“Battles are sometimes
won by generals; wars
are nearly always
won by sergeants
and privates.”

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Retired lawyer's wartime love letters inspire him to open up, write book
By EVE SAMPLES

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Ken Burns prompted America to relive World War II this fall, when his 15-hour documentary aired on PBS. But Robert Parenti didn't need Burns to jog his memory. He's been steeped in his personal war history for the past several years.

A veteran of the 8th Armored Division, Parenti was cleaning out his garage about four years ago when he unearthed 100 or so letters he sent his then-girlfriend in 1944 and 1945, when he was in combat camp and later Europe.

The girlfriend, Laurie, ultimately became his wife. After he found the boxed-up letters, Laurie served as his confidante as he wrote a book based on the letters of their wartime courtship.

"I don't think he knew I had saved them. I really don't," Laurie said. "And for years, he did not talk about his experience at all."

In the book, which Parenti recently completed and plans to self-publish this fall, the young soldier is painted as a bull-headed private unafraid of challenging his superiors.

That sometimes got him into trouble. Not long after his arrival at training camp in Louisiana in March 1944, he found himself digging latrines.

Still, the poetry of his role in the Army managed to strike him. That comes through in his letters to Laurie - letters that it's sometimes hard to believe were written by a man younger than 20.

In one dated April 20, 1944, he writes about one of the Army traditions he actually likes, "standing retreat."

"It gives a man a proud and powerful feeling when he can salute the glorious Stars and Stripes fluttering against the setting sun and the hush of the hills upset only by the notes of the bugle. I have the strangest feeling at that time. My heart thumps, I shiver and large goose pimples come all over me."

Parenti's path to war began when he was 18 and signed up for the Army Specialized Training Program, which promised to send young men to college, then groom them to become officers. That never happened for Parenti, now 82.

The Army canceled the program without explanation 10 months after he started it. He and the other men were sent to combat training, then overseas. By October 1944, Parenti had arrived in England. By November, he had crossed the English Channel to Cherbourg, France.

The letters, many of which are reprinted in his book, A Story of Love and War, are an intimate glimpse into a realm that most World War II soldiers didn't talk about after they returned home. Parenti himself rarely talked about it.

Though he never saw the gruesome action that haunted some World War II veterans, the rough living and close calls were enough to leave a permanent mark. It was pure luck that he missed some of the bloodiest episodes of the Battle of the Bulge.

When he rediscovered the letters, those memories were revived.

"Some of it was very emotional for me when I realized what I had completely forgotten," said Parenti, who became a lawyer after the war.

This past summer, he retired from his partnership at Willie Gary's law firm in Stuart, where he practiced for two decades. Parenti also lives in Stuart.

He's been at Gary's side during the firm's biggest cases, and he still shows up at the office in downtown Stuart, now as a trial consultant.

Looking back, he cites luck as what kept him alive, propelled his career and was an important element of his long-lasting marriage.

He and Laurie have been married more than 60 years, and they have three children and three grandchildren.

Now, in his book, they are lucky enough to have a history of their courtship.

In a letter from Belgium in December 1944, Parenti writes:

I hope you are feeling well, honey, and believe me, I feel fine and all right. Maybe I've changed, or will have changed a bit by the time I get home (more hair on my chest or something like that), but I'll always be fundamentally the same and madly in love with you, as I always will be.

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Second Front
Attorney turns war letters into book Vet's story to fund war memorials

June 27, 2007 - It seems most World War II books were written by either retired generals or historians who weren't there.

What's missing is the perspective of the common soldier, the simple dogface who fought the battles, slept in foxholes, missed his sweetheart and family, and lived everyday surrounded by death and destruction.

"The combat soldier wasn't allowed to keep a diary," explained Robert V. Parenti, a former Private First Class (PFC) who served in the U.S. Army from 1943-46 and fought in World War II's European Theater. "He wasn't able to maintain a history unless somebody saved his letters."

When they returned stateside, most GIs didn't want to discuss the war, much less commit their memories to paper. The only records of their war experiences were their letters, many of which were either lost or thrown away over the years.

Fortunately, Parenti's wife of nearly 61 years, Laurie, saved all 100 or so of his letters to her.

Rediscovered about four years ago, these letters became the basis for Parenti's new book "A Story of Love and War: World War II Recollections from Letters Written to a Soldier's Sweetheart" due out in July.

From the humid, bug-and-mud-filled swamps of Louisiana, where Parenti trained with the 8th Armored Division, to the PFC's experiences in England, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, the book gives readers a riveting first-person account of WWII.

"They chronicle what I was doing and what was happening to me," said Parenti, who for 30 years served as the attorney for Oxford and Addison townships plus the villages of Oxford and Lake Orion.

In September 1982, Parenti moved to Stuart, Florida, where he's practiced law for the last 25 years. He's currently retired, but still goes into the office, tries some cases and serves as a trial consultant.

Published by Trafford Publishing – a self-publishing and print-on-demand company based in Canada – Parenti's book is a well-structured mixture of his letters, historical research, personal observations and even some humor.

Early on there's a funny letter about a woman who began breast-feeding her baby in front of Parenti aboard a train, an extremely rare occurrence in the 1940s.

"Jumping Jehosophat. I nearly died," he wrote.

Parenti decided to write the book after he "realized that the uncommon stories of common soldiers of all wars, who fought and died for our country, are rarely told and are usually buried with them."

"It is to honor those forgotten heroes that this effort was completed and it is to them that this story is dedicated," he wrote.

Buried memories

Stumbling upon the letters opened up a floodgate of memories for Parenti and his wife, who met while he attended the University of Detroit for 10 months as part of the short-lived Army Specialized Training Program and she was volunteering with the United Services Organization (USO).

