars into Vietnam's central highlands. Now he builds libraries there, including one at the school for the blind in Bac Giang. To get government approval for his projects, Theusch works closely with men he was once trying to kill—and who were trying to kill him. "After 30 years I think veterans of all wars start to see things differently," he says. "Now I just want to help the people as much as I can."
Each trip to Vietnam I feel depths of sadness over the darkness of the past, but then in the children I find the joy and hope for the future. Maybe it is why I need Vietnamese children in my life so much—they beam with bright light of better tomorrows for all of us. —Chuck Theusch, to a Vietnamese friend