One day when Dannelle Gay was cleaning out her father-in-law’s house, she came upon a trove of letters he had sent to his parents when he was in Europe during World War II.
There were enough letters from Bob Gay to fill an entire book — and so Dannelle, who had a deep fondness for her father-in-law, brought that book into being.
“World War II Dispatches to Madison: Letters Home From an Army Air Corps Soldier” chronicles Bob’s time in Europe as a radio mechanic from January 1943 to September 1945.
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“He couldn’t write a lot of what was actually going on,” Dannelle told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
Bob was allowed to write about London when he went on furlough — but not other cities. Still, the Gay family found some clever ways to get around the censorship.
His family would ask if he was “Grandma Gay or Grandma Montgomery far away” as code to see if he was an hour from London or farther away, Dannelle said.
The letters illuminate how close members of the Gay family were with one another.
In March of 1944, Bob wrote to his mom, dad and sister, “I got an extra dinner ration and will send it home the first chance I get. Open it and try it. The food is pure and sealed in. Let me know how you liked it.”
Bob and his younger sister Kathy were extremely close. They had the same birthday, just three years apart. Their mother wanted Kathy to wait to get married until her brother got home so he could attend the wedding. But when it became clear that Bob would be away for a long time, they had the wedding without him.
Bob was sad to miss it but mostly overjoyed for his sister.
“I’m very happy to know … that Kath is so happy,” he wrote to his parents on Sept. 4, 1944.
He worried about not having gotten her a gift.
“I’d sure be a lot happier if I could have gotten her a wedding present. Do you think if I turned over $100 worth of war bonds, it would be O.K.?” he wrote in the same letter.
His parents wanted him to feel like he was included in some way, so they sent him photos of the event — and a piece of wedding cake.
The last letter he wrote to his parents was on Sept. 18, 1945, a few weeks after the official end of the war.
“It sure would be fun to be discharged from Truax! Where and when? We will have to wait and see,” he wrote.
Bob’s family didn’t hear anything else from him until he knocked on their front door, home for good.
Dannelle said she was blessed to know her father-in-law for nearly 40 years.
“(He was) humble. Still used ‘golly gee’ and ‘swell,’ but just loved his family, his country, his friends,” she recalled. “He just was an amazing person.”
There was something else Dannelle found in Bob’s basement, along with all those letters. It was a gift he had sent his parents from Belfast.
“We found a box of Irish linen hankies with a pack of shamrock seeds still in it,” Danelle said. “And I actually have some of those shamrock seeds. I planted them, and they’re growing right now in my kitchen.”
If you have letters your loved one wrote during World War II that you’d like to share on the radio, email “Wisconsin Today” Producer Colleen Leahy at colleen.leahy@wpr.org.
