Last week that new Clint Eastwood movie, “Letters from Iwo Jima,” found it’s way to the top of our Netflix queue. I was especially interested in watching it because just last year I finally completed my project of transcribing and annotating the letters my parents had written to each other during World War 2.
The Eastwood movie was pretty good. I would have cut some scenes and added others to improve the story line. But, hey, I’m not a director and plus, who’s going to argue with “make my day” Eastwood.
What I found was that, the story, like my father’s, showed very clearly the realities of young men caught in a war. Most just want to get home. They don’t know the plan or direction of their commanders, but only know that they need to win because that’s what will get them back home to their families. They hang on to, and dream over, those pictures and letters from girlfriends, wives, and children, which they carry with them throughout their travels and battles. It is those people at home that motivate them to keep going. Most are just boys who are trying to be brave, but are often also terribly homesick.
Many of my father’s war letters mention his concern that things and people will be changed when he returns. He fantasizes about taking Betty to football games and getting together with all the old friends. But, things did change, and he changed. He came back a man who wanted to start a family and get on with a normal life after being checked out of “real” life for three years in the army air corp. High school was old news and the old friends had scattered.
Near the end of the war, Dad often wrote to Betty, my mother, of the dreams and plans he was formulating. He never defines them, but only assures her that she is part of them. I can’t help but think what a tragedy it would have been for him if he had come back only to find that the little high school girl he’d known, Betty, had decided that he wasn’t the right guy for her. What if she had decided she wasn’t too keen on the plans he’d dreamed up for the two of them? She’d been only 16 when they had last seen each other and when he returned she was a 19-year-old college girl. It’s clear he had built her up in his mind during those years; fueled by the pictures and stacks of letters she had sent him. This, even after he told her early on to keep her letters only “friendly.” You see he had left a girlfriend behind and it wasn’t Betty, her name was Libby. He didn’t want word getting back to Libby that Betty was writing anything more than friendly letters. Somewhere along the way, things fell out with Libby. Perhaps she just stopped writing. And then my father began to fill his lonely homesick mind with Betty who never did stop writing.
As the war dragged on, Dad’s letter became more and more emotional, almost plaintive. Betty’s letters throughout the war did stay mostly friendly with only occasional tidbits of emotion and expressions of love. They told her story of finishing high school, community service, dates with boys, going to college, and having fun with the sorority sisters. Her life was worlds apart from his existence, living in a tent in the South Pacific sun. But, its clear her letters were like a book which transported him back home, where life was normal. They sustained him, as images of home have and continue to sustained many young men, and now women, off fighting in some foreign land.
-Mary
