JUDY BARRETT LITOFF was a professor of history at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island. BARBARA WOODALL TAYLOR was married to career army officer, Charles E. Taylor. After retirement, the Taylors lived the rest of their lives in Florida. CHARLES E. TAYLOR retired as a lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Army after thirty-one years of service. He and Barbara Wooddall Taylor lived the rest of their lives in Florida.

In Fairburn, Georgia, when I was growing up, everyone knew them simply as CharlieandBarbara, one word—for they seemed almost uncannily close, a single unit of harmony, two parts of a whole. Now everyone who reads this extraordinary document of love in a time of war will feel the power of that closeness. Miss You is the quintessential American chronicle, as substantial and rich and enduring as the Southern earth. Read and cherish it—there are none of us who wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves such a love as this.