Letters of 1943-44 from Normandy: Provide a Structure for My Book

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how I want to structure my book. I've also been writing various "islands" about major topics that will likely be included in the book. The time came for me to organize the letters my uncle Arvid wrote and sent home while he was in service during World War II.

Arvid Setran (my uncle) posing with Harold Grovender (my father) 1944.

I found an album system at Archiver's Scrapbooking Store which would allow me to preserve the letters in a chronological order and with which I could also add pages at a later time without disassembling the entire album. I believe I'm going to find more letters written by my parents which may work well into the storyline as I dig through materials and photos with which other family members have given me to work.

So, a few months later I'm now getting the uninterrupted time to work with the physical materials I'll need to use in writing the book. It seems like it has taken me forever to build the impetus to tackle this big archival project.

One important thing is that I'm allergic to old books and papers! From working with fungal ridden soils in agriculture, working inside greenhouses and seed towers, and living in at least 1 hundred-year-old house for a while, I developed a predictable reaction: irritated nasal passages to the point of bleeding, irritated eyes, and a light-headed feeling that can lead to headaches. My worst fungal allergy is to snow mold (not surprising living in Minnesota) and my second worst must be the stuff that grows on old paper.

If I'm not careful about dust hygiene I can have serious reactions to my own desk. So, thumbing through a very large stack of 70 year-old documents, throwing allergens up into my face, reacting to the dust is a serious problem. But I'm happy to report I got through the entire stack in 2 days by using the (Dr. Oz recommended) neti-pot which enables cleansing the nasal passages with saline solution as often as needed.

I'll be writing about the contents of these letters in my book and probably also in this blog, but another really interesting and separate aspect of going through these letters is the

• size and color,
• type of paper used, 
• source of the paper, 
• the change in handwriting as time goes on, etc.

Most of Arvid's letters are written on small note pad paper, some lined and some not lined, and of a low quality one would usually find sold at a drugstore. He almost always writes only on one side. I figured out why he only used one side when I found 1 word which had been razor-cut out of a letter of his, and the word was the name of a place which he had been in England.

Then there are other, nicer papers with pre-printed headings from Fort McClellan and another army base. There is a letter size paper of lower quality about the size of  normal letter sized paper but on which he folded in quarters and wrote on each piece as if it were a postcard (but not separated from each other). There were 2 post cards early on.

My album of Arvid's letters compiled chronologically in archival quality sheet protectors.  Total pages: approximately 200; possibly 75 or more letters and cards. Arvid's letters cover time period of May 1943 - June 1944.

Towards the end of his stream of letters almost every one is V-mail: that is they are photographs of his letters reduced down in size for sending back from overseas (and possibly while he was on a transport ship). Yet, there is one normal sized V-mail letter on its original letter-stock.

Finally, there are letters from the U.S. Army offering condolences to my grandfather on the death of uncle Arvid... which were dated in August of 1944. Few of the envelopes are included with the letters, but there are some intact with their contents which give the contents an even more spine-tingly feeling because the reality of Arvid's life seems so normal.

Many letters are about what his new address is, sending money to his family, messages to say hi to people and for them to write to him. He comments many times especially asking for people to write to him, wonders why his mother and others don't write to him and so forth. I can tell that he is really missing people, possibly really homesick, and living for each day that brings him another letter from home.

It crossed my mind while I was working with assembling this album of letters that these kind of messages from the several wars we've been involved in over the past 15 years or so are no longer on paper. They are emails, Facebook entries, and unrecorded telephone calls. Will someone be able to puzzle out these historic documents out for history at some later point?

I feel fortunate that my relatives saved these letters. I never thought to save my older brother, Steve's, letters when he was in the Navy going in and out of hostile Vietnamese harbors. Because I never believed that there was the possibility that he'd be injured, I didn't save much. But what I'd saved would have been all that I'd have had to remember him. What a sobering thought.