This collection consists of 19 letters, covering the period from Wednesday, December 10, 1941 to Tuesday, May 18, 1943.

WRITER: Aiken, Patricia O'Brien
Location: Maryland
Relation to Recipient: Sweetheart/Warbride
Ethnicity: Not Identified
Socio/Econ Circum.: Professional - Misc.

RECIPIENT: Aiken, Albert Shelton
Location(s): United States
Military Branch: Army Air Corps
Rank first letter: 2nd Lieutenant
Rank last letter: Captain

Patricia O'Brien, who had grown up in Iowa, was an eighteen year old student at the University of Maryland in July 1940 when she met Lieutenant Al Aiken, a twenty-three year old pilot in the Army Air Corps. In October 1940, Al was sent to Texas for advanced training. After graduation in March 1941, he was stationed at Selfridge Field, near Detroit, Michigan.

Although Patricia and Al had planned to marry in May 1942, the marriage was postponed when Al was sent to Alaska a few days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. They eventually married in Iowa on January 23, 1943 while Al was on a one month transfer to the United States in order to attend school. After spending one month together, Al was reassigned to Alaska where he remained for the remainder of the war.

During the summer of 1942, Patricia began working for the military in Washington, D.C. In October 1942, she accepted a position with the Army Air Corps in Alaska. On her way to Alaska, during a stopover in Seattle, she received a telephone call from her father telling her that her future husband was concerned about what life would be like for an unmarried woman in "Seward's Icebox." She returned home to Iowa, where she remained until she and Al married on January 23, 1943. In February 1943, she went back to Washington to an Army Airs Corps position in the newly constructed Pentagon.

The couple was reunited at the end of the war. Al remained in the Air Force, retiring in 1966.