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Their stories are the journey of a lifetime

During World War II
a small percentage of the enlisted were kept stateside,
their talents more important to the war effort training those at home.
Most felt guilty for being "out of danger"
This is 1 man's story.
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fran soldier
Francis Seibert

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During WWII Sgt. Francis Seibert of Defiance, Ohio was stationed in Amarillo, Texas as an Air Force instructor training men to become aircraft mechanics for the B-17 and B-29 bombers.

Being his first time away from home, he wrote to his family daily. Feeling his letters were “boring,” he began to illustrate the envelopes with cartoons.  His mother saved all 614 of these letters. 

This documentary takes the 82-year-old Seibert through an historic journey as he revisits those letters 60 years later.

The letters cover topics as diverse as Mother’s Day; his first Christmas away from home; first learning of the D-Day invasion; and his impressions of the dropping of the first Atomic Bomb. For a young man of only twenty-one, Sergeant Seibert had extraordinary vision of what the future of the Atomic Bomb would mean to the world. 

In his letter he already saw the full significance of what such a devastating weapon would have on life from then on.  He knew that it would very likely turn out to be instrumental in ending the war and saving thousands of lives, but it scared him.

Through all these letters the underlying message is how important family is. How we take for granted what we have until it is taken away from us, and how often it takes a tragic situation to express how we really feel. The most rewarding part of making this film was to take this journey with Sergeant Seibert.  I believe the audience will feel the same.
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