Story Of The Missing Letters
By Br. Placid Gross
In recent weeks some interesting things happened, which are worthy of recording. So, I will try to sort it all out and write it down for the sake of history.
In our family we all learned to write letters at a young age. Our older brother John was in the Army during World War II and was stationed in the Philippine Islands. I was eight years old when he left. I remember that I wrote letters that were put into the same envelope with letters from the other siblings living at home. John wrote many letters home, but unfortunately, we did not save them.
In the early 1950s there was the Korean War. My brothers Andrew and Benedict, who are five and six years older than I, served in Korea at the same time. They wrote many letters and the other seven siblings at home returned many letters. Our parents encouraged us to write, and they provided the stamps. (I might insert here that Andrew said very positively that a soldier has a much better chance of surviving the war if he has a supporting family and friends back home. That gives the soldier a reason to live for.) Later, two more brothers, Valentine and Pius, also served in the Army.
As a rule, our family did not save the letters that came from the boys in the service. Now we realize that there would be valuable history which could be gleaned out of the letters. However, fortunately, a small percentage of the letters did not end up in the fire box of the furnace. Now in 2025 Valentine was going through some boxes and found letters that Benedict had sent from Korea in 1952 and 1953. He asked Benedict, who is now 95 years old, if he would like to see the letters before he throws them away. Benedict said “yes, that would be interesting to see what I wrote from Korea.” Valentine put about 20 letters into a large brown envelope and mailed them to Benedict in Atlanta, GA. Enroute somewhere in some post office, the large envelope got tangled up in a sorting machine and accidentally torn open. Benedict got the ruined envelope with . . .