Letters from war: WWII sailor's missives home told different story than private journal
LANSING — During World War II, Duane Nicol wrote more than 300 letters to his parents, and closed nearly every one in the same way while serving aboard ships in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
"Will close for now," he wrote. "Write the news and don't worry."
Glenna Nicol was terrified of losing her son in the war — and he knew it. Three years before Duane, then 18, enlisted in the U.S. Navy, his older brother John Delmar died when he was hit by a car while walking down the road between Eaton Rapids and the Nicols' home in Charlotte.
Duane was the only child Glenna had left and he knew how much she needed to know he was safe.
He wrote home whenever he could, as he traveled from Norfolk, Virginia, to France, Italy and parts of Africa. He wrote before and after taking part in Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of Provence, in the south of France, in August 1944.
And he kept writing when he boarded another ship and traveled across the Pacific to the Philippines and Japan.
Duane's letters didn't tell the whole story. His letters to his parents never mentioned the horrors he witnessed during the war or the fears he had for his own safety: Those details instead became part of a private journal he kept.
His letters home tell of the massive Buddha statue and landmarks he saw, the beauty of the countries he spent time in, and the service members he met abroad who grew up in and around Lansing. Glenna kept each letter, carefully organizing them, still in their envelopes, in three large, leather scrapbooks.
Duane Nicol's daughter, Jana Nicol, got all of the letters after he died in 1996, along with a scrapbook of her father's war photos and a transcript of most of Duane's war journal. She's spent the last few years pouring over all of it, researching her father's service, transcribing every letter.
And preparing to write a book about his time in the war.
Preserving history matters, Jana, 60, said, but that's only one of the reasons she's working on the book. The documents, photos and newspaper clippings have helped her to solve family mysteries, and to connect with the relatives of service members with whom her dad served.
The project also allowed her to reveal another side of her father, who she knew as a gregarious, fun-loving family man who left the world too soon at age 71.
"I was only 33 when he died," she said. "It's fascinating to get to know my dad when he was 18."
In private journal, 'He wrote the truth'
Scrapbook collections of letters written by World War II service members were common, said Bill Castanier, president of the Historical Society of Greater Lansing. He's seen some preserved, but said it's rare to find one so intact, so complete, that's not in a museum or archive.
"A lot of people have things like that and they don't do anything with it and sooner or later, the material's lost," he said.
What Jana has isn't easy to find, Castanier said. He first got a closer look at her father's letters, photos and documents about a year ago.
"I was moved by that collection," he said. "It was pretty extensive. A lot of them get tossed out, which is a shame because they tell a whole story of what a person was thinking at the time. They're first person and very intimate."
Duane enlisted in the Navy in 1943, serving aboard a "landing ship tank," or LST, used to transport tanks, vehicles, cargo and troops.
Duane, who was a quartermaster, wrote home "almost every day," Jana said. It appears he wrote in his journal regularly, too, but the entries are in stark contrast to the letters he sent his parents.
"He made it sound like everything was fine because they were on a big cruise ship in the ocean and not seeing any active duty," she said. "In his journal, he wrote quite a different story. He wrote the truth."
One example: "I wrote what could have been my last letter home to my parents tonight," read one entry from August 1944, just after Duane took part in Operation Dragoon. "Glad it wasn't."
In a letter sent just two weeks later, he asked his parents about that year's Eaton County Fair and for the addresses of some of his friends.
"There isn’t any more to write about so I will close for now," he wrote. "Write the news and don’t worry."
In the last few years, Jana has transcribed every letter her father sent home. All of them have dates, and many give the location of where he was when the letter was written. Using both the letters and his journal entries she's matched up landmarks or stories mentioned in them to black-and-white photos her father kept in an album from the war.
Meanwhile, the journal has shed light on where certain relatives were, what they were doing in the 1940s, and what her father experienced in the Navy.
"After the war, all of this stuff was stored up in the attic of our house in town, and then when we moved out into the country, I think he put it up in the attic there, too," she said. "After he died, my mom gave me two big Rubbermaid containers and said, 'Here.'"
'A worthwhile venture'
On a Tuesday morning in December, Jana's dining room table at her home in Lansing was covered in family history.
There were three large, brown, leather scrapbooks of her dad's letters, their pages tinted brown with age nearly 80 years after they were assembled; a large photo album filled with images of his time in World War II, including photos of the ships he traveled on and the places he went; his signal book from the Navy; postcards he picked up during his service; and a massive scrapbook filled with newspaper articles Glenna saved about the war.
All of it sat in Jana's attic for 20 years before she started going through each keepsake. Today she also has his Navy uniforms, as well as items from her grandfather's service in World War I.
Growing up, her father shared with her his photo album, but the journal and the letters were documents she didn't get a chance to read until he was gone.
Jana thinks the scrapbooks and album went to her not just because she's interested in history, but because of how close she was to her father.
"I'm often referred to as 'Little Duane,' in the sense that I have a lot of his personality," she said.
Her dad "loved the United States and he loved Charlotte," Jana Nicol said. "He often used to say, 'If I could fence in the town, and just keep it the way it is, I would.'"
Duane was popular, well liked and was always up for pulling a good prank on friends and family.
"But he also had a really super kind heart," she said.
Jana said his journal entries during the war gave her insight into why her father valued humor and kindness so much later in life, and how the experience changed him.
"I think that seeing the horrors of war, really kind of brought it home to him," she said. "I think my goal was just to transcribe the letters that he had written and as I got into them, I was like, 'Oh, my God, there's just so much here.'"
Friends and historians who have seen the collection encouraged her to pursue a book centered around the material.
"This is really fascinating," they told her. "There are a lot of historians who would really, really like to see this."
"I thought, 'Well, then this is probably a worthwhile venture.'"
It's taken her two years to transcribe the letters and review her father's journal. She researched abbreviations and terms she didn't recognize in the text as she went.
There's great value in what Jana Nicol is doing, Castanier said.
"More people will see it and understand what people went through," he said. He hopes it encourages people with similar items to share them with a historical society or organization, rather than allow them to be lost in storage.
"Otherwise it will just be gone," Castanier said.
Contact Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @GrecoatLSJ .
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This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Lansing woman pieces together father's World War II letters home, journal
