My grandmother keeps these letters in a Whitman's Sampler tin on the top shelf of her hall closet in Findlay, Ohio. There are a hundred and forty-one of them. She let me read them for the first time last Christmas, sitting at her kitchen table, and when I asked if I could copy some of them out for other people to read she thought about it for a full minute and then said, "Well, Hal wouldn't mind. He never could keep anything to himself." So here they are, with her blessing, and with her corrections; she read every one of these over my shoulder before it went up.

Some things you should know. My grandfather, Harold (everyone called him Hal), was drafted in February 1943 at the age of 23, when he was working at a garage in Findlay. He did his training at a camp in Texas and was sent to England at the start of 1944, where he spent the rest of the war as a mechanic keeping trucks running. He did not see combat and he was always very plain about that; he said the men who did had earned the right to talk about it and he hadn't. He came home in November 1945. They were married in February 1946 and had forty-eight years together. He died in 1994.

My grandmother, Dorothy (Dot), was 21 when he left. She lived with her parents, worked at the telephone exchange, and wrote to him at least twice a week for two years and nine months. His letters to her were read by an officer before they were mailed; that's why he never says where he is beyond "somewhere in England," and why one letter has a line neatly cut out with a razor. Her letters to him were not censored, but she was careful anyway, because everyone was.

I have picked ten letters. I have not changed their words. I fixed a few spellings, because Grandma asked me to ("he'd be embarrassed"), and I have left out one or two lines that are nobody's business. My notes are in italics.

Grandma is 78 now. She does not have a computer, but the public library in Findlay does, and the librarian there has shown her how to find this page. So, Grandma: hello. I love you. I've put the one about the socks in, like you asked.

Dear Dot,

Well here I am and I am still in one piece. They have cut off all my hair which you would not like and given me a pair of boots that were made for a bigger man. It is hot here already and it is only March. The fellows say wait till July. I say I will not be here in July but they just laugh.

We are up at 5 and go all day. I am so tired at night I can't think but I am thinking of you right now so I guess I am not that tired. The food is not as bad as they say. It is not your mother's either.

They found out I could fix a truck so I am with the trucks now instead of marching which suits me fine. The sergeant says a man who can keep a truck running is worth ten who can shoot. I did not tell him I can't shoot.

Write me everything. I mean it. Tell me what is playing at the Harris and who you saw at church and what your dad said about the price of eggs. I want all of it.

Your Hal

Dear Hal,

You said to tell you everything so here is everything. It rained all week. Dad says the price of eggs is a crime and Mother says then stop eating them. "Casablanca" is at the Harris and Mary Alice and I went Thursday and cried, both of us, so you would have been embarrassed to be seen with us.

They had a dance at the armory Saturday for the boys from the base and Mary Alice made me go. I want you to know I went. I danced twice with a boy from Toledo who stepped on me and once with Mary Alice's brother who is 16 and it doesn't count. Then I sat down and helped with the punch. I am telling you this so you hear it from me and not from somebody's letter. There is nobody, Hal. There is nobody but you and there hasn't been since the Fourth of July picnic in 1941 and you know it.

The shoe stamp came and I am using mine on sensible shoes, Mother saw to that. I am putting money in the jar every week. It is for after.

I miss you at the strangest times. Wringing out the mop. I don't know why.

All my love,
Dot

Dear Dot,

The fellows were right about July and they were right about August too. It was 104 on the thermometer by the motor pool yesterday. I would give a week's pay for one hour of the shade under your dad's maple.

I had KP for a week for something I did not do (well, mostly did not do) and I have peeled more potatoes than there are in Ohio. If I ever get home and you set a potato in front of me I want you to know I will eat it, but I will look at it first.

Your letters come in bunches, three at once and then nothing for ten days. When they come I read them in order and then I read them again out of order. The other fellows get letters too but I don't think they get letters like yours. Nobody else's girl writes about the mop.

They say we will move before long. I can't say more than that and I don't know more than that. Don't worry. Wherever they send me they will need somebody to fix the trucks, and that is the safest job in the Army, and I mean to keep it.

I got your picture and it is in my shirt pocket and I am not going to tell you how often I take it out.

Your Hal

Dear Hal,

We had Thanksgiving. Mother saved sugar stamps for a month to make the pumpkin pie and then Dad's brother's family came, all six, and there was one piece of pie left and Mother gave it to me and I put it in the icebox and I am not going to eat it because it is your piece. That is silly and I know it. It will spoil. I am going to keep it two more days and then eat it and think of you. Mother says I am not right in the head. Mother is correct.

The exchange is short-handed so I am working six days. I don't mind. It goes faster. Some of the girls have gone to the plant in Lima for the money but I like the exchange and Dad likes me home.

Your mother came to church with us and afterward held my hand the whole way down the steps and didn't say a word about it and neither did I.

They say the mail will be slow at Christmas so I am sending this early and the package with it. Don't open the package until Christmas. I mean it, Harold.

All my love, always,
Dot

Dear Dot,

Well I have crossed the ocean and I did not like it one bit and I don't care to do it again except the once, going the other direction. I can't tell you where I am except that it is England and it is green and it is raining. The fellows who have been here a while say it is always raining. I believe them.

The people are very kind to us. There is a lady in the village who has us in for tea, which is tea and also bread and jam and a kind of cake, and she will not take anything for it, so we bring her the sugar out of our rations and she pretends not to notice. She has two boys in it herself, one in the Navy. Her house is older than the United States.

