Customer Reviews

Good Night Officially: The Pacific War Letters of a Destroyer Sailor (Reville Book)

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Orvill Raines was my friend. We were together
from the time the ship was commissioned 4/3/44
until he died on April 6, 1945 at Okinawa.
Ray Ellen (his wife) kept these letters and when
I first contacted her in 1990 she mentioned them
to me and offered them to the HOWORTH VETS. We published them at our own expense.
Williams McBride took the War Diary AND
Letters/Memories and completed the manuscript
that became Good Night Officially.
After our Memorial Service aboard the USS
Kidd in Baton Rouge, I escorted her around
the ship and was able to answer all the questions that she had, had down thru the
years.
It made it possible. It made it worth while

Although some of the love letters become repetitive, this book captures better than anything the true nature of the destroyer war in the Pacific against Japan. The commentary gets to the point of the hard work and anonymous sacrifice of the common enlisted man in the desperate fight against Japan. The final letter written by Yeoman Raines, and delivered to his wife after his death, is one of the most wrenching and moving literary expressions to come from this war.