Somewhere in Belgium: Letters my father wrote home during World War II

"On the 28th of November we moved out to LeHavre, France. There we spent two miserable weeks in weather that was cold and raining most of the time. The first night we had no shelter at all. Then pup tents and later moving on inland to barns and deserted houses. About the 14th of December we arrived at Rouen, France, and set up a big tent camp of our own where we were supposed to work. But then suddenly came the Belgium Bulge, and we broke camp on a few hours' notice and moved by boxcar and truck to the cold and snows of Belgium, going into the line in the vicinity of Liege.

"Antwerp was, at that time, a British-controlled port, but a drive by the Germans south from their positions in Holland about 25 miles away was threatening, timed with the drive in eastern Belgium. When we moved in, there were few soldiers around, for the British were up on their line. There were snipers about, so for about a month we were constantly armed. The stores were open, and it seemed a bit odd to be in town on business and carrying a carbine or a rifle with a bullet in the chamber.

"By mid-January, the German boast that she would either make Antwerp a city without a port or a port without a city was rapidly being fulfilled. There were several types of buzz bombs but the most common was a jet-propelled job like a torpedo with wings and its own motor. They roared through the sky until suddenly the fuel gave out and then plunged earthward. Sometimes coming down suddenly, sometimes gliding and veering off to one side or the other. Naturally, these were quite inaccurate and ineffective from a military viewpoint but were quite deadly in the destruction of property and life wherever they hit.

"Quite a number landed within a few blocks of me, but only three were close enough that I felt the concussion, was knocked down by the force of one, and showered with glass by the other two. I escaped without a scratch. The worst one came one afternoon when one skimmed over the building where I worked. I heard it shut off and dove for a corner. An instant later came the explosion. Wood and debris filled the air and doors and windows were ripped away, casings and all, by the concussion and then by air rushing into the vacuum. It hit a short distance from my side of the building, plowing into the nearby motor pool building and striking a gasoline truck. There was an unusual number of boys in there at the time, attending a mechanics class.

"I got a good break early in March and went to Paris on a pass. After my returning, the buzz bombing gradually tapered off."

These are letters written home during World War II by an ordinary soldier, a man who sailed to Europe in 1944 as a private first class in the army and returned home in 1946 as a master sergeant, the highest rank for an enlisted man. For most of his time overseas, stationed at an RAF base where planes took off carrying paratroopers into Holland and bringing home the wounded from France, and in the heavily bombed port city of Antwerp, Belgium, he could not divulge details, but he wrote daily to his wife, keeping her spirits up and asking questions about her activities and offering husbandly advice. When the war in Europe ended in May, 1945, he was able to tell her what he had really been doing.

These are the letters his wife saved in boxes for more than three quarters of a century.