Soldier Boy: The WWII Letters of Donald G. Reimer

During this past week, I’ve avidly read the e-book entitled Soldier Boy: The WWII Letters of Donald G. Reimer. A fellow blogger—Cynthia Reimer—discovered the letters a few years ago in her grandparents’ attic. Along with her dad’s letters home she also discovered letters that had been sent to him. He’d kept them and at one point during the war had sent them back home for safekeeping.

Thus, these letters vividly show us what was happening—between January 1943 and late 1946—on the home front as well as in the boot camps in the United States and the jungles of the Pacific.

Cynthia sorted these handwritten letters, added transition; clear explanations for what was happening month by month in the European and Pacific Theaters of War; and entertaining information on the camps her father was in and on the radio shows, songs, and celebrities who were popular at the time.

For me, this book Soldier Boy was a revelation. When the war began, I was in kindergarten and in 3^rd grade when it ended. I knew what was happening from what adults said, from the movie newsreels, and from the newspaper headlines.

Also, every week, Mom gave me our ration books and I bought groceries at the corner store across our grade school. The owner had pinned a large world map pinned to the wall behind the cash register. As I waited for the bus, he’d point out what was happening in both theaters of war. He made the war and the world come alive for me.

Given that background, I’ve read many books about WWII. Most historians, I’ve discovered, research the battles, the strategy, the lay of the land, the troop numbers, troop movement, the death toll, and the names of the men making the decisions. I brought that background to Cynthia’s book.

Here’s why I say her book was a revelation to me. The letters didn’t describe generals or strategy. Nor did Donald Reimer try to explain why the war was happening or why he enlisted. Instead he shared with his family at home what was happening with him in each camp the army sent him to.

 

Thus, this past week, I met one man—an ordinary soldier who became part of the 485^th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion. With him, I spent day after day, marching, cleaning guns, eating in the mess hall—and sometimes there wasn’t enough food, learning to recognize all the different planes that might fly over the battlefield, writing home, getting lonely, going on a three-day passes and sitting in the audience at some radio shows, and moving from one camp to another.

Truthfully I never knew there were that many boot camps in the United States. Nor did I know how many months the men trained for war. Nor had I ever thought about the tedium of waiting for the next letter. The next march. The next battle.

These letters introduced me to one anti-aircraft soldier who felt he had a duty to his country. Mostly, it seemed to me while reading, he lived at peace within himself. He was sure of what he had done: enlist. He was sure that he was in the right place at the right time. I believe that his letters reveal him to be a man of peace.

Yet he ended up on the islands of Leyte and Okinawa. In his letters, he doesn’t complain or grouse or say, “Why me?” He simply lives in the present. Longing for it all to end and to eat a Christmas dinner with his family. But not until he’d done his work.

If you decide to read this book—and I do so hope you will—please also leave a comment/review on Amazon for other readers to find. Thank you.

Peace.

Anti-aircraft artillery from Wikipedia