The collection includes 236 letters with some postcards and V-mails that "Cliff" wrote to his mother, Gladys Shirley, letters written to Gladys Shirley from some relatives of a soldier-friend of Cliff's who'd died in an accident, letters to Cliff from a woman he'd befriended in South Wales, and from his deceased friend's mother, to whom he'd written a note of condolence. News clippings, ephemera, and documents are also included. Cliff's letters express worries about post-war life and jobs, the desire for furlough, the point system, railroad strikes, Churchill, FDR, prices and wages, blackouts, housing problems in the US, draft dodgers, poor conditions in Germany (children begging GI's for candy, etc.), illness, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation (UNRRA), and much more. Letters date from October 1943 though 1948. Cliff's letters to his mother end in March 1946.
