Physical Description: .5 Linear Feet(7 folders)
Language of Material: English.
Scope and Contents
This series contains correspondence from Maj. Edward "Ted" Rivinus, Jr., USA to his wife Esther "Teddy" Rivinus during the
Second World War. His letters detail his life in the Army from the point of his arrival at Oran in North Africa in 1943. He
discusses the other officers he meets and the friends who came with him, in particular a fellow officer, Captain John Frazier
(usually referred to as simply "Frazier" in his letters). Other officers named in the letters are "Foo" and "Ty," though little
indication is given of their real names.
Rivinus writes about everything, from the landscape of his new environs to the people he meets, to the larger political schema
of what is happening in the war. Of the are around Oran, he writes that "the whole countryside resembles northern Mexico more
than anyplace. The towns, architecture, landscape, people, in fact everything except the costumes are just like Sonora." He
also relates stories he picks up from other officers, like this one about a pilot he met at the officer's club:
"The other day, I ran into an American flyer (a major) who had been shot down in Sicily, burned very badly, captured by the
Italians, kept for 20 days in a hospitpal which was in turn demolished by British dive-bombers shelled by Americans & British
artillery, captured by British, then German artillery. All this time, he was in the basement. Talk about 9 lives!"
By the middle of March of 1944, Rivinus was fully entrenched in the battle of Anzio. On March 3, 1944, he writes of having
his tooth filled on the beach. He writes through several major battles, including Anzio and Cassino, and later in France,
Alsace, and Germany. Soon after V-E Day, he transferred to working at a prison camp and after that ran an officer's rest home.
His letters end with his impending return to the United States.