Knut-ThorbjørnAH

//21st July 1789// //Hi mom!//

//Just telling you that I’m OK! The country is great! The first thing I saw when I arrived America was this huge statue of a woman who holding a torch in the bay in New York. The captain on the boat said it was the Statue of Liberty. When I arrived New York, I dismissed on Ellis Isle where some guys asked me about I could read and write. In the building on Ellis Isle, there where thousand of other people who stood back in a line, and had waited in several hours to get of the Island. New York is the biggest town I ever seen. It live more people here than in Oslo. It was hard to find a place to eat and sleep, but I found a hotel who almost where full. The next morning I was planning where I should live, New York was too big for me and to much people in one place. So I moved out of the city and found a little settlement right outside the city where I could live for a while. Around the settlement it was big forest. The nature here is so quiet and so peaceful. I feel free and excited to be in the new world. The people in the settlement are so nice and funny. Still I don’t have found any place to live. But I think I move south and try to find a new settlement where I can settle me down in. Perhaps I find some other Norwegians there. The people in the settlement said I had to be careful in the wild, they said I could meet Indians. So they gave me a gun so I could protect me from them.// //The way down to Texas was hard and dangerous, but I didn’t find any Indians on my journey to Texas. On the way I found some other settlements and big towns. On my way down I took a visit in Washington D.C, and saw the White House where the president live. The house where big and… white. After I had visit Washington, I turn south again. After some weeks in the wild I finely came to Texas. They call it the lonely star, why they call the state that, ask the gods why. But I think I’m going to settle me down in Houston. This town is a little big, but it isn’t big as New York. Hope you can come over for a while, I miss my family a lot.//

//Greetings from your son// //Knut Thorbjørn

___//

//10th August 1944//

//Hi mom and dad! I write this letter for telling you that I’m fine. The D-day was going as planned. But we had to cancel the Operation because the bad weather on 5th June, so we had to move it one day forward. But we lost some good men when we tried to take the beach. When we got on the beach in Normandy, we had to fight the Germans and take the city with force. After we had secured the city we got some reinforcements after some hours we moved out of Normandy. We continued to move closer Germany. But moving closer was hard and bloody. We have lost many good men, but they didn’t die for nothing. They risked their life to free Europe from the Nazi. Now we have moved to the other Operation after the D-day. The Operation got the name Overlord. Operation Overlord is going fine, we moving closer to Germany. But it goes so slowly, almost every city or town we reach we had to fight Germans again. I’m getting tired of this. We have heard from the east front that the Russians are moving for Berlin. So now we push Germany from two sides. I think Hitler is under pressure now, maybe so much that he takes suicide. The war in East Asia is going good I think. We have not got any news from there yet. But the Germans are good trained soldiers, so we must sometimes use our heavy artillery on them. The scream and blow up body parts are not for the weak one. I must say without my Thompson machinegun, I had been dead for a long time ago. But my squad is taking care on each other, we are almost a family. After our squad leader died in Normandy, I got the charge for them now. I’m leading the 8th infantry squad and the 3rd tank division. I write more when we are in Germany.//

//Love from 2nd Lieutenant Knut Thorbjørn//