My War : A Love Story in Letters and Drawings

by Sugarman, Tracy

• ISBN13: 9780375505133
• ISBN10: 037550513X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Random House

Summary

On December 7, 1941, when the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, Tracy Sugarman was a young man studying to be an illustrator--and falling in love with a tawny-haired girl named June. But for Tracy, as for all Americans, everything changed that December dawn. Two years later, now married to June, Tracy was on a troopship bound for England, part of the massive Allied buildup for the liberation of Europe. On D-Day he landed on Utah Beach, one young ensign in the greatest military invasion in history. But Tracy Sugarman was not only a sailor. He was also an artist, who chronicled every aspect of his war in watercolors and sketches and in more than four hundred letters to his wife, who carefully saved everything her new husband sent her. Fifty years later, June Sugarman astonished her husband by showing him his long-forgotten pictures and words: lush watercolors and pen-and-ink drawings set down with breathtaking immediacy in the midst of war, and letters in which the young man poured out his feelings--about the terror and tedium of battle, his own ideals and hopes . . . and, always, his love for his wife. Here, selected from this treasure trove, are the drawings and watercolors that best portray the war Tracy Sugarman experienced. Interspersed throughout are excerpts of his loving and poignant letters home and, as the capstone of this extraordinary book, the single surviving letter from June to her husband. My War is a luminous, powerful account of a world at war--and a beautifully touching love story.

Author Biography

Tracy Sugarman is a well-known illustrator whose work has appeared in major magazines and books and on television. During a long and successful career, he has received numerous awards from the Society of Illustrators in New York City and the Art Directors Club in Washington, D.C. His paintings and illustrations have been exhibited widely, including in a 1994 exhibition at the Naval Memorial in Washington, D.C., marking the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. Sugarman lives and works in Westport, Connecticut, in a home overlooking the sea.

Excerpts

Everybody remembers exactly where they were that Sunday. You sensed immediately that there had been a subtle shift in the world, a movement you could almost feel in your bones. What it would portend would come later. For that split second, the whole room simply froze. It's funny what you remember. Davey Beere, his face beet red from running across the campus, tore into our fraternity house. "They bombed Pearl Harbor!" he gasped. And somebody said, "Who the hell is Pearl Harbor?"

Davey dropped onto a leather couch and shook his head vehemently. "Not who. What, idiot. Pearl Harbor is our navy base in Hawaii." His eyes widened. "And the radio says it's the Japs that did it."

"How bad is it?" I asked.

"They didn't say," said Davey. "They just said Two days later I boarded the early morning train to Buffalo, found my way to the navy office, and took the physical exam for the naval reserve. It was the middle of my junior year at Syracuse University. I was studying to be an illustrator in the College of Fine Arts, and I was learning so much. How to draw, how to paint, how to see! And now, suddenly, the leisurely cadence of college life gave way to an unfamiliar urgency. My graduation seemed very far in the distance, so far that I wondered if I would ever get there.

And here I was, signing up to be a naval officer, a guy who had never even seen a ship up close!

The chief petty officer, hashmarks on his unbuttoned blouse, listlessly studied my application after I passed the physical. He nodded to the chair by his desk, and I sat down. In a distracted voice he asked, "Can you believe those Japs? Hitting Pearl? That was my base for seventeen months! My base! And all those guys . . ." He stopped abruptly. The room was silent as he turned back to my transcript. "What the hell are you doing at college?" he asked curtly. "And what is fine arts? Like drafting, for engineers?"

I didn't know what to say. "No," I muttered finally, "it's more like . . . camouflage. Stuff like that." I got up quickly. "Gotta catch my train back to Syracuse." I held out my hand. "Thanks, sir."

The CPO rose and leaned heavily against his desk. "No. No," he said. "Not sir. I ain't a commissioned officer. I'm a noncommissioned officer. Commissioned officers is sir. You understand? Commissioned officers." He watched my face and then said kindly, "You just call me Chief."

"Right," I said. "Thank you, Chief," and tossed him a salute.

He stared at me. "No," he groaned. "No. No. No. You don't salute noncommissioned officers. You salute commissioned officers." He sat down heavily and stared at the stack of papers waiting to be processed. "Commissioned officers," he growled, "like you're going to be." As he reached for the pile, I ducked out the door.

---

Excerpted from My War: A Love Story in Letters and Drawings by Tracy Sugarman
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.