A Man at War (On the Letters from Pilots of the 1st Latvian Aviation Regiment)

The article includes letters from three pilots of the 1st Latvian Night Bomber Regiments Oļģerts Šprunks, Bruno Capeks and Voldemars Ozoliņš, send from the front to their relatives and friends, as well as a letter of Late Šprunkа to her stepson O. Šprunks. The letters were published in the book “Vēstules no frontes” in 1984. The 1st Latvian Night Bomber Regiment was formed in March-July 1943. The pilots of the regiment fought in the main offensive operations of the Red Army on the NW Front and played an important role in the liberation of Latvia from the Nazis. The letters inform about the military everyday life of pilots, reflect their attitude to the war, to the brutality of the Nazis, to the tragedy of children who lost their mothers, etc. The authors of the letters are courageous men and high-class specialists, but they are deadly tired of the war, of losing their comrades, of being parted from their loved ones. The main thing they were fighting for was to liberate their homeland Latvia from the Nazis and the return peaceful life for its inhabitants. Late Šprunka's letter written in the morning of the May 9, 1945 expressed the great joy of victory, but also deep sorrow for all those who died and the desire to do everything possible to keep their memory alive. Various sources used in the paper help to reconstruct the biographies of the authors, as well as the biographies of other pilots who are mentioned in the letters. Thus, it made possible to incorporate their fates in the history of Latvia and the Latvian people in the 20th century.