--Letter from my grandmother, Jessie Maybelle (Berger) Brown, Bloomington,
Kans., to my father, Sidney DeVere Brown, Winfield, Kans. Wednesday, February 3, 1943.
Dad was 16 when he started college and
didn’t turn 18 until the middle of his sophomore year (on January 29,
1943). Since he started college, he had
seen many classmates join the military or be drafted. His mother is apparently asking whether he
still needs to register for the draft, even though he had already enlisted in
the Navy on November 17, 1942. (On draft
registration, see my earlier post “Tues, Jul 21, 1942: to the army”).
The day before this letter was
written, on February 2, the German Sixth Army, trapped in Stalingrad (now
Volgograd) had surrendered to the Soviets.
In the Pacific, the Guadalcanal Campaign in the Solomon Islands was
winding down – part of the island-hopping campaign of Allied forces slowly
advancing toward Japan. Allied forces
would gain full control of the island from Japanese forces by February 9.
(Sources:
“Guadalcanal Campaign” and “Battle of Stalingrad” in wikipedia.org; McNeill, A Democracy at War, 270-74).
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