War is Hell

Dearest Elaine

I am still well & feeling fairly well. I am in combat. Sure wish I could be near a warm fire & you forever. War is hell, Elaine. I can’t see how people do such things as fight.

Back in 1999, my grandmother moved from her home into a nursing home. She had Alzheimer's, and it was getting to the point that she could no longer take care of herself. I was just 18 years old. As they were cleaning out her house, I picked out a few mementos. I got the coffee cup with the “E” on it that I watched her drink coffee out of every morning. I took the picture of the little old woman in a bathtub from her bathroom because I was with her when she bought it.

I also found a stack of old letters tied with a pink ribbon on top of the garbage in the living room. I had never seen them before, and they looked old and interesting. I didn’t know until I got home that they were the letters my grandfather sent her during World War II.

I eventually put them in chronological order and read each one. They started in the Summer of 1944 when he was sent to England. They progressed through France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, and then back to England, before finally arriving at a hospital in the United States. It was a letter sent at the end of December 1944 that stood out to me from all the other letters.

“War is hell”. It's a phrase I heard my whole life growing up. My father is a Vietnam veteran. His brother and uncles were also in World War II—just ordinary men from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. If they hadn’t been born when they were, they would never have been fighting. They did it for their own reasons. I believe men and women who are on the front lines of combat have experienced hell on earth. I have no reason to think of it any differently.

Years have passed since I found the letters. I kept them safe in a box along with my family history documents. I knew they would make a good story someday. But I had to wait because life took turns that required me to prioritize other adventures. I got married, graduated from nursing school, and had children. In between, I tried to find whatever time I could devote to my hobby of genealogy.

Now is the right time to share my grandfather’s perspective on the war through those letters. I also have my own perspective on history and what I learned from reading these letters. I knew my grandfather fought Nazis. I was raised to hate them. No American who respects the soldiers in World War II should ever defend fascist ideology. Fascism was our enemy 84 years ago, and it’s still our enemy. Americans must be reminded of how and why Americans fought against it then.

Genealogy is not just the study of family history. It’s about learning history through the documents of ordinary people. Most people have only a historical view, based on the experiences of wealthy, lucky, and outspoken individuals. Genealogy provides a glimpse into the history of people you may have known.

I never knew my Grandpa Arlo. He died in 1976, just a few months after my older sister was born. I barely knew his daughter, my mother Arlene, who died when I was four years old. The closest connection I had to both of them was my grandmother, and she didn’t talk much about the past. She hated history. She once told me she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to know what happened all those years ago. And yet, her children loved history.

I know why she hated history. It hurts her to remember. She had already felt so much pain in her life. She didn’t need to stir up the past and open old wounds. She always would “rise above it”.

What I enjoy about genealogy is that it’s so personal. It’s unique to only that one person or that one family. I’m not looking for anything other than who they were. To say their name and tell others about them is an honor to them because they did what they did for me. They lived for me. They never knew me or even knew if I would exist, but they would live every day of their life to advance the next generation. I owe my skills and talents to them and to our descendants.

That is why now is the time to share my grandpa’s war experience with the public. He fought and almost died in a field in central Germany for my freedom. I can’t let him down.

I am a public health nurse for a small rural county in Wisconsin. I face numerous challenges in my job. I’m writing this as we enter vaccination season. Some people stop short of talking about vaccines because they don’t want the parents or the school board to yell at them. I have also stopped short of discussing vaccines out of fear. Since I sat down and reread my grandfather’s letters, I’m no longer afraid. If he could freeze in the forest of Belgium, wake up at two in the morning to take a town with only 10 men with him, and escort German POWs. If he can lie in a ditch for 2 hours with a gunshot in his ankle, I can tell an old man that vaccines are safe. I can leave up my rainbow flag at work. I have the courage to call my congressman and express my concerns about how he performs his job.

War is hell. I owe it to my grandpa to do what I can to defend my country as he did for me.