Don Kalbach

In 1953 I joined the US Army. I arrived in Germany 10 years after the invasion of Normandy as part of the occupation forces and wrote home regularly. Years later, I learned that my mother had kept all my letters. They make a diary of those three years. I added comments, photographs, and footnotes explaining many terms familiar to soldiers but perhaps not to the general population.

I am particularly proud of two events. The first is a letter from Richard Winters, protagonist of the HBO series Band of Brothers. In it he says, "I tell all young people I come across that no matter what your job, 'Do your best every day!' It seems to me you did that and I salute you."

The other is the decision by noted historian Stephen Ambrose to include my book in the Eisenhower Center archives at the University of New Orleans. He agrees that the letters make "a marvelous diary of events in the peacetime Army--really the Cold War Army."