[This is the third installment of my presentation of my future parents’ correspondence from January into December 1945. If you haven’t read Parts 1 and 2, I urge you to go back to 19 September and 10 October to read them before going on to Part 3. There will be about 20 installments, spread out from now through the end of October 2027 on an irregular schedule.]
LETTERS FROM THE
FRONTS
January-December 1945
[After a brief précis of my dad’s army service (with commentary and some comparisons with my own), Part 3 picks up with Dad at sea on his way to France. It includes his only correspondence from aboard ship and then includes his earliest letters from the ETO (he was still in France).]
27 February – 15 March 1945
Dad had begun active duty in the army in March 1941, so by this point he’d served just shy of four years. He’d be discharged in February 1946, having served four years, 10 months, and 16 days in the Army of the United States. (He did a brief stint in the navy before transferring to the army, as I noted earlier [see Part 1].)
(The Army of the United States (AUS) was the temporary, wartime component of the service designed for citizen-soldiers who stepped up to serve just for the duration of World War II rather than as a career soldier. Most AUS officers returned to civilian life once the war was won; a few became Regular Army, that is, career, officers. The AUS was demobilized in 1946, reactivated for the Korean and Vietnam Wars, then disbanded in 1974.
(I was commissioned in the United States Army Reserve, or USAR, the component for officers mostly commissioned through ROTC [Reserve Officer Training Corps] who served their contractual obligation—usually two years—and then reverted to part-time or inactive reserve status.
(In my era [1969-1974], reserve officers were by far the largest contingent of officers in the active army—85% of the officer corps were USAR. In World War II, officers like my dad, AUS commissioned through OCS—the so-called “Ninety-Day Wonders”—comprised 70% of active-duty army officers.
(A third component is the Regular Army, composed mostly of West Point grads and officers and enlisted personnel who applied for the designation and were accepted. This constituted the permanent, professional, full-time core of the military who intended to stay in the service for a full career. These officers use the designation “USA” [for United States Army].
(The distinction among the various components is minimal in practical terms, except as a matter of prestige and deference. The initials formally appear after an officer’s name and rank in official records, orders, or the signature block of official correspondence, such as “Sherman T. Potter, Col., USA”; “B. J. Hunnicutt, Capt., USAR”; “Benjamin F. Pierce, Capt., AUS.” [I’m just making up that last one; the scripts never actually said.])
Starting as a private (E-1) and holding almost every enlisted rank through first sergeant (the second-highest army enlisted rank at that time—he skipped staff sergeant [E-6] and technical sergeant [E-7]), Dad made captain (O-3) in about two years (he became a first lieutenant [O-2] on 27 November 1942 and was probably promoted somewhere between March and June 1944).
By contrast, I served four years, two months, and 16 days on active duty between December 1969 and February 1974, starting as a second lieutenant, and it took me almost four years to make captain. (And, no, it wasn’t because I screwed up, thank you very much.) I was promoted to first lieutenant after a year in grade as second lieutenant, but it took three years for my name to appear on the captains’ list.
The difference? Dad’s army service was entirely during wartime when promotions come faster, especially in combat arms like artillery. My service began during a war—and when I started active duty, promotions to both first lieutenant and captain each came after one year in grade—but President Richard Nixon’s (1913-94; 37th President of the United States: 1969-74) “Vietnamization” plan meant that U.S. troops were withdrawn from Southeast Asia starting in 1969, accelerating in the early ’70s, and combat ceased for U.S. forces in January 1973.
Fewer troops meant fewer officers were needed, especially in the combat support branches like Military Intelligence, in which I served, so promotions slowed down before I reached my second year of service in December 1971. (The trade-off was that when the promotion to captain only required a year in grade, the officer had to serve another year in uniform to accept it. I was promoted two months before I got out of the army.) Still, three years to advance six grades (including OCS and a commission) as compared to four to rise two levels seems lopsided.
(Incidentally, when I was promoted to captain in December 1973, I asked the Berlin Station CO to use my dad’s World War II “railroad tracks” for the ceremony. I had had Dad send them to me just for that purpose. I still have them—a different style pin from the 1970s model and all scratched and scarred from age and, I presume, combat and outdoor bivouacking.)
