Dad........................

 

Germany
13 December 1944

Dear Kit,

I was so pleased to get your letter of November 12th a few minutes ago.  As you can see from the length of time it took to get across that our mail has been almost nil for the past month or so.  Right now the APO is specializing in clearing our Christmas boxes, so the letter mail is more or less overlooked.  This sort of puts us between the dive and the deep - for we want our boxes and yet honestly think the letters ease the loneliness and homesickness that is so deep in our hearts. . . .

When Terry told me about the new baby I was happy as anything for both of you.  And I can easily understand you joy and eagerness for the little boy or girl to round out your lovely trio.

I certainly can understand the worries of people about what kind of world the baby will be brought into.  The life you and Terry and I and everyone else are living just now is certainly a miserable one and far from pleasant.  Yet this much I know, the people of all countries will see to it that when this hell on earth is finished we will see a life and live a life that will be worthy of human beings and Christians.  I know that even on my lowest and bluest days I have put into combat during the past two years never have I doubted that once the war was over we could manage to pull the strings of our lives together and forget all we have had to put up with.  No one can ever realize just how precious and pleasant and hopeful life can be until it is almost snatched away.  I have had one or two close calls that left me so scared I didn't realize how lucky I was.  Then I knew so deep within my heart that it almost hurt that even in the midst of the most terrible war man has known just to live and be with people is worth all the hurts and agony man inflicts on man.

No Kit, a little child brought into the world at such a time as this is probably more fortunate than ever.

I seldom thought about this before I went into combat, but one begins to get a far different slant on all that life means.  If you could see what these fellows go through for each other, how much each one depends on his buddy simply for his life, then you could know and appreciate all this talk of mine.  Very few GIs are sentimental enough to talk about things like this and yet the American boy overseas is the most sentimental guy in the world.

Somehow out of all this madness and blindness the people of the world will find the true way of life as Christ taught so long ago.  No matter how it may seem to us at the moment, there are the ever encircling arms of God to lead us through the blindness into the light.  Something I saw before I went into the service comes back to me now—it runs on this order:

    And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
    Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown!
    And he replied: Go out into the darkness and put thine
    Hand into the Hand of God.  That shall be to thee
    Better than light and safer than a known way.

Kit, this must sound very jumbled and rather incoherent but I have been grasping for words as I write.  How I wish I might be sitting with you and Terry.  I know so well that it would be far easier to talk to you about this and then I could get across what is really in my heart and mind.

There is so much to live for and so many pleasant things to do for and with close friends, that it honestly hurts to be here.

But then two years of combat makes a man sentimental even though there is seemingly nothing but cynicism and bitterness in his heart. . . .

With my best wishes and love to each of you for a Merry Christmas!

Affectionately,

Dan

This is part of a letter my Dad wrote to a dear friend.  Despite the heading, he was probably in Belgium, not Germany.  The Battle of the Bulge started three days after he wrote this letter, and he participated in said battle.  He enlisted, at age 29, shortly after Pearl Harbor.  He was part of the Ninth Infantry that chased Rommel across Africa, fought in Sicily, then landed in Cherbourg on D-Day +3.  He entered Germany and then was sent back home in early March of 1945, just before the crossing of the Remagen Bridge.  As I grew up, Dad would NEVER talk about the war.  It was only after returning from the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day at Normandy that he said he had a collection of old letters and offered me the chance to read them.  Quite the gift from a father to a son.  He died of congestive heart failure at age 84.  I miss him still.

A salute to the veterans.