Another Serendipitous Discovery

It’s amazing how one can be born and grow up somewhere and never learn about some of the most important places or events in its history until adulthood or old age. The schools simply failed to teach those things, and parents never thought of doing so.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I was born and grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, but never was taught that a major Civil War battle occurred there. I learned of the event only after reaching college. At the time of the war, the Battle of Knoxville (or Fort Sanders) was considered on the par with the Battle of Gettysburg in military importance. But I grew up thinking every time I heard the words Fort Sanders only of Fort Sanders Presbyterian Hospital, which was located on the site where the bastion stood.

Then, while on a trip to the Southwest, I made a serendipitous stop at the U.S. Cavalry Museum at Fort Reno, Oklahoma, where I learned that German and Italian POWs were incarcerated during World War II. My subsequent research into similar POW camps led to my discovery of Camp Crossville, a POW camp that had existed in Crossville, Tennessee, just west of Knoxville.

My latest discovery was Camp Tyson, which was located farther west of Knoxville near Paris, Tennessee, and named for Brigadier General Lawrence Tyson, a prominent Knoxvillian who served during World War I. (Knoxville’s McGhee Tyson Airport and the adjacent McGhee Tyson Air Force Base, home of the 134th Air Refueling Wing, are also named for him.)

Camp Tyson was the only World War II barrage balloon training center in the United States. There, soldiers were taught to build, fly, and repair large (35 ft. diam., 85 ft. long) helium- or hydrogen-filled balloons for use in aerial defense. (See training session in progress in the photo to the right.) The 2,000-acre camp boasted 450 buildings and trained approximately 20,000 to 25,000 soldiers during the course of the war. It was a staging area for soldiers who were deployed throughout the various theaters of the war. It also was used as a POW camp.

The barrage balloons were made of two-ply cotton fabric impregnated with synthetic rubber. They cost between $5,000 and $10,000 each. The soldiers gave them various nicknames, including “air whales,” “big bags,” and “sky elephants.” Enemy bomber and fighter pilots called them trouble. (See balloon being launched in photo to the left.)

The balloons were suspended 9,000 to 12,000 feet in the air and tethered by steel cables near important buildings, bridges, ships, and other vulnerable structures to deter low-flying enemy planes. Sometimes explosives were attached to the cables to further discourage enemy planes from coming close to the structures the balloons were protecting.

The buildings at Camp Tyson included not only barracks for 535 officers and more than 8,000 enlisted men but also a 400-bed hospital, a 2,500-seat theater, a post office, a service club, two chapels, a library, a hydrogen-generation plant, an incinerator, a balloon hangar, a motor pool building, and a sewage treatment plant. It also had ten miles of asphalt-covered roads and five miles of railroad tracks. The camp even had its own newspaper called, appropriately, The Gas Bag.

When the soldiers completed their training at Camp Tyson, they were deployed to places in the various theaters of war to provide antiaircraft duty, including flying the balloons, repairing damaged balloons, helping with antiaircraft artillery, and manning searchlights. (The photo to the left shows barrage balloons protecting the invasion fleet off the beaches of Normandy.)

Now why weren’t we Tennessee boys and girls taught about this important base when we were in school? Perhaps it was overshadowed by the more earth-shattering story of what took place closer to home in Oak Ridge, where the first atomic bombs were fabricated. Nonetheless, it’s such serendipitous discoveries that make history a never-ending supply of interesting research material.

What similarly serendipitous discoveries have you made about your hometown or state?

They Covered the War–and More

During the process of researching and writing my upcoming book Dillon’s War, I repeatedly found myself encountering quotations from or references to various war correspondents. Many of those people reported the events of the war from the front lines or very near those scenes of combat. Some of them were wounded or killed as a result of such close-in reporting. I’d like in this post to highlight a few of them. Some of them you might have heard of; others might be unknown to you–until now.

