Letters from George

Through the winter and spring of 1944, England was one vast marshalling yard for the coming invasion. The 49th Engineers staged here with the hundreds of thousands of American troops gathering in southern England, rehearsing landings, waterproofing vehicles, and preparing the engineer equipment — the bridging, the mine detectors, the demolition kit — they would need on the far shore.

George's V-mails from England run from about January to May 1944. He sounds like a soldier in a strange and crowded country: getting used to British money and the blackout, the rain, the waiting. None of them says what everyone knew was coming. The next letters would be written in France.