I am planning a move and have been sorting through what will be kept and to be given away or sold.

As I was going through my vast collection of books, I came across MY WAR by Tracy Sugarman. It is a beautiful collection of his letters sent home to his wife and with his drawings during WWII.

Tracy’s war began on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, Tracy Sugarman was a young man studying to be an illustrator. But everything changed for Tracy, as for all Americans on that December dawn. Two years later and now married to his sweetheart, June, Tracy was on a troopship bound for England, part of a massive Allied buildup for the liberation of Europe. On D-Day, he landed on Utah Beach, one young ensign in the greatest military invasion in history.

But Tracy Sugarman was not only a sailor. He was also an artist, who chronicled every aspect of his war in watercolors and sketches and in more than four hundred letters to his wife, who carefully saved everything her new husband sent her. Fifty years later, June astonished her husband by showing him his long-forgotten pictures and words: lush watercolors and pen-and-ink drawings set down with breathtaking immediacy in the midst of war, and letters in which the young man poured out his feelings-about the terror and tedium of battle, his own ideals and hopes…and, always, his love for his wife.

An excerpt from one of the letters and just before D-Day:
“There were descriptions of enemy armor and what air support was in place behind the beaches. There were warnings of magnetized mines and deadly hedgehogs that had been placed to snag our assault craft. And there were pictures of “Rommel’s spaghetti,” the lethal pointed poles that had been planted in fields and marshes to disable Allied gliders and destroy any assaults from the air. We were exhilarated that so much intelligence had been done to guarantee success. And we saw for the first time what our objective was. It was a sector called Uncle Red on a beach called Utah.”

Fast forward to 1945, his ship would make the long journey home. Four days after they landed, the unconditional surrender of Germany was signed. Now all thoughts were focused on how quickly they could get home to their wives and families. The war was not over. But Tracey’s war was, and he was going home to June.

Comes A Soldier’s Whisper, remembering our history and those who fought and documented it with photographs and… the letters.

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Text & Photo Source: MY WAR, by Tracy Sugarman, US Navy