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by Kaaren Nowicki (Editor)
We untied the white velvet ribbon and opened the hinged lid to discover a huge collection of old letters. I'd expected something more exciting, like a ballerina doll or new black patent leather party shoes. Instead, I saw hundreds of envelopes, each of them edged with red-and-blue chevrons and hand addressed in black ink. My disappointment dissolved when Mom let me know that the letters, grouped into bunches tied with blue satin ribbons, were written by my father during World War II.
Creating this book was a labor of love for Kaaren Andersen Nowicki. Her father's letters to her mother from December 1, 1942, to November 23, 1944, had fired her imagination since childhood. Kaaren, like her father, was quite a writer, in 2016 publishing Spiritual Triage, a book inspired by her work as a chaplain at Atlanta's Crawford Long Hospital. Two years later she turned her attention to her father's letters, choosing 127 of the 300 he wrote home from his U.S. Army postings in the U.S. and abroad, and transcribing the excerpts included here. Alas, on February 22, 2024, before she was able to finish her final edit, she lost her life to cancer.
With the assent of Kaaren's family, her writing group, Inkfingers - comprising Riki and Paul Bolster, Deborah Miller, Kate Ravin and Carla Schissel - finished the editing process. We have lightly edited Kaaren's text and Gib's letters for clarity and consistency, changing the grammar and punctuation as little as possible. In accordance with standard editorial practice, an ellipsis (. . .) appears where Kaaren has chosen to omit words or sentences from the letters. We have made educated guesses in the rare places where information was unavailable, or her intent was unclear.
