Nearly 400 letters written by an American serviceman during World War II have resurfaced and are now readable through a new tool that deciphers handwritten documents.
The letter writer was Air Corps gunner Glenn Whitacre, who served as a radio operator aboard a B-24 bomber. He was 19 when he was killed in a mid-air collision over Italy in July of 1944.
One letter reads:
“You know, when you stop and think of it all, war is actually a silly damn way of settling an argument,” he wrote. “In peace time, if one person kills another, the former is either sentenced to life imprisonment or death. But in war, the more you kill, the more they love you."
The letters were found by Whitacre’s nephew, Marty, hidden inside a rusted footlocker alongside old military memorabilia in his mother’s garage.
“My uncle was killed in WWII,” Marty Whitacre explained in a MyHeritage.com blog post. “I never knew him and very little was ever spoken of him. A few years ago, I located all (357) of his letters home. All of them were in envelopes that had not been opened in over 70 years. The condition of the letters varied greatly by the type of paper used and all were quite fragile.”
In the letters, Glenn Whitacre wrote with sensitivity about war, love, and the life he hoped to return to. Many were too fragile to handle and nearly impossible to read.
A new feature from MyHeritage, Scribe AI, enables users to scan handwritten letters, historical documents, and photos to generate readable transcriptions, along with contextual insights and summaries. The feature is currently available for free for a limited time to registered MyHeritage users. Continued use is included within MyHeritage’s Complete and Omni subscription plans.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.
