Wwii Letters Of Three Brothers And Their Sister

FIRST, there is an error. Chapter I title should be FAMILY not BOOT CAMP IN SAN DIEGO. My mother, unknown to me, kept my several hundred letters home during WWII as well as those of my two brothers and sister and when I found them thought them worth publishing. We were what was known as a Blue Star Family of Four. The Gold Stars were for those killed in action. While I don´t have the figures I doubt there was a large number of families with four on active duty during WW II. We were a very patriotic family. First, my elder brother, Sam, joined in January, 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor. I followed in June of that year, my sister entered the Waves in 1943 and my younger brother the Army Air Force in 1944. We all wrote many letters, however, most here in are mine as I have access only to those my siblings wrote to me. The Navy is viewed primarily through my letters as I was transferred first to San Diego, California for Boot Camp. Subsequently orders sent me to Lakehurst, New Jersey for training in Aerology, i.e. weather forecasting. Upon graduation I was assigned to duty in Houma, Louisiana which was a LTA base whose airships scouted the gulf for German submarines. Later I was ordered to officers training, became an Ensign and served on the U.S.S. Tanner, a hydrographic survey ship. Brother Sam served in the pacific between New Calidonia and Australia. Sister Jane became a Link Trainer, i.e. she trained pilots and was stationed in Atlanta, Georgia. Brother John became a pilot, but the war being over he saw no active duty. However, he decided to make a career in the military and saw more than enough action in Viet Nam to satisfy even him. Following is the first letter I wrote home from Boot Camp in San Diego.

CHOICE 1999 Outstanding Academic Title While other collections of letters and memoirs from World War II have dealt with upper-class individuals, officers, or college-educated people, Home Front Soldier is the first to explore the life of an ordinary, working-class, first-generation American. This gripping story of a young soldier, Philip L. Aquila, and his Italian American family during the Second World War includes a detailed introduction, providing historical context to the more than 500 letters that this sergeant wrote to his family back home in Buffalo, New York. Like an epistolary novel, the letters offer an intimate personal history of how a large immigrant family with four sons in the military coped with the daily traumas of World War II. Each of the major and minor plots relates to larger questions in American social history of the 1930s and 1940s, offering fresh insights about family history, gender relations, ethnic and immigration history, and everyday life on the home front. The book also fills a gap in military history by providing detailed information about soldiers stationed in the United States during the war.

"German Soldiers World War II letters"--

Berthed on the Cleveland lakefront, the battle-hardened submarine USS Cod serves as a proud reminder of the wartime contributions from the Greater Cleveland community. Clevelanders did their duty and more, from round-the-clock work on the factory assembly lines to the four Medal of Honor recipients on the front lines. The Cleveland Bomber Plant churned out thousands of B-29 parts, while Auto-Ordnance Co. developed the design for the Thompson submachine guns used by GIs on nearly every battlefield. Indians pitcher Bob Feller left the game to go into the service, and Clarence Jamison flew with the famed Tuskegee Airmen. Through interviews and archival material, authors Brian Albrecht and James Banks honor a time when Clevelanders of all stripes answered the call to arms.