The "War Letters" department of World War II magazine features letters written from the battlefields and the homefront, prepared for our readers by Andrew Carroll to honor and to provide insight into the generation who knew the war first hand.

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Andrew Carroll is the editor of several New York Times bestsellers, including Behind the Lines and War Letters, which was the basis of the critically acclaimed PBS documentary of the same name. He is the founder of the Legacy Project, a national, all-volunteer initiative that honors U.S. troops and veterans by preserving their letters and e-mails. To date, the Legacy Project has received more than eighty thousand never-before-seen correspondences from every war in American history. He has received, among other accolades, the DAR’s Medal of Honor and The Order of Saint Maurice, bestowed by the National Infantryman’s Association.

If you have a World War II letter you would like to share, please send a copy (not originals) to the Legacy Project, PO Box 53250, Washington, DC 20009, or e-mail WarLettersUS@aol.com.

From the July 2009 issue: A Sidelined General Shares His Philosophy on Leadership
After slapping a hospitalized American soldier in Sicily in August 1943 and then making controversial remarks at the opening of a serviceman’s club in Knutsford, England, in April 1944, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. came within inches of being relieved of his command. Instead, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower imposed a punishment almost as devastating: Patton would be relegated to an essentially minor role during the historic Normandy landings… Read Entire Article.

From the May 2009 issue: An American Pilot Encounters the Ghosts of Buchenwald
On April 21, 1945, 1st Lt. James Carroll Jordan, a 23-year-old pilot from St. Paul, Minnesota, with the Ninth Army’s 109th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, typed a three-page letter to his wife, Betty Anne, just hours after visiting Buchenwald. Troops normally refrained from describing the most horrific details of war, but Jordan—like many other soldiers who observed the concentration and extermination camps—chronicled in graphic and unflinching detail the true brutality of Hitler’s Final Solution… Read Entire Article.

From the March 2009 Issue: A Father’s Thoughts on the Importance of a Uniform
On the day he turned 18—May 3, 1943—a high school student named William Fee rushed to the local selective service office to register for the draft. Throughout William’s childhood, his father, Dwight, who had fought in the devastating Meuse-Argonne offensive in World War I, strove to instill in his son the values he held dear: duty, honor, and integrity . . . Read Entire Article.

From the January 2009 issue: A Sailor’s Horrific Tale of Life as a POW
Machinist’s Mate 3rd Class Alvin A. Andrews died in 1961 at the age of 42, his life cut short by hardships he suffered while being held by the Japanese as a POW for three years during World War II. Andrews spoke little to his family about his wartime experiences, but his daughter Denise, who was five years old when he died, remembers his refusing to allow rice in the house. After his death, his family discovered a trunk containing memorabilia from his days in the Pacific. Among the items was a long letter by a fellow sailor named Arthur D. Emard, who apparently had been captured along with Andrews in Corregidor. Soon after the war, Emard wrote in vivid detail about what he and his fellow prisoners endured . . . Read Entire Article.

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