( This is a letter my father, Bert Sorensen wrote to his parents.)

Dear Folks,

This seems like a good time to let you know where I am but I still can’t tell you what I am doing. I am in Munich Germany and from what I can see those boys did a damn good job tearing it up. There are very few buildings that haven’t been badly hit. We are living in a large apartment house, one of the buildings that weren’t hit. It is sure a modern house, about like large apartment houses back home. The people that lived here must have been pretty well to do families. At any rate it doesn’t seem as though they hurt for very much. These people sure can’t look you in the eye when you pass them. They put their heads down and walk on.

I guess you think it has been funny that I haven’t written everything about France or any of the places I have been. The reason is I couldn’t up until now. If there is anything you want to know you can ask me. That is except what I am doing. I still can’t write about that. When we landed on the continent we landed on Normandy and I can tell you it was sure as hell torn up. You probably read in the papers about the fighting in St. Low (Saint-Lo). That was about the worst place I’ve seen. The whole place was just lying on the ground. But the farther up through France things moved so fast that it wasn’t torn up to bad. When that breaks through come of we were at a place called Laon France (note from Marsha-I could not read the name of the city but looking at the map Laon is my best guess) and we sweat just a little. Boy that was a hell of a place. They picked out a big mud hole and said that’s your home men. Well you give a bunch of G I’s a little time and they will make a home out of any place. It was as cold as hell. Six of us lived in a steel building. We had our supplies in there and it would ______ a guard. Boy was it cold. We would wake up in the morning and the inside of that place would look like Mr. Thurnhills ice house. Even at that we didn’t fair so bad. We made it all right except when we had to leave the fire and go out to the _______. When one or two German planes would get through and come back and bomb and straffe. But they never did much damage, just froze hell out of us while we waited for them to go over.

Well that is enough for that I guess. I just told you about that because you have always been asking me to tell you something. Wes has been able to write a hell of a lot more than I could all along. If I wrote some of the things I did it would have been all cut up.

This is kind of hard subject to bring up but today is Harvey’s birthday. I am in the town he was making for when he went down and from the looks of it they did a dam good job. They didn’t leave these Krauts very many places to live in. I drove through the town yesterday and all along the streets is nothing but rubble. There is one thing I know for sure and that is we can all be damn proud of him.

I guess you have all been hearing about their point system and all that crap so maybe you know about where I stand. I sure hope I can get home but it won’t be too soon I don’t think. When I get home I can tell you a lot of things I couldn’t write about.

You have always been asking me about what I do. I can tell you what I did do, my job had changed now. I was Assistant Warehouse Superintendent in Air Corps Supply. We supplied B 26 airplanes/ medium bombers. I was getting about ready for a change anyway.

I sure did run off this time, didn’t I. I won’t be able to put anything in the next letter as I put it all in this one.

I guess everyone is raising hell about not getting any letters from me but you can tell them to just grin and bear it as I will write as soon as I can. Oh say, I read Fred Cuff’s letter in the paper and if that don’t beat anything I ever saw. I don’t know where he was but I don’t have any trouble finding something to drink stronger than cider. He must have been in Normandy but they didn’t have anything to eat let alone drink. He wrote a fair article though considering.

I will close for now with love to all and I hope to see you all before too long.

Love,

Bert

Bert S Sorensen