It is the same work as Texas, only cold and wet instead of hot and dry, and the trucks are the same trucks and they break the same ways. I am glad of the work. It is good to have your hands busy.

Your letters take three weeks now. Send them V-mail if you can, it's faster, and I don't care if it's small, I can read small.

Dot I am a long way off now and I want to say a thing plain. When this is over I am coming home and we are getting married, and I want you to tell your dad I said so, so he has time to get used to it.

All of me,
Hal

Dear Hal,

It was on the radio yesterday morning before I left for work, the invasion, and the church bells were ringing all over town by noon and everyone was in the street and nobody knew anything. I went to work because what else was there to do. Every call that came through the board I thought, maybe this one is news. It never was. It was Mrs. Carver calling her sister about the chickens.

I know you said you were somewhere safe. I know you said it. I am asking you to say it again, as soon as you can, even if it's only the one line. I will not breathe right until I get it.

I am not going to write about anything else today. Write me.

Dot

Dot,

I am fine. I am fine. I am exactly where I was and I am doing exactly what I was doing and nobody is shooting at me. I got your letter today and I sat down on a tire and read it and then I asked the lieutenant if I could write back right now instead of after supper and he said go ahead, and I think he's got a girl too.

I can't say much about what's going on and you know that. I will say we have been very busy and I will say that everything that leaves here goes somewhere, and it is our job to make sure it goes, and we do. The fellows who go with it are the ones to worry about and I worry about them plenty. I am not one of them. I am the one waving from the gate with a wrench in my hand.

The lady with the tea has had word her Navy boy is all right. She cried on my shirt. It's still wet, or that could be the rain.

Breathe, Dot. I'm here.

Hal

Dear Hal,

Second Christmas. I have decided not to be sad about it and I am doing very well at it during the day.

The socks are in the package. I have knitted you eleven pairs of socks since March of 1943 and I know you have said you have plenty, but Mary Alice's brother wrote that a man can never have too many dry socks in England, and he is over there now too (he is 18, can you believe it), so you are getting socks. Gray ones this time. They took the whole train ride to Lima and back to do.

Mother and I put up the tree. It is a small one. Dad said why bother and then he was the one who wanted the lights on every night. The wreath on the door is the one you brought us in 1941, the wire one, and it has held up better than any of us.

Your mother and I have been going to the Wednesday prayer meeting together. Don't laugh. It helps her and it helps me, and I have figured out that she is not so much strict as she is frightened, and now that I know that we get along fine.

I am not going to say "next Christmas." I said it last year. I am going to say I love you, and I am going to put this in the mail and go to bed, and in the morning I am going to be very brave again.

Dot

Dot,

It's over. Over here anyway. You will have heard by now, there is no use my telling you, but I want to write the words down myself so I can look at them. It is over.

Yesterday the whole village was in the street and there were bonfires and the church bells went all afternoon and the lady with the tea kissed every one of us and then went home and sat down and I think she was thinking about all the boys who won't be coming to tea. I know I was. Not to be gloomy. It was a wonderful day. It was both.

Now don't get excited. Nobody has told us anything, and there is still the other war, and there is a system with points that decides who goes home first and I don't think I have very many. It could be a while. It could be a long while. But there is an end to it now, and I can see it from here, and I could not say that last week.

I want to tell you about the trucks and about the fellows and about the bonfire but I find I can't write it, I am too full up. I will tell you at your mother's table with a piece of pie in front of me, the pie I was owed in 1943, which I have not forgotten.

Tell your dad it's official now. He can start getting used to it in earnest.

Hal

Dot,

My points came through. I have my orders. I can't tell you the ship or the day but it is soon, it is weeks, and after that it is a train, and after that it is you at the station. I've thought about that station so many times I could draw it with my eyes shut. I'm going to walk up to you and I am not going to say anything clever because I've had two and a half years to think of something clever and I haven't, so I am just going to stand there, and you will have to do the talking, and you're good at that.

I gave the lady with the tea all my sugar and a can of peaches and my extra blanket and she gave me a photograph of her house so I would remember it, as if I could forget. Her Navy boy is home. He is about 20 and he looks 40. I shook his hand.

I am bringing home 22 pairs of socks, which is every pair you sent me, because I could not bring myself to throw a single one away, and the fellows have had a lot to say about it, and I don't care.

This is the last letter, Dot. I am going to put down the pencil now and come home.

Hal

That is ten of a hundred and forty-one. I may add more, if Grandma agrees, a few at a time. There is a whole run from the summer of 1944 about a dog the motor pool adopted that I think people would like, and there is her letter about the first time she drove the car, which she is still deciding about.

I want to say one more thing. These are not remarkable letters. There are no great events in them, no battles, and nobody in them is famous. They are two people in their early twenties who did not know how it would come out, writing about socks and pie and the rain because that was what they had to give each other, and giving it, twice a week, for two years and nine months. I have read a great deal of poetry. I have not read anything better than "Breathe, Dot. I'm here."

If you have letters like these in a tin somewhere, read them. Then ask whoever wrote them, if they're still with you, what they'd like done with them. You may be surprised. I was.

— Susan

Elsewhere: Poems from the Attic · The Sonnet Workshop · Letters Home from Boot Camp (a family doing the same thing, fifty-five years on) · USS Kittiwake Shipmates (1968-1972) · Millbrook Township Historical Society · Postcards from the 1950s