He spends many nights immersed in strangers' wartime dispatches, and he reads every letter that is sent to him. Right now he is organizing the letters by category and chronologically. Some he plans to publish in a book, the royalties from which he says he will donate entirely to veterans' groups. Others may go into a Web-based archive, and some originals will be donated to museums or other collections. In going through the papers, Carroll has become something of a historian.
Nobody writes about the joy of war.
It's all about the horrors. Letters, along with diaries, are the best resources we have for understanding that drama. When letters are lost, we all lose. Society at large loses. Although Carroll encourages families to keep all their letters for their personal collections, not every note from the front is of interest to the public.