I’ll start with Don Whitehead because I grew up reading a column he wrote for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, my hometown paper. Don was born in Inman, Virginia, only about 40 miles from the Tennessee state line.

During World War II, Whitehead was a war correspondent for the Associated Press, first covering the 8th Army in Egypt and the U. S. Army in Algeria. He later covered so many Allied invasion campaigns that he was known among his fellow correspondents as “Beachhead Don.” Those campaigns included the invasions of Sicily and of Italy at Salerno and Anzio, the D-day invasion of Normandy, the breakout from the bocage in Operation COBRA, the pursuit of the German army across Northern France, the liberation of Paris, the crossing of the Rhine with the First Army, and the meeting of U. S. and Russian troops at the Elbe River.

Whitehead wrote six books, including The FBI Story, which I read as a kid. He also wrote his column titled Don Whitehead Reports covering a wide variety of random subjects. I especially recall his column “On Where Time Goes” and a tongue-in-cheek selection about “Most Doctors and His Recommendations.” He was the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and the Medal of Freedom.

Another war correspondent with whom I became familiar as a kid was Richard Tregaskis, who reported for the International News Service. (He is on the left in the photo with Marine General Vandegrift.) My introduction to Tregaskis was through the most famous of his more than a dozen books, Guadalcanal Diary. In it, he reported on the combat of the U. S. Marines during the first seven weeks of the six-month Battle of Guadalcanal. So well written is that book that the U.S. military still lists it as essential reading for its officer candidates.

Tregaskis later covered the war in Europe, including the invasions of Sicily and Italy. From those experiences, he wrote Invasion Diary. He lived right with the soldiers who were doing the fighting. So close was he to the action that he was wounded by a German mortar round while with U. S. paratroopers and Rangers near Cassino and was hospitalized for five months. Among his other books was John F. Kennedy and PT-109 for the Random House Landmark Books series, which I also read as a kid.

Also writing for the Landmark Books series was Quentin Reynolds, who covered the war for Collier’s Weekly. Reynolds was a product of the Bronx. In fact, he played one season as a lineman for the NFL’s Brooklyn Lions. Reynolds was a prolific author, writing more than 30 books, many of them for the Landmark series.

Perhaps the correspondent best remembered today is Ernie Pyle, who covered the war for the Scripps-Howard newspapers. He wrote in a simple, down-home style about the ordinary soldier, naming many of those of whom he wrote and giving their home towns. He wrote of the soldiers in not only Italy and France but also the Pacific theater. He was killed by a Japanese sniper while covering the Battle of Okinawa on the island of Ie Shema.

Pyle’s columns were collected and published in four books: Ernie Pyle in England (1941), Here Is Your War (1943), Brave Men (1944), and Last Chapter (1949). I had read two of those as a kid as well. Pyle won the Pulitzer for his writings.

Several correspondents gained fame not so much for their published writing as for their radio reporting. Perhaps foremost in that category was Edward R. Murrow, who broadcasted from London for CBS during the Blitz. (You can hear him broadcasting during an air raid here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7e3G2WUhD4&t=14s.)

Born in Polecat Creek near Greensboro, N.C., Murrow became the originator of the “European News Roundup” from London. He covered the 1938 Anschluss, or Germany’s annexation of Austria. He compiled his reports of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in a book titled Berlin Diary (1941). His radio broadcast was called London After Dark, during some episodes of which one could hear the air-raid sirens blaring in the background even as he broadcasted the news. He was the first reporter to broadcast about the atrocities at Buchenwald. After the war, he became director of the U.S. Information Agency, the forerunner of the Voice of America.

Another broadcaster who gained fame during the war, thereby laying the groundwork for their post-war fame, was Walter Cronkite, who reported for the United Press. He had begun as a radio announcer on WKY of Oklahoma City, using the on-air pseudonym “Walter Wilcox.” During the war, he covered the fighting in North Africa and Europe, including the Battle of Britain. He flew on bombing missions in a B-17 Flying Fortress and once even fired a machinegun at an attacking German plane. He also landed in a glider as part of the ill-fated Operation MARKET GARDEN.