In a letter on Tuesday, 27 February, Mom seemed aware of the reality that Dad would soon be leaving for a long time. She wrote how she’d been “spoiling” Dad “terribly with all this mail” over the “last 3 weeks” and how that might change now because, she reminded him, “I once warned you, I’m not a very fine correspondent.” As much as she’d miss him “constantly,” she explained, “I still may not get as many letters under-way as I should like to.” Letters were inadequate to express “the thoughts and feelings” she had, anyway: “It’s like floundering around in the dark: searching for words and phrases to say what’s really in one’s heart.”
Then she reported that Kris called her early that morning to say that Dad’s father had gotten a letter from his son. Mom immediately phoned home to find that she “had done the family one better by getting two” and left work “on an emergency ‘home visit’” to read them. (I can only presume that these were Dad’s letters of 24 and 26 February because they’re the last two before embarkation in the collection.)
After some of her usual complaints about work, Mom finished up with effusive regrets for not being able to see Dad “just once more, on one more pass” before he leaves. It’s clearly a farewell letter, though it’s just as clear that no one knew exactly when the battalion was scheduled to leave. (In the next couple of letters, dated in early March, Mom indicated that she still didn’t know if Dad had left yet or was just restricted to camp.)
Dad’s unit actually shipped out from the New York Port of Embarkation aboard the U.S.S. Argentina for what the army called EAME—the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign—on the morning of Tuesday, 27 February, the day after his last stateside letter and the day of Mom’s last one to him before Dad reached France. He was “at sea” on Monday, 5 March, the date of his next correspondence, and arrived in France on Sunday, 11 March, three days before he wrote his first letter to Mom from abroad.
(In his early letters from Europe, Dad never said exactly where in France he was, which, like the precise date of departure and other specific information, was probably classified. Since his battalion continually moved forward (north) after arriving in the European Theater, I guessed he landed at Le Havre and the 529th bivouacked somewhere outside of the French capital—surrendered by the Germans on 25 August 1944.
(On 21 May, 10 weeks after his arrival in France—and the day censorship restrictions were lifted—Dad revealed that the unit did indeed land in Le Havre. The Allies had liberated the port on 12 September 1944.
(After I reached the 21 May letter, I decided to insert the details Dad disclosed post-censorship about his trans-Atlantic voyage and arrival in France. In some instances, I’d already pieced together some deductions and guesses about the facts—I was even right on a lot of my surmises—and I’m including those conclusions as well.
(Other information revealed in that letter pertained to Dad’s then-current situation in Germany, so I’ve inserted it where it was applicable, as readers will see.
(I had figured the camp was probably east or north of Paris because less than two weeks after landing in France, Dad, his CO, and a small detachment from his battalion traveled north to Belgium; Holland; and Aachen, Germany, which are generally northeast of Paris. Once again, Dad revealed the facts in the 21 May letter.)
After landing,
the battalion was taken to Camp Lucky Strike near Fecamp (the home of Benedictine [the herbal liqueur]). This was a large tent camp occupying a former German airfield, and was used as a deprocessing area for units prior to their commitment at the front. We stayed there just about a month. Our time was utilized in unpacking equipment, drawing new equipment, putting our guns [namely, the howitzers, not their small arms] and tractors in condition, and consuming a monthly liquor ration.
An artillery tractor or gun tractor was a specialized, heavy-duty vehicle used to tow artillery pieces. In World War II, before the development of self-propelled artillery, the U.S. Army used both wheeled and tracked tractors in the ETO.
Camp Lucky Strike was one of several American camps ringing the port of Le Havre used for assembly areas for units entering combat. They were known as Cigarette Camps because most of them were named for American cigarette brands such as Lucky Strike, Pall Mall, and Old Gold.
Lucky Strike was between Fécamp and Saint Valery-en-Caux, about 45 miles northwest of Paris along the Channel coast of France. It could accommodate 58,000 troops. We’ll see shortly that on its way back to Le Havre to depart France, the 529th was sent to another camp called Camp Washington, D.C., one of the City Camps that were a companion array for the Cigarette Camps.
Back home, Mother was once more complaining about the lack of mail from Dad, and I suspect that was due both to the fact that he was on a troop ship in the middle of the Atlantic for 12 days and the wartime logistics of delivering mail from the front.
Mother wrote on Friday, 2 March, noting that it was “a week ago from a couple of hours from now” that Dad got his “surprise” pass. It seems Mother and Dad had even made some elaborate plans for the following day (involving a “wonderful buggy ride”) that never came to fruition. (When Dad wrote on that last Monday, he didn’t say anything suggesting he was on his way to Europe; he was already aboard ship by the time Mom wrote this letter.
