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A Minnesota Couple’s World War II Letters
- Minnesota Historical Society Press
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A Minnesota Couple’s World WarII Letters John S. Sonnen What Tom Brokaw has dubbed“the greatest generation”was made up of individuals,each with his or her own piece of the historical record.John Sonnen’s military service was from March 1944 through March 1946 (the period which included D-Day in June 1944 through the end of the war in 1945).He was stationed in Georgia,Texas,and then overseas, mainly in Germany,as the war came to a close and in the months following the surrender.His letters provide a regular portrait of his war experience.His wife Georgiana’s letters from St.Paul provide a Minnesota context for the same period. This article,written by John Sonnen,describes the dilemma and confusion that he and his wife faced about what to do with all the letters they had written to each other during the war.Forty-one years had passed since the last letter had been mailed,received,and read.What to save,how to save,why save anything were just some of their questions. Were their letters that meaningful—to them over forty years later,or for that matter,to anyone else,like other family members or scholars? Late in the autumn of 1987,while engaged in the vexing annual chore of bringing some semblance of order to the congested contents of the cramped attic of our modest home,Georgiana and I decided it was show-down time regarding the final disposition of accumulated memorabilia.StuJ we had bumped into, stumbled over, and shunted about in that slant-ceilinged, tucked-away space for the forty-eight years of our marriage.Most of it was mine. There were two cartons of 78 rpm records from the 1920s and 1930s, a seventy-seven-copy collection of original Life magazines, an antique shotgun from my grandfather’s days on the Minnesota frontier, a German army rifle and Luger pistol that were surrendered to me on the Westphalian plain the first week of April 1945. Our children, long gone from under this same roof, would be given one more opportunity to claim these artifacts.If refused,oJ the items would go to the first interested collector, historical society, or library. However, also stashed away with this unwanted memorabilia were “those 150 letters—as in our annual question, “What shall we do about those letters we wrote to each other during World War II?” There were hundreds and hundreds of them.We wrote almost every day throughout the two miserable years we were apart: March 27, 1944, to March 27,1946.Contained in a heavy corrugated carton with a substantial cover,they had been serving as a platform for our boxes of records. Letters of mine were in their original mailing envelopes,which Georgiana had kept in three groupings : those I wrote from basic training (Camp Stewart, Georgia), from advanced training (Fort Bliss,Texas), and from overseas (Europe). Letters from her were more jumbled because I would squirrel them away in foot lockers, duJel bags, or knapsacks.The first lot I brought home in August 1944 when furloughed after basic training.The next arrived in an army-ordered shipment of personal eJects when I was alerted for overseas duty a few months later.The balance came home in March 1946.Now here theywere,more than fortyyears later,confronting us once again and awaiting a final reckoning.What to do? Keep them another year? Throw them out? “What do you think?” Georgiana asked. “I—well,I just don’t know.They’ll have to go some day.I suppose it might as well be now.” “Tell you what,” I was told.“Take them down to your den.That’s where they belong anyway—with those snapshots and maps you brought home from the war.Then,as a winter project you can peruse them.Maybe by springtime a decision will come easier.” I carried the carton down to my den. After the holidays,when winter really set in,I started that project.The first task was to assemble the letters in chronological order.While arranging the ones from overseas, a small magazine clipping fell from the folds of a letter dated April 2, 1945.That would have been, I told myself, nine days after my combat intelligence squad had stormed across the lower Rhine River in the U.S. Ninth Army’s final assault against Germany. Now why in blue blazes, I wondered,would I have been snipping out a magazine...