Written by Lt. Helen Gertrude Staebler Martin, United States Army, this letter was penned one day before the end of World War II in Europe (V-E Day, Victory in Europe Day). Lt. Martin describes everyone eagerly waiting for the official ceasefire announcement and how the French citizens are already celebrating with joy and ringing church bells:

“There is a French news broadcast on right now and although I know very little French, there is no misunderstanding ‘la guerre in Germania finis.”

Lt. Martin also expresses hope that she will be home in the coming months and deep relief that someone she knows, and other U.S. servicemen, will not have to fight the Germans anymore. She includes a brief account of an enlisted soldier a few months prior predicting the war would end on May 7, 1945 – the day she wrote this letter. Additional content in the letter includes Lt. Martin recounting a gift she received from one of her patients and general comments about the slowness of the mail service.

Born in Michigan, Lt. Helen Martin (1912-2005) and two of her five siblings served in the U.S. military during the Second World War. Lt. Martin enlisted with the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and joined the 36th General hospital. She would serve overseas in North Africa, Italy, and France (1943-1945). The Staebler Family Second World War Collection at Chapman University’s Center for American War Letters Archives (CAWLA) contains over 1,200 pieces of correspondence, photographs, documentation, and other ephemera related to Lt. Martin and her siblings who served during the World War II. The Staebler Family Second World War Collection is part of CAWLA’s collection of over 210,000 war letters, spanning from the American Revolution to 21st-century conflicts.

To learn more about how to access this collection and other collections in CAWLA, please contact the archives at warletters@chapman.edu. Please visit the archive’s public finding aid database to search for additional collections of war correspondences.