The Correspondence series plays the most significant role in the collection by revealing William (Bill) Herbert and his family, friends, colleagues, etc. even if for only a brief period of his life. Through the letters between Bill and his mother Ernestine, in particular, a picture of military life in Europe is gleaned as well as everyday life back home in New York where Mrs. Herbert lived.

Letters from Bill to his mother actually begin in the summer of 1940 when 17-year-old Bill was at Citizens' Military Training Camp in Fort Dix, New Jersey. (Letters from his mother to Bill do not appear until 1943 which is apparently when she started saving carbon copies of her letters to her sons.)

Bill's letters to his mother mention his day-to-day affairs in the Army where he was in the Signal Corps. Until the end of 1943, Bill was stationed in New Jersey and Virginia; in December of 1943 he was sent to England where he remains until early 1945. He then spent a month in France and was then sent to Germany. A few highlights of the correspondence between Bill and his mother include:

April 1943: Bill starts Officer Candidate School (but gets turned down); his mother mentions the "black-outs" in New York (which were common and planned during World War II).

October 1943: Bill is getting ready to be shipped overseas. He asks his mother to send him a bayonet and more chewing gum.

November 1943: Ernestine makes some comments about Election Day: "We certainly gave the New Deal another good trouncing. Maybe they will think twice about a fourth term." (Bill is only 20 so he will need to wait another year to vote.) Bill writes that he would like his mother to send a few more knives for the other men, and also a leather writing outfit, Speedball pen outfit, and a can opener.

December 1943: Bill arrives in England; he sends his mother his will as he was advised. His mother says she will send him a subscription to Reader's Digest.

January 1944: Bill tells his mother that if his letters seem dry and uninteresting it's because security is much tighter in the ETO (European Theatre of Operations). The letters get censored and sometimes returned to them for re-writing. Soldiers give girls Lux soap because it's nicer than anything they have there in England. He gets to go to London on a pass and mentions seeing the Tower of London, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, etc. All the bobbies who walk a beat have to be at least 6 feet tall. His mother mentions going to "the Garden" to see Sonja Henie's ice show. Bill's group has been working to help people re-build houses and repair roofs that were bombed. He has met a fun family (Lockwood) with a daughter named Joan that he has been seeing.

Other "discussions" between Bill and his mother involve finances, i.e. sending money orders home, his mother buying and sending things that Bill needs, etc. Bill talks about buying a Gregg shorthand book to learn shorthand. His mother tells Bill that this Easter there was no White House egg roll because we can't waste food during the war. Bill relates the pursuits that he and his new friends in England are engaged in--darts, Monopoloy, drinking tea, etc. He describes his girlfriend, Joan, to his mother who has asked him multiple times to do so--she's 18, pretty, likes to do the things that he likes, etc. Bill's mother reports news from home--speeches by General Eisenhower and Winston Churchill--the latter apparently discussing the topic of robot bombs.

In 1944 also, mother and son discuss the upcoming Presidential election in which both affirm that they will be voting for Republican candidate Thomas Dewey. Many of Bill's letters to his mother have rectangular holes in them, where parts of sentences were neatly excised by the censors.

In 1945 Bill was sent to France for a short while, and then spent the rest of his Signal Corps assignment in Germany. In May, Bill's mother mentioned V-E Day but assured him that there would be no celebration until all of her sons were home safe again. (Her other two sons were in the Pacific.) At that point, Bill mentioned that censorship had been lifted in the E.T.U. and that it "seems queer to seal my own envelopes." He describes a trip he took to the Buchenwald concentration camp where he witnessed "...stacks and stacks of bodies; starved, wizened-up, and charred remains all over..."

In the fall of 1945, many servicemen returned home and all of Bill's letters during this time mention his imminent departure, which finally occurred in November. The last letter he sent home to his mother was dated November 6, 1945.

The bulk of the correspondence in this series is between Bill and his mother; however there is a small amount between Bill's brother Ernest and their mother, and an even smaller amount between his other brother Jack and their mother. All of the correspondence stems from the same time period.