As Mom said, it had been almost a week since she and Dad had seen each other and three days since she’d heard from him. She reported that Dad’s sister Kris had been notified the day before that she’d been promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) in the WAVES (the equivalent to an army first lieutenant [O-2], one rank below Dad) and “is very proud of herself.” So was everybody else, Mom wrote, and they planned to celebrate “in true & magnificent style” on Monday—“Probably a movie—or something similar, before or after a short ‘snort.’”
In other family news, Mom’s father had arrived home on the previous Tuesday (27 February) from a trip to Mexico. (It sounded like a business trip rather than pleasure. Grandpa Harry may well have gotten doll parts or fabrics from Mexico.)
His first question for his daughter was, “Have you been seeing the boy-friend – Has he left yet?” (That’s the first time “boyfriend” has been mentioned in the letters, by the way.)
Mother told her father that my father-to-be was “really on [his] way this time,” but my future grandfather responded, “But you’re not sure!?” Mother wrote Dad she convinced her father, but he was also “a little sorry.” “In the final analysis,” Mom added, “you did leave a sweet taste in his mouth!” I guess my dad redeemed himself after his behavior at the New Year’s party!
(By the time I was old enough to know what was going on around me, Dad and Pop-Pop H.F. certainly had an excellent relationship. Not only did Pop-Pop get my dad a job after he married my mother—the movie theater gig in Washington, where my grandfather also arranged for an apartment for the newlyweds—Dad became a member of the board of Pop-Pop’s doll business, eventually helping to engineer the sales of the company, first in the 1950s and then in the ’70s. [Horsman Dolls was sold, returned, and sold again; see my post on the doll company, already referenced in Part 2, for an explanation.] By that time—Pop-Pop died in 1967—Dad was essentially the family representative on the board.)
Mom wrote Dad again the next day, 3 March, a week since she last saw my father and even then unsure whether Dad was still in New York or on his way to the war. She complained, as always, about missing his letters and reminisced about an evening she and Dad spent in Trenton with some other couples, including Dad’s battalion-mate and friend Fred Morris, a while back.
Photos of the evening had been taken and Mom promised to send some if any came out “decent”—but she’d “have to approve, first,” she insisted. A sort of civilian form of censorship in action. Mom wrote that she was getting “‘a Hell of a lot more sleep’ than during the weeks you were here,” but said “that if I had my choice I’d take the sleeplessness & you for all the shut-eye!!”
Mother also wrote of skipping a gig “hostessing at an officer’s dance” at some local military post. (She went to “a pretty good picture, instead: Winged Victory . . . . Entertaining as well as being something of a tear-jerker in spots.”)
I mention this bit of chit-chat—Mom’s letters especially, though Dad’s, too, to some extent, were full of gossipy small talk; it’s part of what makes the letters so interesting—only because it was at just such a social event, if I remember the story accurately, that my future mother met my dad’s sister.
If it hadn’t been for Mom’s job at the Red Cross and her occasional call to act as hostess at social events for GI’s, where she’d be expected to socialize with servicemen and -women far from their families, my mother and father might never have met! And where would that have left me?
(Winged Victory [Twentieth Century Fox, 1944; dir. George Cukor], by the way, is a curious bit of wartime Broadway and Hollywood lore. Moss Hart [1904-61], the writer best known for the plays Once In A Lifetime, You Can’t Take It with You, and The Man Who Came to Dinner, all with George S. Kaufman [1889-1961]; the screenplays for Gentleman’s Agreement and the 1954 A Star Is Born; and his autobiography, Act One, was commissioned by the U.S. Army Air Forces to write a morale-boosting, patriotic play in 1943, and after traveling around the country observing pilot training at various air bases, wrote Winged Victory.
(The play, with a cast of nearly 300, débuted in Boston that fall, becoming a huge hit and transferring to Broadway in November, where it ran for 212 performances before 350,000 spectators. The New York production closed in May 1944 so that the entire cast could go to Hollywood to film the play; the movie was released just before Christmas 1944. After the filming, the play went on tour around the country until August 1945, playing to 800,000 viewers in over 445 mountings.
(Because of its immense cast and the indelible connection to the WWII era and milieu, Winged Victory is one of the biggest Broadway successes that’s never been revived anywhere after the wartime national tour. Though the film is available on video, I don’t believe it’s ever played on television.)
