Love Letters from World War II

Book excerpt: What would you write to your young wife when you enlist in the Army to fight the Nazis during World War II? This book tells that story. Bob Dalton wrote a series of almost daily letters home during his service from 1944-1946. This is not a book of combat exploits, but a true life story of what it meant to have a wife and baby at home while serving your country in WWII--and the burden it placed on GIs and their families. The letters frankly discuss the challenges of life because they were only intended to be read by his wife. We found this trove of letters along with hundreds of original photos that illustrate the book after our mother passed away in 2018. We felt that we should share their story. Each letter begins and ends with his love for his family that he left behind to fight. He shares his experiences in boot camp in South Carolina, the trip to the front, crossing the Rhine with Patton's Third Army, and then battling to the Czech border by war's end. His mission changed to demilitarization and denazification until the Russians occupied Saxony as part of East Germany. Then he spent a year as part of the Allied occupation forces in Frankfurt dealing with postwar reconstruction and the U.S. Army bureaucracy. The war changed our father, and reading these letters changed our image of him and the other members of the Greatest Generation.