In every American war from the Revolutionary War to the Persian Gulf War, American military men and women have captured the horror, pathos and intensity of warfare by writing letters home. Tens of thousands of these letters have been handed down from generation to generation. Using the most compelling and enlightening of these missives, War Letters tells the story of American wars from the viewpoint of the men and women in the front lines.
Many people have described their wartime experiences in letters home. But very few have chronicled war for the people doing the fighting. Bill Mauldin, World War II's most famous cartoonist, is one of them. In 1943, when he was 21, Mauldin's division shipped overseas to North Africa. Mauldin had been drawing cartoons since he was a boy, and he was quickly assigned to cover the war for the 45th Division News, and then for Stars and Stripes. His cartoons, featuring a scruffy pair of foot soldiers named Willie and Joe, scored an instant hit with the soldiers who saw them. Within two years, Mauldin won fame -- and a Pulitzer Prize -- for capturing foot soldiers' everyday experiences.
As Mauldin described his famous GIs, "they matured overseas during the stresses of shot, shell, and K-rations, and grew whiskers because shaving water was scarce in mountain foxholes." Enjoy this sampling of Mauldin's work, courtesy of his publisher, Presidio Press.
A minute-by-minute account, on both sides of the Pacific, leading up to the surprise attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.
A revealing portrait of one of America's most paradoxical leaders.
Winner, 2010 Peabody Award --- The 1968 My Lai massacre, its subsequent cover-up, and the soldiers who broke ranks to bring the atrocity to light.
In 1960, Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union.
In the summer of 1940, 10,000 children were sent from wartime Britain to the United States.
During World War II, more than a thousand women signed up to fly with the U.S. military as WASPS.
With over a million already dead, heroic American soldiers and nurses served in the closing battles of World War I.
Joseph Goebbels, the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany, was the mastermind behind Adolf Hitler's success.