On Monday, 5 March, Dad finally wrote. He was aboard the troop transport Argentina on the Atlantic and the correspondence was a V-Mail, a tactic meant to help solve the problems with mail to and from combat zones I raised.
(Dad didn’t identify his troop ship as the Argentina until much later. A former ocean liner originally christened S.S. Pennsylvania, built in 1929 and renamed in 1938, the Argentina was requisitioned by the War Shipping Administration and served as a troop transport from 1942 to 1946.)
V-Mail was a World War II development, used between 1942 and 1945, both to save space and weight that could be then devoted to shipments of war supplies, and to enhance security. Because V-Mails (the V was for ‘Victory’) were single pages, they were easier to scrutinize by censors.
The original pre-printed letter-size form on which the message was written was photographed and transported by ship or plane as thumbnail-sized microfilm images, taking up considerably less space in mailbags than full-sized paper letters. (Thirty-seven mail bags weighing 2,575 pounds were reduced to one bag weighing 45 pounds, says the National Postal Museum.)
V-Mail was also a faster way of getting word back and forth between GI’s abroad and family and friends at home—12 days as opposed to a month. The V-Mail negatives were then printed (at a quarter of full size) at V-Mail facilities at the other end to be delivered to the addressees. The photographing and printing processes also thwarted any effective use of microdots or invisible ink because such espionage techniques wouldn’t be reproduced by the photography.
Oddly, the 5 March V-Mail my dad wrote—it was his only V-Mail in the collection—was on the paper V-Mail form, not a photo print, so I wasn’t certain it was even sent. (Mom’s V-Mails were like small photostatic positives—as opposed to the white-on-black of the usual photostat. Photostats, for those too young to remember the time before photocopiers, were an earlier form of making exact copies of documents.) As I learned later, this turns out to be an erroneous interpretation of the facts.
Little more than a note, the one-page, single-sided V-Mail sounds as if Dad had been on board for several days (as, in fact, he had been). “Monotony is the chief characteristic of this voyage,” Dad grumbled. Aside from “the necessary chores to insure [sic] safety and maintain cleanliness,” his and his cabinmates’ principal activity “consist[ed] almost entirely of assuming an [sic] horizontal position practically all the time.”
He reported that he and the five other captains who shared his “comparatively comfortable” quarters “are all very compatible.” Dad’s bunkmates included his buddy from the 529th, Fred Morris, and the two young officers “gripe to each other to our mutual benefit.” He closed the note by telling Mom that on deck “practically every night . . . I indulge in a wishfull [sic] myriad of thoughts all containing you.”
That was my father’s only message from shipboard; in his 21 May letter, Dad revealed a little more about what he characterized as “a practically uneventful trip”:
There were several submarine alerts, and the escort dropped several ash cans [depth charges, an anti-submarine explosive] during the voyage, but other than that we suffered no alarm. Two of the ships in the convoy did collide in the dark, and they turned back to the Bahamas for repairs.
Dad’s next letter was dated 14 March, nine days later and three days after he’d landed in Le Havre (11 March), and annotated merely “France.” From Mom’s letters, it looks as if Dad’s V-Mail from the ship hadn’t reached her—at least not yet; she hadn’t mentioned having received it so far. In her next several letters, written every few days, she lamented not having heard from Dad for weeks.
Apparently, Dad’s family received mail from him, but I don’t know when—I’m guessing not from shipboard—or how often, and Kris shared the news with Mom, but Mom was unhappy that she hadn’t gotten any letters herself. The first letter she said she got was Dad’s first from France, written a little over two weeks after his last letter from stateside.
Meanwhile, not having heard from Dad except second hand through Kris, Mom continued to write to him. In a letter dated Tuesday, 6 March (but finished on Wednesday), she reported on that celebration of Kris’s promotion Monday evening, which had turned into an after-dinner affair. It was “hardly ‘very showy,’” Mother affirmed, just “coffee & a gab” with the WAVES “and then apropos to the occasion,” the young women took in Here Come the Waves (Paramount Pictures, 1944), another wartime propaganda flick, this one a musical starring Bing Crosby as a crooning seaman and Betty Hutton as twin WAVES.
Mom’s rating: “Really riotous—tho’ I’m not certain if it had that effect on me because the picture was that enjoyable, or because the fun derived, was ‘catchy.’” Kris and her roommate, Blossom, “thought it was great—and couldn’t get enough of the ‘boot’ training portrayed—it reminded them so much of their younger days!!” (You understand we’re talking about a bunch of 20-somethings here.)
