Military Letters, Tazewell County, IL Genealogy Trails

Tazewell County, IL Genealogy Trails

Letters

To The Folks Back Home

Lt. Howard Bland WILLIAMS writes his mother, Mrs. Emma Williams, 231 Caroline Street.
Lt. Williams is stationed somewhere in Ireland.
Jan. 20, 1944

Dear Mother:
Just a few lines to let you know I'm O.K. and feeling fine. Hope you are the very same.
You write that you pray I will be spared the danger of going into battle. Mother, I don't want you to do that. Instead, I wish you would ask the Lord to give me courage to lead my men into battle bravely and set the right example. I want you to pray that he will give me the knowledge to make wise decisions that will insure the safety of those men as much as possible.
I want to live as much as anyone, but I don't want to be a coward in the face of battle. I never mean to ask a man to perform a task I wouldn't do myself, and I wouldn't sacrifice all my men and not my own life. if the time should come, I will die like a soldier and a man. That's the type of prayer I want answered.
More than anything, I want a chance at some of the ones who were responsible for the deaths of dine young men like Howard (unreadable) and Carl SWITZER and countless others. Those bys gave their lives that others might have freedom. After Pearl Harbor I knew I would never rest easily until I got a crack at those that started all this, and I still want a chance.
Perhaps the day will come when our scores will be settled and on that day I won't have to hang my head when asked where I was during the war. I'm waiting to fight for all I hold dear. And that all boils down to seven letters that men the world to me- America! Those letters represent you and Grandma, all of my childhood days and the good times I've had. They mean several million mothers who have sons in the service, some never return - - to say nothing of the farms, factories and schools and a thousand other things too numerous to mention. That's America.
Your son, Bland.

We don't know what day this letter was run but it was found in an envelope with another article that was dated 1963. It was published in the Pekin Daily Times.
[Submitted by Carole Martin and transcribed by: Candi- 2008]