Background information and commentary by Andrew Carroll: Although it seems to be more common in e-mails from Iraq and Afghanistan (possibly because troops have greater access to news on the homefront through 24-hour cable and the Internet), servicemen and women in World War II rarely wrote about politics in their letters home. But one young pilot in the European Theatre was becoming so fed up with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, that he vented about the president in the following letter to a friend and explained in no uncertain terms why he planned to vote for his opponent, Republican candidate Thomas Dewey, in the 1944 elections. (The letter is published in its entirety, and for the first time, in WAR LETTERS.)

Nov. 4, 1944

Dear Bob,

…. We really haven't done much of anything yet over here, but we're beginning to see that there's a damn big job ahead of us before we'll ever see home again.

Eleanor tells me that she's beginning to look the part of an expectant mother. I noticed it a little before I left, so she must be "showing" considerably by now. The baby's E.T.A. is supposed to be around the first week in March so it isn't so very far off. I guess I'll miss his entrance, though, but if we aren't held up too much I should be able to see him around next summer. (Notice that I use "him" and "he," etc.) I hope it is a boy, but a doctor friend of mine is betting me that it will be a girl due to the fact that in his observations he has found that the children of airmen flying at high altitude are in the great majority of cases girls. I hope he's wrong in our case, though, even though I'd be almost equally happy to have a girl.

I suppose you have been following the political battles of Dewey and F.D.R. with your usual interest, Bob. I've sort of lost track of them lately, but the Stars and Stripes have sort of revived my interest. I'm going to be more than disgusted if Dewey doesn't win. I really think we need a man like Dewey in there now! I like the vigor, and efficiency that he has shown in the past and even in the way he is conducting his campaign. I think he'll do a lot toward clearing up all the dozen and one messes that the government is in now. For one thing he has a fairly definite attitude toward everything really vital and that's something the New Deal certainly hasn't had….

I like his plan for a simpler and definite tax policy. He also seems to be concerned with regaining the confidence of the people and of Congress in the president. I believe he can do it if he continues to stick to his guns and follow out a definite and straightforward platform. Have you read his recent eight-point platform? It seems very good to me.

I hope this letter finds you O.K., Bob, and in good spirits….

This letter-writer would aspire to be president of the United States himself decades later. His identity will be revealed in the next week's “Lines of Fire.”

NEXT WEEK: Another (surprising) letter by a WWII pilot who would also one day run for the presidency…