The wartime letters of George T. Butler, written home to his sisters between 1942 and 1945 — from training at Camp Carson, Colorado, across England and France, through Belgium, and into Germany.
59 letters and clippings, photographed and transcribed and placed in the best chronological order we can reconstruct. Each entry shows the original scan beside a readable transcript; uncertain words are marked, and missing pages are noted. It is a family archive, preserved as written.
“We hit the beach the third hour of the invasion… As soon as we landed we started removing mines and kept it up for about forty-eight hours. We didn't sleep at all the first week.”
George's war, start to finish — from Camp Carson to the Elbe →
Prefer to read on paper? Download a print-friendly transcript (PDF) — text only, easy on the printer.
Or read the letters to a particular sister: Ann (21) · Marian (37)
The collection also holds two letters from a family friend, "Bucky" (Paul Simpson) →
Recent updates
- — Added a start-to-finish overview of George's war — how his letters line up with his unit's and VII Corps' path across Europe. Read the overview →
- — Organized the letters by location and year, added a short teaser to each, corrected several dates and places, and added a page for the two letters from “Bucky” (Paul Simpson).
- — Letters from George first published online.