Tragedy Leads to Homefront Letters: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Wartime”

 

John Aird’s Correspondence with the Parents of a Young Man Killed in Action

John Aird: 1919-2005 (Father)

 

Following my mother-in-law’s death, my husband and I brought home a box of family letters from the 1930s and 1940s from her house. Most were letters between John and Laurel, my in-laws, along with copies of letters Laurel sent to her parents and other relatives. One letter was different. It was addressed to John Aird at his parents’ Detroit home. The postmark read Goshen, Indiana, and it was sent in October of 1945. The return address listed a name that was unfamiliar—Mr. and Mrs. F. E. Priser. Curious, I read the letter, and realized it was an amazing window into wartime and the bonds that formed between young men facing danger far from home.

I did a quick Newspapers.com search on the Priser family, and discovered that Mr. and Mrs. Fred Priser’s only son, Robert Priser, had been killed in 1944 in Italy. He had been in John Aird’s army unit. The newspaper in Wakarusa, Indiana, wrote a brief article on his death. It read as follows:

“Mr. and Mrs. Fred E Priser of Goshen were notified October 31^st by the war department that their only son, Pvt. Robert Priser, 21, serving in the field artillery with Lt. Gen. Mark Clark’s Fifth army in Italy, was killed in action on October 20.

The message was delivered only a few hours after the parents had received a letter from their son, written on October 17, in which he described conditions as ‘terrible’ on the battle front in Bologna. Pvt. Priser inducted into the army May 26, 1943, while a junior at Indiana University, went overseas in January of this year, landing in North Africa on January 19. He saw his first combat duty in the march on Rome in April.”

Robert Priser, High School Graduation Photo

I went back to John Aird’s memoir about the war, and found a passage on Private Priser. John wrote as follows:

“Back at B Battery, things were not going at all well. I alluded to this fact only vaguely in a letter home, but withheld the details. The battery was suffering a series of casualties, more than all of the rest of the battalion put together. One of the casualties was the young man who had sent his fiancée a lock of his hair at Hampton Roads. His loss I felt deeply because he was an only child and such a fine young man that his death seemed especially tragic. In profound depression, I wrote an eight-page letter, which on second thought I decided was not suitable to send home and trashed it. In a later letter home, I recalled again the incident of the lock of hair. For weeks I could not stop thinking about the young man, his fiancée, and his parents. I could not accept his loss. Others in the battery evidently felt the same way. A number of officers and enlisted men, including myself, began to write to his parents, who answered every letter.”

I suspect that part of John’s profound reaction to Robert Priser’s death had to do with the similarities between Priser and John. They were both only children, and both had been young college students with a life of promise ahead of them when the United States entered the war. Both had left college before graduating, and ended up fighting together. The only differences were that John was a scant three years older than Robert Priser, and John had survived. I’m sure John could see his own parents in the Prisers; he could imagine how his own death would be devastating to them.

John with his parents, Harry and May, before he was shipped out.

John’s correspondence with the Prisers continued throughout the remainder of the war, and even after John was sent home. The Prisers’ letter mentions two other men, Jim May and Kenny Rump, who had recently written and expected to be sent home shortly. Obviously, these were two other men from Robert Priser’s unit who, like John, had continued to write to Robert’s parents.

The Priser letter also revealed that John Aird had not merely written to the Prisers, but had visited them at their home while he was on leave before he was discharged. The Prisers wrote:

“I cannot tell you how extremely sorry I was the afternoon you stopped at our home because of my having to leave to attend the funeral of our shop foreman. I am sure you understood but I really wanted to visit with you much longer. While we sincerely appreciated the letters you so graciously sent us when you were in Italy, yet personal contact and conversation gives you something more and fills the gap which distance, unfortunately cannot fill. However, we are clinging to the hope (and promise, if I remember correctly,) that at a time when it is possible and convenient, you will come to see us again soon.”

What a remarkable connection these people formed in the midst of grief! They were able to reach across an ocean to share memories of a bright, promising young man and to build a sort of friendship. And John was not the only man who did this—others in his unit became penpals with this lovely couple as well.

I found this letter to be profoundly moving and hopeful. It demonstrates that even in the worst the world can give us, there is hope for kindness, concern and comfort. We think of wartime as bringing out the worst in mankind, but it also brought out the best.

Sources:

Death of Robert Priser. Wakausa Tribune. Wakarusa, Indiana. Nov. 9, 1944 edition.

“Goshen Youth Killed In Italy”. South Bend Tribune. South Bend, Indiana. Nov. 2, 1944 edition. Accessed on Newspapers.com.