★★★ Diaristic and revealing, the family memoir in letters Searching for Harold proffers insights into people’s wartime thoughts.
Stephen Watts’s family memoir Searching for Harold reconstructs daily life during World War II via vintage letters.
In covering several years leading up to the war, the war itself, and the aftermath, many voices are heard, with the most focus given to Watts’s father, Wayland Jr., and Wayland’s uncles, Harold, Ray, and Wilbur. Wayland was desperate to enlist but found that war itself did not match what he’d seen in Hollywood war movies. The airplane-crazy seventeen-year-old was sent to flight training in Texas, from where he sent requests home for comforts like underwear, camera film, and snacks.
Meanwhile, Wayland’s Uncle Ray was thrust into action, killing Japanese soldiers and witnessing the deaths of his platoon members. He changed as a person, getting “calloused in my feelings.” Ray also lamented that women among the military personnel were “deglamourized,” wearing pants and clumpy shoes. Though awarded a Purple Heart, he felt embarrassed that it was for a ’’minor scratch.” Harold was glorified by the military apparatus too, his efforts framed as necessary and courageous; he died because of bad luck, after which his large family and wife, Harrie Delle, were bereft.
The letters are diaristic in tone, and they contain revealing and even funny moments, as when Wayland recounts his daily schedule in the barracks, plane maneuvers he’s learning, and complains about the too-big army raincoat that covers his fingers. There are surprises in the letters too, like that greater hostility is directed toward Japanese soldiers than Nazis. Harold expresses the belief that the Germans weren’t as bad, while Ray professes admiration for the Germans above any other European group and describes the Japanese in Tokyo as “bowing, hissing, and scraping.” Only an all-Black platoon that Harold mentions seems to consider Nazis the main threat. Such glimpses into the attitudes of everyday people writing in private are evocative of the period’s atmosphere, as with notions that the war was neither glamorous nor heroic despite the intense military propaganda campaigns suggesting otherwise.
Still, quite often the missives are mundane. Concern is expressed over mosquitoes, ringworm, and subpar beer, for instance. There are also instances of repetition, with the same information imparted to different people. The men’s mothers and sisters are frequent addressees; their replies are often missing, and those that are included have frequent abbreviations and little punctuation, holding the audience at a distance.
An epistolary family memoir, Searching for Harold collects the thoughts of imperfect soldiers doing the best they can amid the difficult circumstances they inhabit.
Reviewed by Andrea Kreidler, July 14, 2026