1st Lt. Shannon Eugene “Gener” Estill comes alive in his letters. His persona emerges from the page in conversations with his wife, Mary Kathryn Taylor Estill.

By the time Edward Carter had turned 24, he had fought alongside the Chinese against the Japanese, served in the Merchant Marine, and, finding that uneventful, joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the fight against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War.

In 1944 and 1945, postal worker turned soldier Wendell Wiley Wolfenbarger wrote his wife Ruby and children frequent letters. Sometimes they were postcards, sometimes V-mails, and others were written "sitting on a box by a wood fire, outside of course, writing on my knee."

The horrors of World War I led to research that resulted in two antibiotics that saved thousands of lives in World War II, and many millions since.

In a first letter home after his release from a Japanese POW camp, a fighter pilot thanks his family for their prayers.