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Lost letter sheds light on WWII experience

WABASHA, Minn. — For years, Johanna Arnoldy wondered about her brother’s wartime service. But she could never get any answers.

“When he came back, he wouldn’t talk about it. He said he had lost too many friends,” she said.

All the Wabasha woman knew was that her brother, Arden Gullickson, was drafted and served in the Army on Iwo Jima during World War II. Then came an unexpected discovery made just in time for this year’s Veterans Day — a forgotten letter.

“I am writing this letter in a foxhole, and it won’t be very nice, as the wind is blowing and it’s dusty,” he wrote. “I haven’t had much sleep the last week or washed, but I am going to get tonight off to sleep.”

The letter is addressed to his parents and written April 1945 from “somewhere in the Pacific.”

“I never knew this letter existed,” his sister said.

Neither did Gullickson’s widow, Donna Gullickson. But while volunteering at the Whalan Museum, she came across a donated scrapbook filled with old newspaper clippings.

“All of a sudden, I see this (article that says) Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Gullickson received a letter from their son in the Pacific,” she said.

And there it was — an old newspaper story with the reprinted letter written by the Army private.

Donna said her husband did not talk a lot about the war. After he returned, he spent his life working as a carpenter. What Donna did know was that Arden served in the Pacific theater and he mentioned how tents would fill with water. He once shared that his best friend was killed in the war. But that was the extent of it. Arden died 12 years ago, taking most of his stories with him.

“It was really terrible, the little bit I have heard (about the war),” his widow said.

While the letter does not provide much detail, it does give a little more insight into life on the front lines. He wrote: “Well, I am a rifleman, and I am at the front in combat. We are blasting the Japs out! They live in caves, so it is a hard job.”

Arnoldy was 10 when her brother left the family farm in Whalan for war.

“I know he left from Lanesboro with a whole bunch of them in a train where they usually kept cattle,” she said.

The night he left, she cried herself to sleep. It would be three years before he would return home.

“He didn’t complain about anything — except me driving a tractor too fast,” she said.

Pvt. Arden Gullickson ends his Pacific letter with a simple request: “Don’t worry about me. I will be back with you again.”