WWII Veteran and Wife Reunited with Wartime Love Letters Stolen 40 Years Ago

By Daily Mail Reporter

Credit: Daily Mail

WWII Veteran and Wife Reunited with Wartime Love Letters Stolen 40 Years Ago

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    Lloyd and Marian met in high school and got married on December 31, 1942

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January 6, 2013 Updated Jan 6, 2013 at 2:50 PM PDT

When Lloyd and Marian Michael celebrated their 70th anniversary last month, they were able to look back on their life together after being reunited with their wartime love letters that were stolen four decades earlier.

The couple from Rancho Cucamonga, California, had hundreds of missives, many of them dating back to Lloyd’s deployment to Europe during World War II, stored in a cardboard box locked inside steamer trunks along with other precious mementos.

But in the 1970s, someone broke into their home and got away with the letters, leaving the Michaels devastated.

For four decades, Lloyd and Marian thought that the tender notes they had sent to each other were gone forever, but in November, they got a call from a war veteran from Moreno Valley who told them he had their treasure trove of letters.

The man was not responsible for the burglary 40 years prior, which Mr Michael suspects was carried out by some young boys in the neighborhood.

The welcome news could not have come at a better time, a month before the Michaels’ 70th wedding anniversary, which the two celebrated on December 22.

'Neither one of us can read them; we break down too quick,' Lloyd Michael, 89, told Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.

According to Mr Michael, the man who returned them the personal missives found him through his military service number, and then narrowed down all the veterans with the same name by looking up the name of their spouse.

The Michaels' love story spanning more than seven decades began when the two were still in high school. In 1942, it the war raging in Europe, the two was married.

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