Howard Weistling always wanted to be a comic strip artist, but felt he should enlist in the Army after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. His plane was shot down by the Nazi's and he spent a year in a prisoner of war camp in Barth, Germany.
To cope with starving and being homesick, Weistling drew a comic book on cigarette wrappers bound together with scrap metal. It was sent around camp, one panel at a time and gave the soldiers something to look forward to. One day the Nazi guards just disappeared. The Russians were marching on the camp. When they were liberated, the book was left behind, and Howard never mentioned it to his family.
When Howard returned home to California he had a wife and they soon had a child, so he permanently gave up on his comic book dreams and got a real job to support his growing family.
He didn't say a word about the war for years but one of his sons Morgan was able to pry a few stories out of him. They developed a special bond. One night Howard saw Morgan sketching ideas for a poster. "And he just got tears in his eyes 'like you're doing what I always had hoped I would do. And he was literally — I could just feel it — living through the moment like that's his way of living that dream out." Morgan said he wanted to go to art school, which his parents sent him to when he was 15. By the time Howard died in 2002, he beamed with pride that his son had become a successful painter.
Morgan however had never seen anything that his hero had drawn. He often spoke with his mom and siblings about how much he wished he could have seen something his dad had drawn. "Then on a random day a few months ago I get an email from an older gentleman and he says, 'I think I may have some drawings that your father did when he was a POW in World War II. Would you like them?' And I just stared at that email and started crying.It was like getting my father back, but also getting a part of him that I had never met." Morgan says.
The unnamed donor explained that he had a business partner who had bought a truckload of Nazi artifacts at an auction and they had found Howard's book, with his name engraved. A quick google search lead them to Morgan.
"It was like him being able to tell me the story of the war in a way he was never able to before."
If you'd like to see some of the drawings click here.