Honoring Sergeant Carter by Allene Carter

“Everything I am told to do, I go ahead and do it for your sake,” he wrote to Mildred. “It seems to make life a lot easier when I look at it that way. I would be a pretty toughguy down here if it were not for the thought of you. It goes to prove I think the world of you.”
    Significantly, Eddie always addressed his letters to “Mrs. Edward A. Carter Jr.” and in his letters he often referred to Mildred as his wife and himself as her husband. They were not yet married, and in joining the Army Eddie wasn’t running away from her. If anything, he wanted to do something to prove that he was worthy of her. Eddie sought always to keep his desire to be husband and wife before Mildred. Through his letters he continued his courtship. He wrote almost daily—sometimes twice a day—and in every letter he professed his ardor for her. In one letter he included a clipping from the First Platoon newsletter with an item reporting that “Private Edward A. Carter doesn’t say much, he is so busy writing and receiving letters. Wonder if love could be the answer?????” He appended a handwritten comment: “It’s the truth. See?” Eddie went so far as to get Edwin Kennedy, an Army friend of his, to write a note to Mildred avowing that “Your husband will not move from the barracks at all—all he does is write to you and talk of you.” Kennedy included some pencil sketches of Eddie in uniform, marching, writing letters, and reading a letter to Mildred to which she responds “No.” Eddie stopped at nothing to persuade Mildred of his love for her and his desire to marry her. When Mildred sent him a card, cigarettes, and other gifts at Christmas, Eddie responded with an eight-page letter expressing his gratitude. “You are my ideal,” he gushed. “Iam living only to be able to come back to your warm and beautiful love.” Eddie did not fail to express his affection for the children and Mildred’s family. “I am dying to see little Buddha,” he wrote. In subsequent letters he asked about Buddha’s development: Did he have any hair on his head yet? Had he taken a step or spoken a first word? Special greetings were often directed to Mr. Jennings, to whom Eddie felt very close. Eddie also included Mildred’s two children by her previous marriage in his notion of their family, speaking of them as “my kids.”
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    F rom the first day he entered boot camp Eddie baffled his instructors. They couldn’t understand how a new recruit, after very little training, could achieve near perfect scores in shooting. “I don’t miss a thing I shoot at,” Eddie wrote to Mildred. Moreover, he was proficient with a host of weapons, including handguns, rifles, antitank weapons, and the Thompson submachine gun, his favorite. Proud of his accomplishment, Eddie sent Mildred an article published in the post newspaper in October praising his marksmanship. The article predicted that Private Carter “will become one of the area’s, if not one of the camp’s, best shots.”
    Training at the boot camp was intense, and shortly before it ended in early January a tragedy was narrowly averted. Eddie lost his footing on ice on a march and fell off a dam into a reservoir with an eighty-pound packstrapped to his back. He sank like a rock into the deep water. Unable to swim under all the weight, he stayed calm and managed to release the straps and buckles and free himself from the heavy pack. He struggled to the surface, much to the surprise of the officers and the other soldiers, who thought he would surely drown. They told him he had been under water for four minutes, but to him it seemed like four days. It was so cold that his clothes froze when he climbed out of the water. But with a cockiness that was characteristic of him, Eddie told Mildred not to worry. “I am fit as a fiddle,” he boasted.
    With his weapons skills,