“In honor of an occasion, as it was,” the ladies went for late champagne cocktails after the movie (“Flashy! What?”) and “had an opportunity for a wonderful pickup!” They “turned down the invitation,” Mom recounted, “in the style of true well-brought-up young ladies, or naval officers,” but she revealed that “2 gentlemen, one in the navy, the other 6 hours discharged, offered us ‘another round.’”
The big news was that Mother decided on Wednesday to move in with Kris and Blossom for a while. Mom’s parents had gone to New York City for “10 days-or-so,” leaving her “to fend for herself.” I guess she was feeling bereft, so she went looking for company, “pawning myself off on anyone who’d have me.” Mom arrived at her new digs late and discovered Kris “in Blue-jeans (what the farmers wear, you know) midst thousands of pots, pans, cutlery, dishes & food piled high—very much bewildering.” Mom’s account of what came next reads like the stuff of farce (think Servant of Two Masters—or maybe a Lucille Ball routine).
Her very lovely intention was to have a banquet-like spread ready for Blos, who was to come in from N.Y. . . . and me, who was being sort-of welcomed! Things apparently were not cooking up as they were expected to do—and she just had too many things to handle by herself. However, at about 7:30 we were ready to sit down – Blos never came home in time for dinner, & so down we sat anyway & the dinner was . . . lovely. Well, we did have fun.
I find Mom’s wry remark about blue jeans amusing, even though I take it as at least mildly sarcastic. (She can’t really have thought my father didn’t know what blue jeans were.) Jeans were common work pants, even for women, by the ’40s. The navy work uniform for enlisted sailors was dungarees (which may well have been what Kris was wearing, bought at her base’s Ship’s Store, the navy’s PX). By the time I was a little boy in the early ’50s, jeans were the usual outdoor play clothes for even us middle-class kids and by the ’60s, they were practically the uniform for teens like me.
(We weren’t allowed to wear jeans—or any pants “with rivets”—to school when I was an elementary- and middle-schooler, but I went to a Quaker private school; we weren’t even allowed to wear loafers or sneakers—shoes had to be laced and leather; sneakers and tennis or basketball shoes were made of canvas in those days.
(By high school, an all-boys’ prep school in my case, we wore jackets and ties and in my freshman and sophomore years of college, that was also the dress code—though, by then, below the waist, jeans and even mocs were tolerated. That disconnect finally felled the dress requirements after my second year.)
Mom wrote again on Thursday, 8 March, and expressed how much fun it was staying with the WAVES. They did go to bed early, though, Mom affirmed, “10:00 the latest,” so she was getting lots of extra sleep—she couldn’t even read because the light would disturb her new roommates.
“Being somewhat bored,” Mom reported, the young women went off on a jaunt “to Princeton for dinner (a hot dog in the street from a ‘vendor’) and a really good scary movie!” She proclaimed the junket “great sport wasting the gas”—which, you may know, was rationed during the war—“and going on such a binge!” Mom ended by saying how much she hoped Dad would send a letter “the minute you hit land” (which she couldn’t know would be in three days’ time).
(Princeton—12½ miles north of Trenton, a 25-minute drive—is an ironically prophetic destination. In 1947, Kris married a Trentonian, my Uncle George, and settled in New Jersey’s capital city. After raising a family there, Kris and George moved to Princeton in the late ’70s, where they spent the rest of their lives.
(My cousin Bill and I both went to prep school in Princeton in the early 1960s, though I left after my sophomore year to finish high school in Switzerland when my father was posted to Germany as a Foreign Service Officer [see “An American Teen In Germany” (9 and 12 March 2013), and “Home Alone” (12, 15, and 18 June 2015) referenced in the introduction to Part 1]. Bill’s sister, Lisa, also went to high school in Princeton; brother Jim attended another prep school in nearby Lawrenceville. Cousin Lisa still lives in the Princeton area with her family and Cousin Bill did as well until a recent move to Bucks Country, Pennsylvania—the area where my mother and her sister, as well as my brother, went to prep school.)
Mom included a curious announcement in this letter—for which she never provided any further explanation. The rationale for deciding to dash off to Princeton for “something new with lots of spicey variety” was that Blossom wasn’t “interested in doing the every-day sort-of-things.” The cause for that, Mom tossed off, was that “she’d just been asked to christen a ship in Portland, Oregon”!
