Couple's daily letters form core of WWII memoir
Published: March 13, 2005
Section: Daily Break, page E3
Type of story: BOOK REVIEW

© 2005- Landmark Communications Inc.
WAR AND LOVE A Surgeon's Memoir of Battlefield Medicine with Letters to and From Home HOWARD JONES and GEORGEANNA SEEGAR JONES


Xlibris. 554 pp. $26.99.


BY KATRICE HARDY

FOR MORE THAN a year Howard W. and Georgeanna Seegar Jones maintained a love affair through letters .

Georgeanna's were rich with details about their two young children, her work as a doctor and researcher, and their life after the war.

Howard's letters were filled with every detail of his days without his wife , from the young soldiers he operated on to the colleagues with whom he lived and worked.

If a day went by when one of them didn't write a letter, the next day he or she would write two.

"War and Love" is an extensive collection of memoirs, diary entries, photographs, maps and, of course, letters.

They tell the story of two young doctors who were separated early in their marriage during the Second World War.

At the time, neither imagined their thoughts would one day become a part of a book. The idea to bind their wartime memories dawned on Howard Jones in the late 1990s shortly after he read another book about the war.

One day, while digging through boxes in his family's home, he came upon countless notebooks and letters whose existence he had forgotten.

The book was initially intended for the Joneses' three children, two of whom have followed their parents' lead and become doctors.

"War and Love" is a powerful reminder of how far the medical profession has come. It is clear that the tools, instruments and knowledge back then were light-years behind what is used and known today.

Howard Jones' habit of striving for perfection is evident in the copious, detailed notes he included in the book about the anonymous soldiers he operated on.

In letters to his wife, he would ask for the latest research on certain medical procedures. She would always oblige and often sent him medical instruments as well.

It becomes evident that even back then, Georgeanna had an interest in reproductive medicine and wanted to help women with difficulties bearing children.

During times when many women were struggling to serve as the head of households , Georgeanna raised two babies, cared for her parents, attended to patients and conducted research.

In her letters to her husband, she wrote longingly of a time when she could work alongside him. Only there, she felt, could she be spectacular .

Indeed, in 1981, the two, while working in Eastern Virginia Medical School's Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine, were responsible for delivering the nation's first baby through in-vitro fertilization .


* Katrice Hardy covers medical issues for The Virginian-Pilot.

{CAPTION} BILL TIERNAN/VIRGINIAN-PILOT FILE

Howard and Georgeanna S. Jones