"A
full moon, thousands of stars...but no Margie" offers weekly accounts of
love letters written by the author's parents during World War II. Readers will
get a glimpse into the daily lives of those deployed and those left behind. The
actual words of the letter writers tell the story, and the reader will
experience first-hand the joys, fears, frustrations, monotony, hope, and love
of a generation of young people cast into the extraordinary times of a world at
war.
The
narrative begins with the story of a close-knit neighborhood "gang"
of friends not far from their high school years enjoying summer vacations from
their jobs in Detroit, Michigan. The attack on Pearl Harbor changed their
futures immediately, and "getting in" to the service became a
necessity. The disparate reality of when and how military service was achieved
and its impact on the families of the soldiers who spread across the globe
changed the nature of their relationships. The "gang" of friends and
their families would never be the same. Military service opened new
opportunities for these soldiers from Detroit to visit parts of their country
and the world they probably never imagined they would see.
The
author's father, Joe, carries the bulk of the narrative, and he experienced a
number of firsts in his lifetime as a result of his service. Joe learned to
ride and care for horses in the cavalry. He visited states to which he had
never been, and he met, trained, and lived with soldiers from across the United
States. Joe traveled thousands of miles over the expanse of the Pacific Ocean
to reach New Guinea, Australia, and the Philippine Islands. He flew in an
aircraft for the first time. Joe often expressed loneliness and frustration
about missing his "one and only Margie," and he developed a growing
disdain for the Army, particularly its officers, that he reported in the form
of "gripes." He displayed a curious mixture of intolerance and
empathy for the native people he encountered in the countries of the Pacific.
Joe outwaited all of this through a religious reliance on the daily letters he
wrote to "his girl" back in Detroit.
Margie
proceeded on the same letter writing course, but her notes left out much of the
loneliness and frustration she was truly feeling. She viewed her letters as
"talks" to keep Joe up on all the latest news and gossip back home.
She tried always to be upbeat and informative in order to diminish the vast
distance between her and "her boy." Once in a while, Margie reported
the times that she felt worried and anxious and the times she cried herself to
sleep, but she mostly kept those feelings out of her letters. In a world today
with instantaneous communication possibilities, it is difficult to contemplate
that a letter sent by Margie, with the mundane news of a particular day, wouldn't
reach Joe for nearly two weeks.
Even
more difficult to fathom in this era of online ordering and delivery, is the
reality that packages mailed from Detroit often took many months to arrive in
the Philippines. Without letters, Joe and Margie, along with millions of other
service members and their family and friends back home could not have navigated
emotionally the years they were apart. Their personal story is a tiny particle
in the vital history of the United States during World War II, but hopefully,
it will remain as a solid touchstone for the generations of descendants who
will follow these two sweethearts from a closely-knit neighborhood in Detroit.