Edward L. Pierce

[Detail] An exhausted Edward L. Pierce after a long day's work on the line between base and outpost, Korea, [1953] War: Korean War, 1950-1953 Branch: Army Unit: 48th Field Artillery Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division Service Location: Fort Riley, Kansas; North Korea Rank: Corporal Place of Birth: IL

From the time he was drafted in the summer of 1952, 20 year-old Edward Pierce kept up a regular, well-written correspondence with his parents back home in Calumet City, Illinois. Writing almost every day, he penned his letters from boot camp, from the ship taking him to Korea, and finally from the front lines of the war with North Korea. Pierce's letters provide a wealth of detail about the life of the ordinary American soldier in Korea. The letters are also preoccupied by the drudgery of Army life and the weather, which nearly every soldier who served in Korea described as the coldest they had ever experienced in their lives.