Recently, I discovered history in a packet of letters my mother had kept since World War II. The timing was perfect. Just when our nation’s brave men and women who served in the military were being honored and celebrated on Veterans Day, I was immersed in the innocent musings of a young soldier who paid the ultimate price for his service.

Robert was killed in action in France at the age of 22. He and I share DNA. He was an uncle I never got to meet.

One of eight children, Robert was closest in age to his younger sister, my mother. And according to stories told and retold by my mom, she and Robert often double dated and hung out together as kids.

While in the Army, Robert wrote to her often. Through his words on paper, slowly I am getting to know my handsome uncle, whose framed photo has been on a shelf in my living room since my mother passed away two years ago.

Although he’s in uniform, Robert looks much too young to be a private about to be sent into war.

He was trained at Camp Sam Houston, Texas, and Camp McCoy, Wis., and many of his letters bear those postmarks.

In great detail, Robert often described the weather or his duties or grueling early-morning exercises (“that I don’t like”). He wrote of fellow soldiers getting drunk and falling into the water, movies and dances he enjoyed and girls he met. He referred to his mother in letters as “MaMa.”

Most of the letters are written in pencil. Some are faded or smudged. His spelling and lack of punctuation amuse me but humanize him.

Robert loved to use the word “boy,” as in “boy, was it cold,” or “boy, was that good candy.”

From him, I learned servicemen live for packages of goodies sent from home. Apparently, when one of the soldiers got such a mail delivery, the whole group came running and shared the tasty loot, especially if the box contained candy and cake. Robert once boasted he ate five pieces of candy sent to a fellow soldier.

He wrote of Camp McCoy’s five feet of snow and trying out skis and snowshoes.

As he was writing that letter to my mother, he said he was listening to a loudspeaker outside playing “O Come All Ye Faithful” on chimes. “It sounds beautiful,” he wrote.

In one letter, he described crawling across a 50-foot field in the rain, “and all around was dynamite, and when you were about 15 feet away, they would set it off, and the dirt would fly in your face and down your neck.”

Robert wrote of cleaning his rifle (“boy, is that a job”) and “making a 14-mile hike today; boy, was I tired.”

He strongly discouraged my mom from joining the WAACs, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. “You wouldn’t like it,” he told her several times - for emphasis, I guess.

When Robert was in Fort Sam Houston, he wrote about the state. “We now sing ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas.’ It is a wonderful state. The only thing is it is so hot during the day and cold at night.”

His letters talk of playing the “mouth organ,” a harmonica, and of trying to play a bugle. “It takes too much wind,” he wrote.

While in Wisconsin, he wrote he helped to “build a bridge out of boats. When it is finished, the trucks and everything go across and it don’t break down,” he explained. Robert enclosed two newspaper photos showing Army Jeeps crossing the span.

He sounded like a typical young man. “What girl do you mean that likes me? I don’t know. Tell the girl to write sometime,” he instructed my mom.

After reading his letters, I wanted to learn more about my uncle, so I scoured the journal I had encouraged my mother to write about her life.

She told of small garden plots she and her siblings planted with lettuce, tomatoes and flowers.

“My brother Bobby was different; he planted potatoes and peanuts,” she wrote.

In another entry, my mom said he “caught a baby crow and taught it to say a few words. He was something else.”

Her journal recalls the horror of learning her big brother had been killed in action.

“I was so sick I couldn’t eat for three days. I just cried and cried. Mom’s hair turned white overnight,” she wrote. “Only when his box of fudge came back unopened did Mom accept that he was gone.”

In one of his last letters, Robert explained his “dog tag” to my mother.

“I wear one around my neck all the time. I guess you don’t know what they are. Well, my name and my address are on them. That’s for when I go across the ocean into the battle and am hurt, they can identify me.”

Thank you, Uncle Robert, for giving us the human side of war and history.