Coming of age in a season of war: a son's correspondence home It was a time when many young men were leaving home for the very first time, and the journeys they embarked on were experienced by relatives and friends through letters sent home. With This You Have the Works is a chronicle of Gordon Lee Stuart's days as a raw recruit, being sent to various training centers in the United States, and as a mature U.S. Army airman abroad. For three and a half years, Stuart penned over one-hundred and fifty letters to his mother in what stands today as a time capsule of thoughts, experiences and feelings about daily life, relationships, and finding the girl of his dreams. Stuart's letters mark the passage of history and provide a personal perspective on an tumultuous era where the only thing a person could count on was change.