Edward Martin’s letter to his wife began “Dear Princess,” wondered how his “little pigeon” was doing, and told her there was “a burning in his heart” at the mere thought of her.
Oh, and it was too bad about their friend Walter: “He wasn’t in the Army very long was he? Where was he killed?”
There was love in the air on April 23, 1945, but there were also P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bombers growling overhead as Sgt. Martin wrote to his bride, Sophia. He was in France and she was in Michigan with their infant son, and he was repairing the machinery of war as he dreamed of the simplicity of home.
From the time he enlisted in June 1942 until the U.S. Army Air Corps turned him loose in November 1945, Edward addressed at least 250 letters, postcards or even telegrams to the two-story, two-family, cookie-cutter house in Hamtramck, Michigan.
We know that because Sophia saved them, in a plain wooden box, through his absence and return and their life together and then after he died in his sleep four decades ago at only 67.