After the war, Cronkite covered the Nuremberg Trials. But his voice became a mainstay of American broadcast journalism when he was the anchor of CBS Evening News. I also identify his voice as one of the narrators of the You Are There historical educational episodes.

The rose among thorns of war correspondents was without question Dorothy Thompson. Called the “First Lady of American Journalism,” she was the first American journalist expelled from Nazi Germany (1934) after she interviewed Adolf Hitler and angered him with her transparent portrayal of him and his rising Nazi regime. Her expulsion papers were delivered to her by a Gestapo agent. She later wrote a book titled I Saw Hitler.

Thompson became a foreign correspondent in 1920 for the International News Service. She also wrote for the Philadelphia Public Ledger and the New York Evening Post. She was the first woman to head a foreign news bureau. A prolific writer, she wrote a three-times-a-week column titled On the Record for the New York Herald Tribune that was syndicated in more than 170 other papers. She also wrote a monthly column for the Ladies Home Journal. In addition, she had a radio broadcast on NBC. (You can hear her voice here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsz8DzcmhMs.) Amid all her activities, she found time to write 21 books.

These were just a few of the most famous of the scores of American war correspondents during World War II. Without their reporting and writing, our knowledge of the war, its events, and the people involved in them would be sorely lacking. It would be well worth the effort to find and read much of their writings.

Book Update and Some Recommendations

Some of you who have read my blog for some time might be wondering (and several people have been asking) whatever happened to my “soon-to-be-published” book Dillon’s War. You aren’t alone–I’ve been wondering the same thing!

Once a manuscript is out of an author’s hands, after it’s been through the editing process, the author has proofed it, and it returns to the publisher for the rest of the production process, there’s little, if anything, he or she can do to hasten its release. Worrying doesn’t help. Badgering the publisher doesn’t help either. In fact, it might even prove to be counterproductive.

That’s where Dillon’s War is lodged right now. Meanwhile, without a cover design or a definite release date, I’m unable to prepare release announcements for the various media, schedule speaking engagements, etc.

That’s been my predicament ever since Dillon’s War successfully navigated the editorial process and entered the cover design and layout stages of production. It has been completely out of my hands, dependent on the actions–or inactions–of others. I began to despair that it would ever be published.

However, last week I ventured to query my editor about the situation. Although she, too, was powerless to do anything to hasten the process, she did reveal that she had seen my book on the release schedule for July. If that is true and it is, indeed, released sometime in July, it will fit perfectly within the timeframe of the eightieth anniversaries of two big events featured in the book: the June 6 D-day invasion of France and the July 25-26 breakout by American troops from the bocage, the hedgerows of Normandy.

One can only hope and pray. Stay turned for a specific release date. Meanwhile, I’d like to recommend to you two other authors, both of whom write about their relatives’ involvements in World War II.

While researching and writing both Dillon’s War and Bagosy’s War (the former traces my uncle’s ground-bound journey through Europe with the 3rd Armored Division, and the latter will trace my wife’s uncle’s journey over Europe as a B-17 tail gunner with the 384th Bomb Group), I stumbled across an interesting blog. Authored by “GP” and titled Pacific Paratrooper, the blog is designed to honor his father, Everette A. “Smitty” Smith, who served in a Headquarters Company, 11th Airborne Division, in the Pacific theater of World War II. The primary focus of the blog, however, is about the unit, not the man, because that’s where Smitty put the emphasis whenever he recounted his activities in the war.

Pacific Paratrooper also reviews various books about people and events in the Pacific theater, especially those involving the 11th Airborne Division. At the end of each post are two important features. “Military Humor” features one or more military-related cartoons, revealing the lighter side of the serious business of waging war. “Farewell Salutes” pays tribute to the memory of veterans who have passed since the previous post was published.

