It was a good as time as any to start reading "War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars." A recent acquisition from Goodwill’s "50% Ripped" sale (one of the best book promos, with dozens of previously "unreachable" coffeetable books and specialty titles up for grabs), "War Letters" offers riveting accounts and insights on armed conflict as told by those who were experiencing it first-hand.

As editor Andrew Carroll points out, this is raw unfiltered history as most of the letters were written by foot soldiers, the ordinary combatants who walked the battlefields, witnessed untold violence and smelled the scent of death in the line of duty.

The collection encompasses a wide range of correspondence, starting from the Civil War, on to World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Cold War, and more recently, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, Somalia and Bosnia. One can almost be sure that there will be future editions to include the conflict in Iraq, ironically a reminder that the lessons to be gleaned from all those letters have yet to be fully heeded.

The underlying theme of "War Letters" is the human cost of war, the anguish it causes as families are separated at long intervals and in many cases, only to find that there would be no happy homecoming. It makes you think that if this were required reading for the powers that be, they might just be more circumspect about sending their troops to battle. It’s the kind of book that encourages tolerance, understanding and a wider perspective (no matter how "Miss Universe" that sounds), so that lives may be spared and innocence may remain intact.

"War Letters" is the unexpected offshoot of the Legacy Project, a nonprofit initiative that editor Carroll founded in 1998 to preserve war correspondence. The campaign, interestingly enough, was spurred by a fire that hit the Carroll house a decade before. The loss that he felt deeply for was the correspondence that he treasured, including love letters and letters from overseas, among them an account of the Tianamen uprising from a friend. The treasured memories had all been reduced to ash.

Carroll later got to thinking what kind of letters soldiers wrote to their loved ones and if there was a way that these were being preserved. The story goes that when he talked to some veterans, he was shocked to learn that many just threw away their letters, not finding them significant as they were "just" ordinary soldiers. That moved Carroll to write to the Dear Abby column introducing the Legacy Project. In a matter of months, he received thousands of letters (copies and originals) retrieved from attics, bought from garage sales or tucked away in some half forgotten place. Carroll has since amassed 75,000 pieces of mail which, as he characterizes in the book’s introduction, as individually being like works of art, "some more polished, some rougher around the edges, but each one exquisite in its own right".

Collectively, he says, the letters offer a larger narrative of America at war. "War Letters" features only 200 letters from the astounding number that Carroll has gathered, but they represent a whole range of experiences from varied perspectives—yes, the common soldiers’, but also those of the family’s left at home, the officers’ and in some instances, even the viewpoint of the enemy.

Caroll notes that efforts were made to transcribe the letters as they were written, down to the mistakes. This not only conveys the distinct personalities and writing styles of the correspondents, but also reflects the conditions under which the letters were made. For example, some words were rendered indecipherable because rain or melted snow had caused them to blur; while punctuation and spelling errors may have been aplenty because of the haste in which the letters were written.

The section on World War II alone offers a wealth of absorbing letters. Cpl. Robert S. Easterbrook writes to his parents from the hospital bedside of Japanese ex-Premier Hideki Tojo who had attempted to commit suicide shortly after their defeat. Easterbrook writes in detail the blood transfusions given to Tojo during his watch and tells his parents that "In my next letter I’ll send a piece of his shirt. It has blood on it—but don’t wash it. Just put it away in my room."

S.Sgt Horace Evers, finding himself in Adolf Hitler’s apartment during the Allied invasion of Munich, writes a letter on Hitler’s personal stationery describing the horrors of Dachau to his parents. Reproduced in the book, the stationery bears the Nazi swastika and the imprint "Adolf Hitler" crossed out by Evers and under which he wrote his own name. Evers remarks how the dictator’s luxurious quarters were in marked contrast to the "living hell" of the Dachau concentration camp. In one of the book’s most stark passages, Evers relates seeing trainloads of bodies piled one on top of the other, barracks for 200 that held 1,500 people, a gas chamber and furnace room in one barracks, rooms full of bodies waiting to be cremated… moving him to wonder, "How can people do things like that? I never believed they could until now."

There are letters laced with humor, some overflowing with exuberance such as that of Capt. George Rarey who couldn’t contain his joy upon learning his wife had given birth to their son. But ultimately, Carroll’s book is just heartbreaking, more so when you find out that a lot of what you are reading are "last letters", written a few weeks or even just a few days before the writers would be killed in action.

It’s a book you will most likely prefer going through one section at a time, with breaks in between, instead of finishing it in one go. There’s just too much sadness to take in, and one is often left in tears by the sheer tragedy of it all. If you are reading it in the quiet of night, it is so easy to put yourself in the writer’s place, scribbling inside a fox hole amidst bursts of gunfire, longing for the comforts of home, to be reunited with loved ones and pondering the utter uselessness of war.

In one of the most telling missives in the book, Sgt. Richard Leonard explains to his friend that despite having to fight the Japanese, his personal interactions with the common folk of that country made it impossible for him to revile them as a whole. He asks, "Can I hate the old man who took us to his home for dinner and made us accept his family heirlooms for souvenirs? Can I hate the kids that run up and throw their arms around me in the street? Or a Jap truck driver who went miles out of his way to drive me home one night? My answer is that I can’t."

Leonard adds that it would have been easy for him to hate blindly, particularly after the Japanese killed his brother, but in the end, he makes this realization: "…Hate leads only to more hate and it’s only if we can get together work and live together—and develop confidence in each other that there is any hope of a better tomorrow."

Too bad that it has had to take the tragedy and pain of war to unearth many such simple truths.

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Andrew Carroll came to the Philippines early this year to scour for war correspondence that will be featured in a follow-up to his book. His extensive research consists of a 35-country itinerary which began in August 2003. His journey has taken him to Poland, Germany, Sarajevo, London, Russia, Afghanistan and Iraq. He was expected to visit other Asian countries like Vietnam, China, Korea and Japan and also Kuwait, Egypt, Malta, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Scotland.

For more information about the Legacy Project, visit the websites www.warletters.com or www.warlettersinternational.com or e-mail Andrew Carroll at warletters2004@yahoo.com or warletterint@aol.com.

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