The letters generated "a lot of laughs and a lot of tears," according to Laurie, who aided her husband in writing the book by typing up his recorded dictation and helping with editing.

"It wasn't as emotional for me as it was for him because it brought back so many memories of his experiences," she said.

"We started to read these letters together and it was so emotional because there were things in the letters that I had completely washed out," Parenti explained.

One such buried memory was his visit to the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, liberated by the British. "Yes, I have seen a concentration camp," Parenti wrote to Laurie on May 26, 1945. "One of the worst in all Germany – Belsen. Have you heard of it? I am sure a mere newsreel couldn't tell you the half of it."

Military censorship prevented Parenti from writing a more detailed account of what he saw at the camp where approximately 50,000 people died including Anne Frank.

"Most of the people had been removed, but evidence of the horror was visible, and occasionally we would find a former inmate, dressed in a striped garment, who only begged for food and help," Parenti later wrote.

Lucky guy.

A common theme throughout Parenti's book was his luck. "My whole army life was a series of lucky breaks," he said.

While training with the 8th Armored Division in Louisiana, Parenti was preparing to be a frontline soldier with the 88th Armored Cavalry Recon Squadron.

He was originally going to drive an armored jeep bearing a .30 Caliber machine gun, but after "rolling it over three or four times during maneuvers," Parenti's superiors decided to reassign him to a medical unit.

"I later learned that the reassignment probably saved my life because many who had trained with me in the 8th Armored Division early on in Louisiana were assigned to frontline combat positions, which took heavy casualties," Parenti wrote.

Parenti's luck held out during the war.

When the Battle of the Bulge began on December 16, 1945 in Belgium, Parenti had already left the country and was north of the fighting in Holland as evidenced by his letters and a tiny pair of wooden shoes he sent to Laurie dated December 14, 1945. The shoes are pictured in the book.

Although the Nazis' last offensive of the war ended in complete failure, the Battle of the Bulge was one of the bloodiest battles with approximately 76,000 American soldiers either killed, wounded or captured.

Sometimes Parenti's luck came in the form of decisions made by the big shots running the war. The Allies' agreement at Yalta to have the Americans stop at the Elbe River and let the Russians take Berlin, along with President Harry Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan most likely saved Parenti's life.

Both decisions prevented the Americans from suffering tremendous casualties.

Had those decisions not been made, Parenti would have headed into Berlin with the 9th Army for one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Following the Victory in Europe, Parenti's next orders were to begin training for deployment to the Pacific Theater for the invasion of Japan, which never happened because the atomic bombs dropped in August 1945 forced the enemy's unconditional surrender.

WWII ends with a "damn"

Parenti joked it was his use of a swear word in a letter to Laurie that ended the war in the Pacific.

"We haven't learned anything new on our status except that we have to commence our scheduled training, which intended us to be ready for the Pacific by October 15," Parenti wrote on August 5, 1945. "Here's where it all starts again. Damn it!"

The day after this letter was written, the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and another one on Nagaski Aug. 9. The Japanese surrendered Aug. 15.

In his book, Parenti wrote, "Apparently, the use of the first vulgarity that I recall in all of the letters that I have written had an affect, for the war ended the next day."

Letters then and now

Reading letters from soldiers serving in Iraq and comparing them to his WWII letters, Parenti's amazed at how similar they are. "The language of the soldiers writing home today is also identical to some of the language I used," he said.

In letters then and now, soldiers ask the same questions such as "When will the war end? Why am I here? Why don't you write me?" according to Parenti.

Although they served in two different wars separated by geography and more than 60 years, talk of "luck" and feelings of "despair" are common themes in all soldiers' letters, he explained.

Censorship and plagiarism?

One thing that always bothered Parenti about his war letters was the Army's censorship of all mail heading stateside.

"I hated to think that the words I had intended for you, and you alone, were being read by some dopey officer that had no business at all other than military, to read my personal mail," he wrote on May 21, 1945 in his first uncensored letter from overseas. "Do you think Napoleon could have written Josephine love letters if he knew they were going to be censored?"

Parenti had a sneaking suspicion the officers were copying down some of the things he wrote, "so they could tell them to their wives and sweethearts."

Rereading the letters, Laurie was immediately "impressed" by the "maturity" of her husband's writing even though he was only 18-20 years old during the war.

"I was so surprised at how well written they were," she said. "I just can't imagine a young boy writing that well now."

Homecoming

Before being discharged in February 1946, Parenti got the chance to return to the U.S. for a while. He hitchhiked his way to the 80-acre dairy farm where Laurie's family was living in nearby Brandon Twp.

He recalled walking along Davison Lake Rd. as the sun was beginning to set and seeing Laurie coming toward him.

"I came to the top of a small rise in the road and I could see her walking towards me, having in tow her 10-year-old kid brother, Larry," Parenti wrote in his book. "We ran towards each other . . . Her blond hair was streaming behind her and her skirt was billowing. It was like a picture out of a movie and the recollection of it is vivid in my mind to this day. We caught hold of each other, hugging and kissing, screaming and yelling, with Larry embarrassed but holding on to me."

The two were married in September 1946.

More veterans' memorials needed

Royalties earned from Parenti's book will be donated for the establishment and maintenance of public veterans' memorials. "I would like the feeling that when young people go to the memorial parks, there will be something for them to walk right up to and know it's there to honor veterans," Parenti said.

Royalties from all books sold in Michigan will be distributed to veterans' memorial projects in Oxford and Orion. Those sold in Florida will be used for war memorials in his home community of Stuart.

Parenti firmly believes there should be more "impressive" veterans' memorials throughout the nation with statues designed to attract people's interest, particularly young people, so they will never forget.

"A Story of Love and War" will be available at large bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble, as well as on-line.

"I think it's a wonderful book and I hope everybody wants to read it," Laurie said.