I have no idea what that was about—and it never came up again. It sounds like a pretty big deal, a little bombshell—especially considering that Blossom Willens, like Kris, was a pretty junior officer, and she was all the way across the country from Oregon. (Blossom was from Chicago, so she wasn’t local to Portland, either.) I have the feeling there was more to this story, but there’s no one left for me to ask.
(I have learned, though, that Portland was the home of several shipyards of Kaiser Shipyards, which built hundreds of Victory ships, Liberty ships, and escort carriers during World War II. Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser [1882-1967], entered the shipbuilding industry in order to help meet the construction goals set by the United States Maritime Commission for merchant shipping.
(The U.S. Navy frequently selected WAVE officers, even an ensign based on the East Coast, to sponsor and christen these ships to boost wartime morale, honor the contributions of women in the military, and publicize the WAVE program.)
In an undated letter following the weekend of 10-11 March (I’d guess it was written on Monday, the 12th, or Tuesday, the 13th), Mom said she’d spent the weekend in New York City, visiting with her “uncles, aunts, and cousins.”
(My mother’s family moved to Trenton from the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the 1930s [see “Horsman Dolls”], but there were still a lot of relatives there—my grandfather, for instance, had three sisters who all had daughters around my mother’s age with whom Mom was very close—so my mom and her family often used to travel into the city, about a 60-to-75-minute train ride or 90-minute drive, for entertainment, shopping, family events and visits, and holidays.)
While in the city, Mom took the opportunity to take care of “something I’d wanted to do long ago”: buy Dad “a ‘farewell’ gift.” She explained that she’d wanted to give Dad the gift in person, “but there were so many confusing mix-ups connected with your leaving I never was able to attend to anything.” She elucidated:
I noticed you weren’t wearing one of those identification bracelets – because you didn’t like them or because you just never had one I don’t know. However, I like them, & particularly the one I sent to you. Too, you won’t hold against me my sentimentality, expressed on the back-side – please, sweet? All in all, it’s merely a little remembrance I wanted you to have – and you will remember me because of it, won’t you?
Well, here’s a little surprise—and the unveiling of a minor mystery.
Serendipitously, I found the little gift card that Mom had written to send with the ID bracelet; it was among some family keepsakes—graduation programs, diplomas and certificates, photos, letters, and so on—in a box of odds and ends Mom kept, but I never knew what it was until I reread that letter. The envelope for the card was addressed to “Capt. E. M. K*****, 0-1165639.” The note said essentially the same thing as Mom’s letter (except it didn’t say that the gift with which it was enclosed was the bracelet), closing with: “Lots of luck, sweet – Hope you don’t mind wearing this – Love – Me.”
I don’t know if Dad wore the bracelet while he was overseas—he did confide in me years later that he didn’t really like wearing one and he didn’t during his and Mom’s marriage—but he kept the bracelet in his jewelry box, and I have it now. It’s sterling silver and on the front, Mom had “GENE K*****” inscribed (later, after Dad got Alzheimer’s, Mom added their phone number in Washington, D.C.) and on the back, she put “JUDY 1 - 1 - 45,” the date they met.
(Now the letter, gift card, and gift are all together again—more or less. I put the card with the letter in the scrapbook, but the bracelet is in my jewelry box. I think the fact that all three of those items still exist and had been preserved over all these years—in three separate places—and that my rereading the letters allowed me to identify them all and reunite them is remarkable.
(It’s not so astonishing that I connected Mother’s letter to the bracelet in my jewelry box—her description of the gift was a pretty broad clue—but that I linked the letter to the note card was serendipitous. Language in Mom’s letter is nearly identical to language in her note on the card. I wrote up this incident as a sample of what “Letters from the Fronts” contains; it’s posted on ROT as “The ID Bracelet” [18 August 2025].)
Still waiting to hear from Dad, Mom wrote on Thursday, 15 March (“Income tax due,” she noted; 15 April didn’t become Tax Day until 1955), how much she was enjoying spring, which had broken out in New Jersey—she described the day before as “a day of days! It was simply gorgeous—really spring; with lots of sunshine, & warm, warm weather”—and wished Dad were there so they could take “a long long walk somewhere”—and then added “pardon the suggestion—perhaps a drive would be better!”
