Love & War as Never Before

World War Ii Through the Eyes of a Young Boy and in the Letters of a Loving Family

Love & War As Never Before is a look at what life was like for a boy living in Pittsburgh from age five to nine during World War II: from that dreary, cold Sunday in December 1941 when the radio reported the bombing of Pearl Harbor, to that sunny day in August 1945 when the city, and the nation, celebrated in the streets long into the night.

With that story as a baseline, Love & War As Never Before also reveals the ordeals of the boys aunts, uncles, cousin, and father serving in the war as it progressed from North Africa through Sicily, Italy, France, Belgium and Germany.

They were aunts Margy and Nell with the American Red Cross; Uncle Martin, a battalion commander with the Hell on Wheels 2nd Armored Division; cousin Pat, a company commander with the 7th Armored; uncle Tom, a Navy lieutenant commander in the Philippines; and the boys elusive father, John, an intelligence officer with the 8th Army Air Corps. Their experiences are told through a trove of some four hundred pages of letters found yellowing in a crushed cardboard box in the corner of the fathers garage some fifty years after the conflict ended.