Collectible Wartime Letters

Wartime letters are more than just sentimental family mementoes tucked away in shoeboxes. They're intimate first-person accounts of life during historic wars. In these candid documents, the servicemen and servicewomen—who often had oceans separating them from their romantic partners and closest family members—express profound feelings of absence, yearning, fear, and excitement. What makes wartime letters so compelling is the way universal human emotions of hope and courage, grief and death are intensified by the experience of fighting in a war. Even the tactile nature of letters contributes to their poignancy. You can smell the decaying paper, see the tear stains and rips, examine the stamps, postmarks, and handwriting. It's easy to imagine the recipient opening the letter over and over again, holding it in his or her hands. While a great collection of wartime letters could be compiled into a gripping, can't-put-down novel, these notes also serve as priceless historical documents. Historian Andrew Carroll at the Center for American War Letters at Chapman University has been collecting war correspondence dating as far back as the Revolutionary War. He has an uncovered a letter describing the Japan bombing of Pearl Harbor as it was happening, as well as a World War II letter describing a concentration camp that had just been liberated. Such letters offer perspectives you're unlikely to find in history textbooks.