(I assume that’s a reference to the frequent hikes Dad had to go on as part of this army duties. I don’t recall Dad saying anything about hiking later, but when I was a Boy Scout and started going on overnight camping trips, he did say unequivocally that he’d had enough of “sleeping on the ground” in the army and wasn’t interested in going camping ever again. He never did, either.) Mom pointed out that they’d only been together “when it’s been cold, nasty, & very wet”!
Mom also recounted “a very annoying experience” the previous evening. She and Kris returned early to the apartment and while they were busy straightening the place up, “the phone began ringing away impatiently.” Mother answered it to find a long-distance operator on the line. It seemed that “she was not quite certain of what she was saying,” Mom thought, “trying to find out if it was o.k. for her to charge that phone with a call made earlier that day by Lt. K*****.” It was obvious from what Mom wrote next that she had my dad on her mind:
When she finished, it occurred to me somewhere along the line I was impressed with the idea “Capt.” K***** was meant rather than Lt. – and that a long distance call was coming in—. Well, needless to say, both the operator & I finally came to an understanding – and “parted” – but in the meantime I fear I suffered a shock – and Kris, who knew what was going on, all the while, laughed!! Vulgar! No sympathy.
Mom went on to acknowledge that she knew it was impossible for Dad to be calling, but because he’d “bobbed up unexpectedly at times in the past,” she formulated “a miracle” in her imagination. Mom never explained what actually happened, but do I have to point out that Kris was “Lt. K*****” (which Mom seems to have forgotten).
Given Kris’s reaction to Mom’s confusion, she probably had placed a call sometime that morning, perhaps from her navy base, and charged it to her apartment phone. Hence the confirmation call from the operator. Mom was fixated on my dad, as she wrote: “Must be I miss you, eh? [A]nd perhaps think of you once in awhile [sic].”
(Readers should remember that calls from Trenton to New York City and vice versa were long distance in 1945. Furthermore, a call to Kris’s family back home, which is what I’d guess this was, wouldn’t have been a work call, so she’d have had to pay for it herself, not charge it to the navy.)
Many of Mom’s letters, at least at this point before Dad began writing again from overseas, fell into a pattern. She spoke emotionally about missing Dad and feeling unhappy that she hadn’t heard from him in so long, and then (though not necessarily in this order) turned to gossip and chit-chat. In an undated letter written, I figure, around Saturday or Sunday, 17 or 18 March, Mom went on at some length on the first topic:
Thought that the more I did to occupy my time – and mind would help to keep me from thinking of how far away you are, and how long it[’]s going to be before seeing you again. But, darling, I miss you more and more each day – and with every new event or activity taking place I want you to be here to take part. Sweet, it may be hard to believe, after reading my letters since your going away – but, actually I’m not one for writing a lot of corny sentiment – all this candy-sweet business. I never have, and never thought I would. But, dearest, forgive it if it’s nauseating to you – I realize once in awhile [sic] it’s pleasant – but a “habit” of it can become annoying. However, I’ve got to write what’s on my mind and right now that’s you & my missing you – never have I felt I’d have to express myself like this in the mail. So, dear, forgive it – and realize that after awhile [sic] I’ll get use[d] to your being away – especially after I get a letter or two from you. Then perhaps I’ll get back to normal.
Okay, a word here about my mother’s lack of sentimentality—at least of the epistolary kind: it’s not true. Not in my lifetime, at any rate. I’ve said this before, but in my family, Dad was the rationalist and Mom the sentimentalist. Now, maybe she never wrote what are essentially mash notes like this before, so she was never called upon to use “candy-sweet” expressions—but Mom never shied away from sentiment either in her speech or her letters. (I know. I was on the receiving end for over 60 years!)
After the emotional effusion, Mom turned to commentary, covering her first horseback ride in many months earlier that day—it left her somewhat saddle sore—and an impromptu party the night before at the officers’ club that started out to be a bridge game and ended up at Mom’s house (because her folks were gone) “for eats, etc.”
The gathering lasted till 4 a.m. and Blossom stayed over (Kris was in Washington for the weekend—part of her navy duties) and even after they went to bed, the young ladies “had to gossip and compare notes” until the wee hours. I tell you, Mom and Kris and their buddies were like a miniature sorority when they got together!
[“The Letters Project, Part
4” starts on the day that my mother-to-be heralds the beginning of spring. Mother also alludes to a health problem in
Dad’s family. The first letters from Dad
from France are also the first ones with actual war reports—the fighting had
moved east, so Dad was describing the aftermath of combat. ROTters’ll
see that installment on or about Sunday, 15 November 2026.]
