Letter Nº 2
To Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes
107th Infantry Regiment
New York Army National Guard
England, United Kingdom
Brooklyn, NY
Dear James
I have no idea if you received my letter, but I know you haven’t written back. It’s been two months... Well, you must have not received it. I asked the mailman and he said that postal services with the warfront are very difficult at the moment. Sometimes letters don’t go through and sometimes the regiments move so quickly that it’s hard to keep up with them.
Well…It’s been a few weeks now since you’ve been gone. Long weeks…
In any case, I am sorry that I haven’t written earlier but I admit that I was kind of expecting a reply from you. Bonnie’s brother Harold has already send a handful of letters home and he has just been there a couple of weeks. Maybe you two have met, maybe not. I was told that not all the Regiments are sent to the same settlement.
There’s this new thing and it makes me so proud. Norman Rockwell, the cover artist of the Saturday Evening Post, created this fabulous image of what he calls “Rosie the Riveter”. You might have seen it, I am sure that it’s going around quite a lot. It’s one of those campaigns they came up with to encourage women to become wartime workers. I mean, most Americans still hold this old fashioned notion of the place of a woman in society, They truly believe that a woman’s proper place is in the home, working as a housewife, caring for her husband and children and handling the household chores. Now, because of the war, all those patterns were disrupted and all of us, men and women alike were thrusted into new roles and activities related to the war. Today, all kinds of employment are seen as vital war jobs, even the everyday civilian jobs, not just the factory jobs. They say that the more women take up jobs, the sooner the war is won.
With the many men and women serving overseas in our nation’s armed forces, most of us who remain here have to dedicate ourselves to supporting the war effort. In whatever means available. Three weeks ago, my mother took a job in an aircraft manufacturing plant and my sister Sally now works in a munitions plant.
I am thinking about getting a job at Eisen-EMCO, the biggest military uniform production factory here in the New York area. I just wish there was more we could do for our boys out there… I wish I could do more for you, too. You must be lonely.
So I hope that you are proud of your girl here, doing what needs to be done to help from this part of the world. But I want you to know that it is hard for me, too. I know we didn’t have that much time together but I just feel that those moments were all that was needed.
Well, I won’t take up more of your time. Please know that I miss you, so much!
Forever love, Connie