The address for Pacific Paratrooper is https://pacificparatrooper.wordpress.com. Check it out.

Another author who writes about her relatives who served during World War II is Joy Neal Kidney. Her relatives served in both the Navy and the Army Air Force and in both theaters of the war. Her first book was Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family during World War II. It tells how five brothers served, but only two came home.

Her most recent work, What Leora Never Knew, recounts her journey to research what happened to those three relatives lost during the war. Both are excellent works. You ought to check them, too.

Meanwhile, while we’re waiting not so patiently for the release of Dillon’s War, if you’re interested in learning more about my uncle’s unit, the 3rd Armored Division, here are some good books that I discovered during my research:

• After D-day: Operation COBRA and the Normandy Breakout by James Jay Carafano
• The Panzer Killers by Daniel P. Bolger
• Victory at Mortain: Stopping Hitler’s Panzer Counteroffensive by Mark J. Reardon
• Battle for the Ruhr by Derek S. Zumbro
• Spearhead by Adam Makos

If your interests are more “up in the air,” here are a few about the 8th Air Force and the air war in Europe:

• Masters of the Air by Donald L. Miller
• The Bomber Boys by Travis L. Ayres
• Coffin Corner Boys: One Bomber, Ten Men, and Their Harrowing Escape from Nazi-Occupied France by Carole Engle Avreitt

Did you have relatives who served during World War II? Why not trace their involvement? You might discover some interesting facts that you’ll want to share with your family members and others. GP, Joy Neal Kidney, and I did!

Letters from the Front, Part 7

Once the breakout from the bocage was achieved, the 3rd Armored Division and the 391st Armored Field Artillery Battalion raced forward. They penetrated deeper and deeper into enemy territory, bypassing pockets of resistance and leaving them for following units to mop up. Several times, they fought off attempts by the Germans to counterattack, and they often found themselves surrounded and cut off from the trailing units. Artillery units of the 391st were forced to stop their advance and defend themselves. But every time, the enemy was forced back or other units managed to break through to them.

The 3rd Armored Division was being called the Spearhead Division because it was always leading the charge. And the tip of that spearhead was the 391st. Out in front, identifying and calling in the artillery fire were the forward observers. Corporal Dillon Summers was driving one of them, Lieutenant Forston.

Throughout the rest of July and August, the unit surged forward, seldom slowing or stopping. An opportunity seemed to be opening itself for the total defeat of the fleeing German 7th Army. They might be able to trap the Germans in a pincer movement, with one arm being the British army and the other the 3rd Armored Division, at Falaise, where a gap through which the enemy was desperately racing to escape was slowly closing. On Friday, August 18, the 3rd Armored Division met the “tea drinkers,” and the Falaise Gap was closed. The 391st was relieved and began a period of rest and maintenance. Both the guns and the men needed that time badly. They had been fighting without respite for four weeks.

But they were soon back in the race across France and into Belgium, which they entered on September 2. The fighting continued through the areas around Mons, Namur, Verviers, and Eupen. The 391st lobbed artillery rounds across the border against defensive positions in Germany. On the 12th, they entered Germany and faced the formidable Siegfried Line, where they encountered strong opposition.

It was during this fighting on September 15 that the FO tank Dillon was driving took a direct hit in the fuel tank and burned rapidly. The 391st unit history states, “Only one man, the driver T/5 Summers, was in the tank at the time and he managed to escape with only burns on the face. Sergeant Pierce was lightly wounded by shrapnel at this same time. Both men remained on duty.”

The 391st halted operations while the infantry mopped up in the surrounding area. It was during this apparent lull that Dillon wrote the following letter, dated September 20, to his family, and mentioned having heard that one of them had dreamed of him.

Hello Everyone.

Just a line to say hello & say I am well & OK. hope every one there is like wise Your last letter dated Sept 4th was glad to hear from you all, also got one from Hazel. I will get time soon I hope an write Jean & Hazel again. tell them hello & press on in School. they are doing Very good I think.

