Vernell R. Miller Papers

The Vernell R. Miller Correspondence consists of 101 family letters and 6 miscellaneous items, covering the period from 1945 through 1946. Primarily the correspondence between Vernell and his parents while serving with the 13th Engineers, the letters tend to deal with mundane daily activities of camp life, and family matters.

The early correspondence deals primarily with adjustment to army life, issues of trying to get a discharge on the basis of agricultural hardship for his family, and descriptions of activities and people in his unit. A sequence of several letters written while en route between Ft. Riley, Kansas and Fort Ord, California, give his reactions to seeing the varying landscape of mountains and observations of agricultural and ranching activity along the way.

A gap of several months occurs in the correspondence after he arrives in Ft. Ord and resumes when he is posted overseas to Seoul, Korea where his duties seem to involve driving trucks, working with parts supply for heavy equipment, and finally with the Division Fire Department. There are almost no internal references to impressions of Korea except for derogatory mention of gooks and to sending some kimonos home. For the most part the description of activities parallels that of his impressions of army base operations in the States.