Long Lost Letters From War Found At Local NH Farm
This story almost sounds like the plot of a movie and is super romantic.
The owners of Joy Lane Farm, Joel and Katy, were cleaning out some boards in their ceiling when they came across some scraps of paper.
It turns out that they were long lost letters from a soldier to his sweetheart back in New Hampshire. The letters were dated from 1943 to 1945!
The letters were from Eddie Croteau to his girl Grace who lived in Rollinsford, NH. They spanned the United States and Europe, starting in New York and then to Italy. According to their Facebook post, the final letter was just a couple of months after V.E. Day.
I wasn't familiar with what that was so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, V.E. Day stands for Victory in Europe Day which "celebrates the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the end of World War II in Europe."
Eddie tells of almost dying in Italy after a mine went off in a Red Cross building he had just been at:
“It was awful. No kidding lots of them were buried in all that mess. There must have been over 100 of them killed and wounded. At 2:30 o’clock, this afternoon I was in that building and at 3:30 it happened. Was pretty lucky. I had a good mind to sit there and write you a letter. Good thing I didn’t cause it would have been the last letter.”
So, did Eddie ever get to reunite with his girl?
Joel and Katy found out there was a happy ending. Eddie, whose real name was Joseph E.Croteau, made it back home and married his Gracie. They were together for 62 years before his passing in 2008.
Joel and Katy said in their post that they would love to pass the letters on to any relatives of Eddie & Grace Croteau and within ten minutes they had been contacted by the Croteau's granddaughter!
Love this story, and what a happy ending!