Very glad everyone likes the new pastor. Does [illegible] & family ever come out? Did You go to the shower of Clara?

What is old Bice doing now and is Edd & Leon here with me. . so where am I? that’s another question. I am seeing a lot of the world any how.

Dreaming of me coming home was a nice dream, But You are getting ahead on Your dreaming.

Well so long for now. I am still getting the paper but it is kindly old.

Love & best wishes to all.

Dillon

If he had waited a few more days to write, he would have had big news to tell them. On September 25, Brigadier General Maurice Rose, commander of the 3rd Armored Division, visited the 391st and presented some medals, including a Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster to Technician Fifth Grade Dillon C. Summers. (The Oak Leaf Cluster indicates that it was his second Bronze Star, but I have never been able to determine when or for what it was awarded.) His FO, 1 Lieutenant Forston, also was awarded a Bronze Star. I do not have any letter from Dillon in which he mentioned having received the medal although he had alluded in an earlier letter than he had been recommended for the award. I do not know if that recommendation was for the first or the second Bronze Star.
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Letters from the Front, Part 6

In the days and weeks following Corporal Dillon Summers’s July 7 letter home, the 3rd Armored Division fought its way south from the Normandy beaches. The 391st Armored Field Artillery Battalion moved right along with Combat Command B (CCB), and at the fore were the forward observers, one of whom Summers drove. As the unit achieved each objective, it was relieved by another unit and then moved forward toward the next objective.

Then they hit the bocage region of Normandy, an area of small, open fields, each bordered by dense hedgerows, mounds of earth thick with tangled and deep-rooted trees. Many of the fields were skirted by narrow, shadowy lanes, an environment perfect for German defenses. It was not at all conducive to armored warfare.

German artillery and machine gun emplacements in the subsequent hedgerows had all surrounding hedgerows covered by effective crossfire. As soon as a Sherman tank rose up over one hedgerow, German artillery in an opposite or adjacent hedgerow blasted the tank’s exposed, lightly armored underside.

Only after the First Army’s armored divisions adopted a device made by a Sergeant Curtis Cullin from steel angle iron salvaged from a destroyed German road obstruction and welded it to his tank were the tanks able to crash through the hedgerows without exposing their weakness and make appreciable progress against the enemy. They were poised to break out of the hedgerows and into flatter ground where the tanks could maneuver more readily.

The breakout plan was codenamed Operation Cobra. It was during the tense preattack preparations that Dillon wrote his next extant letter, dated July 25, 1944. [Only selected excerpts of this letter are included here. This lengthy (five pages) letter either was damaged in some way and sent as it was, or Dillon never sent it and only brought it home with him later, because it is not written as a V-Mail letter. The apparent reason for the letter, written to his sister-in-law (and indirectly to one of his brothers since he addressed him by name in it), was a domestic situation that had occurred and he hoped to set things right between them.] In the hindsight of history, the letter reveals a lot about the combat situation generally and Operation Cobra specifically.

Hi Ya Girl,

This day July 25/44 I was some what surprised. But really I was very happy to hear from you again. It makes me feel good in every way to hear from people back home. . . .

If _______ was here in my shoes right now, I do believe he would think of changing his way of living. It would do him good. . . . This isn’t a bed of roses here. It’s total war every way you look when you see them fall all around you an tanks hit & set on fire & burn to the ground with men in them dead from concussion. It’s time to look for Gods help. . . .

_______ you are very lucky, you are in a country where there is no worry, a place where you can make good money Yet, you don’t appreciate that. Me? I am in a place where I have to stay buttoned up in my tank, or dig a foxhole in the ground whether it’s rocky or muddy I must go down to be spared from shell & bomb fragments. What a happy life I could live if I was in your shoes. With a lovely family as you have you should be happy & have a christian home with Christ at the head of it.

