Are letters from the Revolution and Civil War much different from e-mails written today?
The main difference is the formality of the language. Other than that, I find the emotions very much the same. I begin the book with a letter by a soldier fighting in the War of Independence, and the sentiments expressed to his young son are almost identical to those I’ve seen in e-mails coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether you’re going off to war with a musket or an M-16, the individual experience of leaving home and putting yourself in harm’s way is rather universal. And as troops and their families cope with the anxiety of these deployments, one of the subjects they write most frequently about is the enduring power of faith. Each person reflects on it and values it differently, but the importance of believing in something greater than one’s self is a theme that resonates from war to war and across the generations. 6. You’ve said that you consider U.S. troops “great, unrecognized theologians.” What do you mean by that? Many troops have confronted life and death circumstances,
