Presenter(s): Will Curtis − History
Faculty Mentor(s): Alexander Dracobly, Julie Hessler
Poster 119
Research Area: History
For just short of three years, from June 1942 to August 1945, my great-grandparents, newlyweds Billy and Bonnie Amend, did not see each other or hear one another’s voice. Billy was a Major in the 190th Field Artillery, stationed in England until the Allied invasion of Western Europe on June 6, 1944. During the years he was gone, the Amends communicated exclusively through letters. They each wrote almost one a day for the duration of the war. My thesis examines just one year of this correspondence, 1944, during which Billy saw some of the most violent combat of the war, including the Battle of the Bulge. Meanwhile, Bonnie was left to struggle through daily life and care for my grandmother back home in Hugo, Oklahoma. Through examination and careful reading of just over one thousand pages of their original letters, my thesis evaluates how the Amends persisted through World War II and how the letters they exchanged helped them to do so. Primarily, the letters served to maintain the bond between Billy and Bonnie. While they spent ink discussing the war itself, the letters are largely dedicated to summaries of day-to-day life, and expressions of each other’s desire to finally be together again. However far apart they were and however much danger Bonnie imagined Billy to be in, the letters they wrote back and forth seemed to lessen their separation, and mitigate some of that danger. Though my thesis only examines the correspondence of Billy and Bonnie, their experience was one had by millions of Americans during the war. They provide a direct account of was on the minds of families separated by the deadliest war the world has ever known, and detail just how they were able to come out on the other side.