The collection consists of thirteen letters from Charles Gillispie home to his parents, Raymond Livingston Gillispie and Virginia Coulston, while he was stationed with the United States Army in France, Germany, and Austria during the final months of World War II in Europe in 1945. Letters are addressed from France, often from his army post near Rouen, (March 9th to March 25th; April 9th to April 13th), Germany (March 30th; April 19th to May 1st), Austria (May 5th to May 8th), Bavaria (June 4th), and Camp Shelby in Mississippi (August 25th). In his detailed letters, Gillispie describes the state of the citizenry and infrastructure in the French and German countryside; the living conditions of the soldiers; learning of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, and later, the death of Adolf Hitler; abysmal conditions at German prison camps for United States prisoners of war; the perception of African American soldiers by southern white soldiers in integrated military units; visiting Hitler's mountain retreat in Bavaria; his anticipation of future military service in the Pacific; and other topics. Most of the letters are typed versions of handwritten letters, and several exist in two drafts. Included with Gillispie's June 4th letter from Bavaria is a printed map titled "Obersalzberg, Hitler's Mountain Retreat."