Just Call Me Soldier Boy: World War II Letters from PFC. Andy Bergner, Patton's Third Army

On the fiftieth anniversary of VE Day I was given an amazing historical document. Inconspicuously bound in a blue denim notebook was a collection of 273 letters written by my father, Andy Bergner, then an 18 year old GI, to a neighbor lady named Mary Jane. The letters, which lay forgotten in an attic since 1946, provide first person witness to the experience of a boy becoming a man in the crucible of World War II. Andy was among the last wave of young Americans to be drafted to the war. He arrived in Europe in early 1945 in time to participate in breaking the Siegfried Line and pushing the Germans to final surrender. He spent only six months overseas and returned home alive and whole, so this is not the story of a hero in a traditional sense. Yet, in reading these funny, homey, often pious, sometimes painful letters, a hero emerges who speaks through these original documents on behalf of a hundred thousand other 18 year old heroes who left the Boy Scouts and ball fields of middleclass America for the killing fields of war. This edited collection of 120 of the letters plus original photographs and memorabilia offers a social history of 1940’s life that embodies themes of patriotism, family values, personal responsibility and faith that are once again at the forefront of the American political debate.