I have been in a very nervous stage ever since I have been in France. I have been in the middle of two tank battles. You have read about them in the paper, But didn’t know I was in them. Dont guess you cared I’m in a very bad mood today pay no attention. ha My tank was hit by fragments from a German 88 mm shell. Our Radio put out of commission. It was fixed under fire & we carried out our mission. I have been recommended for a Bronze Star for Bravery.

But tell you the truth, I was scared stiff. My bed roll I gave ten dollars for was shot full of holes. My head light shot out.

I couldnt help but think how lucky you and ________ was, also other boys back home.

At night when I sleep I am up & down all night. Sleep in a hole or in under my tank. I look to God for protection.

You could be killed there Just as easy an where would you spend eternity?

. . . The thing I have been made to see now, You havent yet, But you are going to regret if you live, some day, when it is to late. I dont want you to fee mad at me. Because I didnt entend for this to make you mad.

I just wanted to point out how you & I are living. . . .

I guess I am just in a very bad mood & If You were siting by my side now You would be even worse. I have Just seen this morning about 2800 Bombers Bomb a small Area in whitch I must go through in a few hrs.

Heres hoping You . . . really make a go of it from now on. I Love You all, rember me. . . .

Love to all, Dillon.

As he finished the letter, American armored columns, including the 391st, were poised to launch the ground offensive. The massive bombing to which he referred was designed to “soften up” the German lines, disrupt their communications, and make any retreat by the enemy next to impossible. It did that and more. The German troops were dazed and slow to react.

Unfortunately, American troops had also been affected. A breeze arose just as the waves of bombers–B-17 and B-24 “heavies” followed by B-25 and B-26 “mediums” and then P-47 fighter-bombers–blew the smoke from markers that signaled to the pilots where they should begin bombing back across American lines. About 150 Americans were killed and wounded. The operation was postponed for a day while commanders sought to understand what had happened and how to avoid it next time. Lieutenant General Lesley McNair visited the front lines to investigate. He decided to remain overnight and observe the next day’s bombardment.

Once again, the heavies, mediums, and fighter-bombers came over and dropped their deadly payloads. Once again a breeze blew the smoke from the markers over American lines. And once again, the bombs fell on American soldiers, killing 111, including McNair. But this time, the ground assault was released once the bombardment was over.

As the armored units raced forward, they found that almost all German front-line resistance had been obliterated, and rear echelon troops were confused and disoriented, able to maneuver in retreat only with great difficulty under the pressure of the oncoming American armored units.

Dillon did not record, at least in any extant letters, what he witnessed.

Letters from the Front, Part 4

Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and other special occasions were extremely important to servicemen serving overseas during World War II. It was just such an important occasion that prompted Corporal Dillon Summers to write the following V-Mail on June 18, 1944. He was still undergoing training in England with the 391st Armored Field Artillery Battalion, 3rd Armored Division. (Their respective patches are shown here.)

To put this particular letter in broader context, one must understand that Dillon wrote it 12 days after the D-day invasion of Normandy, to which he refers (“the big day”) in the letter. In two more days, he himself and the 391st would hit Omaha Beach. In six days after writing the letter, he would be in combat, and his letters would be even less frequent because of the battalion’s almost constant advance through France and Belgium and into Germany itself. Of course, none of that was implied in the letter.

Hello Dad.

Especially on this occasion. I am thinking of you today. Fathers Day. Wishing You the very best of health. I am well my self.

As you know, the big day came around at last & every thing is looking pretty good.

We hope to be back in the states maby by the first of 1945.

Havent heard from there in several days. Guess You are hearing from me before now. How’s Your farming coming along?

Is Verlon doing any better since he left Kingsport?

Well write when You can.

Sincerely Your Son

Dillon

One can readily tell that he was eager for news from home and impatient when he went for a time without receiving letters from home. However, he was himself saying little of substance because of both the limited room on the V-Mail form and the strict censorship imposed on all outgoing mail.

Such was the life of a front-line soldier in World War II.

