Your Loving Son, Philip: Letters from an American Soldier in World War II, May 1944-June 1946

(Mixed Media Memoirs) After her husband, Philip Herzig ’46, died in 2004, Helene Herzig discovered letters he wrote to his parents during his service in the war in her attic. In those letters, he details his life during basic training and his time as an infantryman in the European Theater of Operation. He describes his responsibilities, where he lived, what he ate, what he learned, as well as the conditions and the routine of the days. In the book’s foreword, Joseph J. Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, called the collection a “major memoir from the World War II generation, distinctive for its literacy, its palpable recovery of the ordinary routines amidst those extraordinary times. … Philip is always disarmingly honest, never poses, never embellishes for effect.” Helene Herzig served as feature editor for North Shore Magazine. She also is the author of Legendary Long Islanders: Interviews with Famous Residents from the Hamptons to New York and A Father’s Dream Through a Daughter’s Eyes: How to Raise a Wonderful Family.