World War II Panorama Unfolds in Letters of Six Brothers

When their draft notices arrived at the height of World War II, Robert and Normand Valliere could have said no. They didn’t.

They wanted to be soldiers.

Like their older brother Perley.

And the next older brother, Leo.

And the next older brother, Ernest.

And their oldest brother, Henry.

“It was part of what the country was asking,” Robert, 77, the only surviving brother, said in an interview. “Everybody else was going, and you just went along with everybody else.”

The Army didn’t know or didn’t care how many sons Joseph and Ella Valliere had. It was fighting a war that would claim the lives of tens of millions and needed every man it could muster.

“No officer ever spoke to me about the family having six in the service,” Robert said. “I was just another name and a number. We never thought of it either. We were called and we went.”

Military historians say it’s rare for more than two or three siblings to serve simultaneously in the same service in wartime--and even more so for all to come back alive.

Even more incredible, none of the Vallieres saw combat.

“We were all pretty lucky because we all could have gone infantry,” Robert said. “I don’t know which of us came the closest to the front line. They never really talked about it.”

Although the brothers spoke little about their service, their stories are preserved in letters home--thousands of letters tied in neat bundles and kept safe for more than 55 years by a sister.

The letters tell of duty, family and the sacrifices of a generation--at home and abroad. It is also a story of which Robert knows only his chapters; he made his brothers’ letters available to the Associated Press but has never read them.

15 Million GIs

In World War II, 10 million American men were drafted to fight the Germans and Japanese and their allies. Five million others enlisted.

The Selective Service System, the federal agency that manages the registration and drafting of men into the military, didn’t and still doesn’t offer deferments for brothers.

There is sometimes confusion about who may be drafted from a single family, due partly to the deaths of five brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, at the Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942. The Sullivan brothers, all serving aboard the Juneau, died when the ship was sunk by a Japanese torpedo.

Their deaths prompted the Navy to adopt a policy that prevents family members from serving on the same ship.

But then and now (if the draft were to be activated in a military emergency), only local draft boards can free men from their military obligations, based on personal circumstances.

Robert and Normand, as the last two Valliere sons, were offered deferments. Robert felt that accepting would dishonor his brothers.

“I figured, ‘Hey, they’re gone. I’m going to go with them,’ ” he said.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, mobilized the nation. Droves of young men enlisted or were drafted--the grunts, the infantrymen, the mechanics, the medics, the cooks and the ditch diggers.

They were the men who won the war. They were the Vallieres.

Henry, the oldest, was the first to go. He found a career when he took a dare 11 years before the war.

It was 1930, and his family was feeling the pinch of the Depression. With money and work scarce in Meredith, the family raised chickens and grew much of their own food.

Joseph, who immigrated from Canada as a teenager, did construction and carpentry to support his wife and eight children. The struggle was made more difficult by Ella’s health; she was bedridden with diabetes much of her life. The chore of rearing the children fell to Pauline, the second oldest.

But Henry’s enlistment was more about peer pressure than financial pressure. Two friends dared the 20-year-old to join up with them. Henry stayed in the Army through the Korean War.

Little of Henry’s correspondence exists. While three brothers never married and two waited until after the war to wed, Harry met and married his wife while stationed near Boston. Most of his letters went to her and have since been lost.

But in those that were saved, Henry assured his siblings that joining the Army was the right decision and poked fun at the “Valliere Army.”

Writing to his father in July 1944, Henry said, “If they keep on in this drafting, we’ll have to find a bunk for you.”

Ernest, drafted three months after Pearl Harbor at age 28, went from fixing autos to fixing people.

“They put me in the Medical Corps, which is a bit different from greasing cars,” he wrote to his parents.

“It is considered about the best branch at this camp. You can call me Doc, if you want to, now. Tell Leo that the Army is just as Henry said it was, and not to feel bad if he has to come in.”

Ernest was moved repeatedly, from England to North Africa to Corsica to Italy to France. But like his brothers, Ernest had more than the enemy to worry about.

“The brownies were good. I ate most of them myself,” Ernest told Pauline in May 1942. “But it would be better if you didn’t send anymore stuff, as you need the sugar more than I need the cookies and cakes.”

And about a year later to his mother:

“I wrote to the bank telling them that it was OK for Dad to draw money from my account. If it will help any he can draw what he wants and it might be possible for you to go to the hospital.”

Painful Setbacks

Leo was the Valliere the Army wasn’t sure what to do with.

