Good Monuments To Look At

My father, Sgt. Frank Weeks, served with the 87th Infantry Division in World War II. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and earned two Purple Hearts and the Bronze Star. His father, also Frank Weeks, had fought in the trenches of France as a doughboy during World War I. During his time in the service, my dad wrote home faithfully to his parents and sisters. These are excerpts from three letters.

December 24, 1944 (aboard ship)

Dear Folks,

We're finally on a ship and I haven't gotten seasick. But then the ocean hasn't been rough yet either. We only eat twice a day. There are PXs but you have to wait an awful long time before you can get in. Boy it sure is crowded here in the troop quarters but you get used to it after a while. There are movies etc. here on the ship but I haven't gone to any of them yet. There are rumors, but you don't know definitely where you are headed for. Couldn't tell you, though, even if we did. Most of the fellows nerves are sort of on edge and there are a lot of arguments but so far that's all they've been down here below decks. You can't tell day from night so you sure can catch up on your sleep.

Frank

January 5, 1945 (France)

My Dear Folks,

We're here in France, that much I can tell you. We came in through the same place you did, Dad, but I'm willing to bet you wouldn't recognize it. We came through England, but didn't see much of it. It's plenty damn cold here. To the civilians, everything seems to be pretty scarce, as you can get an average of 75 francs for a pack of cigarettes. About two and a half dollars in our money. We came here in old (word cut out by censors) and boy it sure is rough trying to sleep with about 40 others in them. France certainly has been bullet-riddled from one end to the other and I don't mean maybe. Mom, instead of sending me candy will you send me small cans of meat, fruit and stuff like that? The French money is all paper money and boy when we get paid we sure will have a lot of it.

It's harder here to find out what goes on concerning the war than it was in the states. We still can't write all that we would like to, and I've tried to make this as long as I could and I guess this is about all. Say hello to everybody and so long and don't worry about me.

Frank

May 16, 1945 (Germany)

Dear Folks,

Well here it is evening again and I haven't anything to do so I'll write a letter. What this place really is is a place for collecting displaced persons. They are then shipped in groups back to their homes. They are having a lot of Germans do the cleaning up around here now. Believe me, there is plenty of it to be done, as this place is really flat.

In this town there are still dead people under the rubble. So you can see what I meant when I said flat. Some American GIs who had been prisoners in Dresden said that in the first raid there 140,000 were killed. It is now called the city of the dead. I don't see how these cities can ever be rebuilt. They will make good monuments to look at before they start another war.

So with that I'll say so long.

Frank