1945-04-20 Letter

"The silence & quiet inactivity around this squadron is slowly driving everybody nuts. Pretty soon I'll be cutting out paper dolls in strings, I wish I could give you the full dope about this but I can't."

In the final months of World War II, 21-year-old Fred Brian began a letter with the above text. The recipients were his parents, to whom he wrote over 300 letters during his two-and-a-half years in the Army Air Corps. Brian was a frequent and faithful writer; the collection shows he averaged writing a letter almost every other day. In many of the letters, Brian regrets that he cannot share certain information due to the Army's censorship of troop correspondence. He spoke often about the hours he put in as a pilot, and a little about home: "Hope you're all feeling OK. I can imagine how it looks there at home with April there in force. Wish I were there instead of where I am."

Hitler turned 56 years old on the day Brian wrote this letter. Ten days later, he and his wife committed suicide. Brian survived the war and completed a BFA degree at Illinois Wesleyan University in 1950. After completing an MFA at the University of Iowa, he returned to IWU and retired in 1984 as an award-winning professor. He donated his letters to the University at that time.

The letters in the World War II Correspondence collection are not transcribed, but anyone who is interested in helping to transcribe them can e-mail the Illinois Wesleyan University Archives at archives@iwu.edu.

Written by Anne Shelley, Illinois State University

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