World War II letters find unlikely route home to Interior Alaska [Video]

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTVF) – Interior Alaskan Sharon Marks Haney Wright couldn’t have predicted that part of her family history would intertwine with a Dutch author’s online shopping.

She also couldn’t have predicted the author would fly to Fairbanks to reconnect her with the thousands of words her father wrote from Germany 80 years ago as a soldier in the 94th Infantry Division.

And yet, that’s exactly what happened.

“The mental condition is one of worry most of the time, and it is worse when you are headed back to the front,” reads one of the letters written by Lauren Marks to his parents, dated March 29, 1945. “Up there you get to where you don’t give a damn, and that is the only way to take it.”

The excerpt comes from one of Haney Wright’s favorite letters her father wrote while in Germany. It’s one of more than 70 pieces of correspondence Dutch Historian and Author …