A cloudy day, letters from WWII, and appreciation

I seem to have a knack for coming up with lots of (big) projects to fill my days.  And there are many collections of old family items around here, especially photos--some with names identifying people and, unfortunately, many without.  So I've done some work to figure out who is in those pictures.  More work needs to be done there though!

Another collection I've found is three years' worth of letters that my father sent home from his time in World War II.  He was an infantryman (rifleman) in Company C of the 168th Infantry Regiment which was part of the 34th Infantry Division that was operational in North Africa and Italy.  He was drafted and was inducted into service on 3 September 1942--exactly 33 years before my enlistment day in 1975.  (Weird...) He was shot in the leg "somewhere in Italy" but wasn't hurt badly enough to go home but was awarded a Purple Heart.

Thurston (Charlie) Larson

He finally got out on 2 October 1945, so he spent three years over there in North Africa, Italy and Marseilles towards the end, and pretty much hated every moment of it.  And if I didn't need an explanation before, reading the letters once again reveals his violent (for him) and negative reaction to my announcement one spring day in 1975 that I was joining the Army.  "No daughter of mine, etc. etc."

I've read some of the letters now and in one he says if he is able to get home again, he will never complain about anything again.  And if he gets home again to Port Wing, he's going to stay there until he dies.  Well, with the exception of several years when he had to live elsewhere to support himself, my mom and me, he was eventually able to get back here to live for about 12 years until he died.  He was living his dream!

So here's the box of letters:

Yes, there are a lot of them and these are the ones I HAVEN'T processed yet as I'm trying to figure out a system to catalog them (I AM a librarian after all!).  My solution will no doubt involve creating a spreadsheet since I've often been called the Spreadsheet Queen.   I just want to find out from them what I can learn for myself and the rest of our family, and maybe they can be used as primary sources for someone's research.  I've already contacted the Library of Congress Veteran's History Project and they would be interested in getting them for their archives.  But they only want the original items so I have to get everything out of them for me before I send them away.

So the main thing I've learned so far is appreciation...for people who fought that horrible war, willingly or not, for my two cousins who were captured and put into prisoner-of-war camps in Germany, and for this beautiful place my dad was able to come back home to so we can live here now.