War Letters: American Experience

Stories Of Courage, Longing And Sacrifice

In every American conflict from the Revolution to the Persian Gulf War, American military men and women have captured honor, pathos and intensity of battle by writing letters home.In 1998, in an effort to preserve the correspondence, editor Andrew Carroll set up the Legacy Project which subsequently collected 50,000 war letters.Using the most compelling and enlightening of these missives and newly discovered home movies, War Letters tells the story of American wars from the viewpoint of the men and women on the front lines and those who waited at home.The film features breathtaking eyewitness accounts of famous battles, intimate declarations of love and longing, poignant last letters written only days before soldiers were killed, and many profound and memorable expressions of exhilaration, fear, whimsy, exasperation, anger and patriotism.Full of poetry, compassion, humor, determination and raw emotion, the featured letters ultimately transcend the subject of war and address some of the most powerful contradictions of the human condition.