He was 24 and working at a gas station when he was drafted in June 1942. Medical problems and poor drill performances kept Leo bouncing from one training assignment to another, including pilot and bombardier.

In the end, he learned to run radios and radar and was assigned to the 126th Army Airways Communications Systems Squadron. He served out the war as a control tower operator in India.

But with two older brothers to emulate and three younger brothers looking up to him, the setbacks were painful.

“I feel that I have been the first to let you down,” he wrote his father in July 1943. “The rest all made good in their first attempt. But I didn’t. But I’ll try to make up for it in my new school. Perhaps it’s just fate that I shouldn’t be a bombardier.

“You’re right about fighting for everything we have. And you certainly did a damn good job in your job of raising six sons,” he wrote. “Even though we’re soldiers now, we’ll all be back as just plain sons one of these days soon.

“And we’ll all do our best to do credit to our dad, you can bet.”

Perley, 21, was drafted one month after Leo, the fourth Valliere in the Army.

“I’ve got to keep up my writing to my brothers,” Perley wrote to Pauline in September 1942. “Maybe we didn’t get along so well when we were home, but now . . . we are thousands of miles apart and it may be a long time before we see each other again. But let’s all pray it will be a short war and within another year we can all be together again.”

Trained as a radio mechanic, Perley served in England, the Netherlands, France and Germany with the Pathfinder group of the Air Force, then part of the Army. Sending radio signals, Pathfinder planes led B-26s in bombing runs even in bad weather.

Robert was drafted Dec. 31, 1942 --his 20th birthday.

“The guy said, ‘Happy birthday, you’re in,’ ” he said. “I was just as green as they come, right out of high school wondering, ‘What next?’ ”

“What next” was training as a laboratory technician for the 28th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, which flew over enemy territory armed only with cameras. Robert developed the film and selected photographs for intelligence officers.

“This is my war,” Robert said, indicating an armful of albums filled with hundreds of black and white wartime photographs.

Most are haunting--skeletons propped up on gravestones, bombed-out stone churches, crumbling buildings riddled with bullet holes.

For Robert, one photo captured the war: the stark image of a mushroom cloud billowing 30,000 feet above Nagasaki.

“I was in the photo lab at the time we developed it,” he said. “We were astonished. . . . We were all awe-struck.”

By 1943 it was clear the Army would need even the youngest son. Normand was drafted seven months after Robert, in July 1943. He wanted to go to college, but duty called.

“Yesterday some of the fellows from Laconia shipped out,” he wrote to his parents from training at Ft. Devens in Massachusetts. “Seeing them go made me sort of wishing to go with them. Later it was wanting to go home. Really, I think I am a little homesick.”

Ernest wrote to his father: “I know how you feel about Normand going into the Army and agree that five of us should be enough. He may not be as rugged as the rest of us, but as you know strength isn’t everything. He can do, and will do, to the best of his ability anything they ask of him. That’s one thing that I think all of us are doing.”

Normand hoped to get into an Army program that would send him to college but ended up in the 128th Anti-aircraft Artillery Battery, a division of the Coast Artillery.

“I guess Uncle Sam knew I was the weakest of the boys in the family and he must have wanted to make me tough enough to stand on my own beside my brothers,” he wrote to his father in February 1944. “Believe me, he is doing it.”

Like every soldier, Normand hoped for a speedy end to the war.

“I heard this morning that President Roosevelt said in his speech last night that the boys overseas would be home next year at this time,” he told his parents in December 1943. “Let’s all of us hope that he’s right.”

He wasn’t. But good news did come.

On Aug. 14, 1945, Robert was on Okinawa, preparing for bed and listening to the evening news.

“The radio announcer said, ‘Just a moment. We’ve just been given an important bulletin. The Japanese have surrendered,’ ” Robert said. “And then all hell broke loose.”

Soldiers lost control, he said, cheering, firing weapons randomly and nearly rioting. Several soldiers were killed that night. Robert stayed safe in a foxhole.

“We were scared, but it was a happy scared because it was over with.”

In the coming months, the Valliere brothers headed home.

“The day is finally here,” Leo wrote to Pauline on Dec. 8, 1945, just two weeks before a happy Christmas reunion for the family. “It sure is a real good feeling to know you’re finally on the way. Here I come on my first boat ride. This will be another experience to talk about.

“I won’t be writing anymore now, so keep your fingers crossed until you hear from me again--once more in the good old U.S.A.”