The World War II Love Letters of Leland Duvall

Leland Duvall was a now-and-again farm worker with a grade-school education when he received his World War II draft notice at his fathers farm near Moreland, Arkansas, in March of 1942. He departed for training in California, where he began to write to Letty Jones, a Pottsville girl hed had a crush on for several years. From the first correspondence through the end of the war, Leland sent Letty a torrent of letters, hundreds of careful and undeniably heartfelt missivesutterly tender but never sentimental, reliably charming and gently humorouswritten daily from desert sands, pup tents, hospital beds, armored cars, and bombed-out buildings. That Duvalls writing is a tour de force of wit, elegance, and erudition is all the more poignant because he was a man who was almost entirely self-taught. The letters, discovered by Duvalls daughter four years after his death in 2010, are here enriched by his longtime friend and colleague Ernie Dumas, who provides facts about where Duvall was and the perils he endured while penning his epistles, information that was often missing in dispatches that were necessarily censored and always guided by Duvalls effort not to bore or worry his dearest Letty. Duvalls lively intelligence and obvious joy in writing come through on every page, joining with vividness the patina of the time and the bright shine of a timeless love affair.