Letters from the Front, Part 3

On April 20, 1944, Corporal Dillon Summers again wrote to his family back in Heiskell, Tennessee. This time, however, he used V-Mail, the letter going through the post office at nearby Powell, Tennessee.

With so many servicemen and women writing to parents, wives, sweethearts, children, and friends back home, the military transportation system would have been overwhelmed by the sheer weight and volume of the paper. V-Mail solved not only that problem but also the issue of security. Speedy, secure delivery of letters, the Post Office, War, and Navy departments knew, also “strengthens fortitude, enlivens patriotism, makes loneliness endurable and inspires to even greater devotion the men and women who are carrying on our fight far from home and from friends.” (1942 Annual Report of the Postmaster General)

As the war continued and more personnel were involved in the war effort, the volume of mail increased. To deal with the issues, the War Department instituted the Army Micro Photographic Mail Service, or Victory Mail, more popularly known as V-Mail.

The letter-writing soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine wrote a brief letter on a special standardized 7 x 9 1/8-inch form. Each form was capable of holding up to 700 typed words, although most front-line personnel had no access to a typewriter and generally wrote by hand. Censors then blacked out any information considered sensitive, such as locations, destinations, or numbers of troops, weapons types and specifications, or any other information that might be even remotely of potential use to the enemy. The letter was then photographed on microfilm, reducing it to 4 1/4 x 5 inches.

The Kodak Recordak equipment used in the process could film 40 letters every minute. The process reduced the standard V-Mail forms to 1/4 the size of the original. Any letter that was damaged could not be microfilmed but had to be sent through in its original form. Each roll of microfilm could hold 1,600 of the one-page letters. Folded, it was then inserted into a 4 3/4 x 3 3/4-inch envelope. What otherwise would have required 36 large mail bags to transport could fit as V-Mail into a single mail bag.

All V-Mail was then sent via airmail through central offices in New York, Chicago, or San Francisco in the form of reels of microfilm, where the miniature letters were enlarged, printed, and distributed to the addressees.

Here is what Dillon wrote in his V-Mail on April 20, 1944.

Hello Mom & all,

Will drop you a few more lines to let You know I am still O.K. hoping everone there is well an in good health. Heard from Lexie & Dorothy today. Lexie said something about Reo. Have you got any news from him or the war dept?

How’s every thing on the farm? Guess it’s still to wet to do much. I never hear any more from Kecks. tell them to drop me a line sometimes. Eugena isent married yet is she. Do they still hear from Edd Burkett? wasent He & Reo together? when have they heard from Glen Moore & Randle?

Well just a line tonight So keep smiling. Will write Annie soon. Just a little at a time You know. Write more air mail & more often. Heard from Buck Ezell. Surprised me.

Love to all.

Your Son

Dillon

Dorothy was Dillon’s wife. Lexie and Annie were his sisters. Unfortunately, I do not know who Reo, the Kecks, Eugena, Edd Burkett, Glenn Moore, Randle, or Buck Ezell were, although I do recall hearing their names in conversations when I was a child.

His final request in the last paragraph of the letter reveals the hunger of the average serviceman for mail from home, and he wanted it quickly and often. Mail call was more popular than the chow line!

Letters from the Front, Part 2

Corporal Dillon Summers of the 391st Armored Field Artillery Battalion was beginning his second month of extensive training in tank warfare in Warminster, Wiltshire, England, when he wrote the following letter home. It was in response to a family tragedy of which he had just learned.

MON OCT 25/43

Somewhere in England

Dearest Mother & all.

Will ans the letter I rec from You today. was more than glad to hear from You again. One also from Hazel & Jean. tell them I will write later.

Lexie was saying in her last letter that she was keeping Donald out of school that day Oct 11 because he had a cold & today I got a Cablegram from Verlon saying he died the 16th.

It was a great shock to me. he was sick only five days wasn’t he? Mama it hurt me very bad. An I know Lexie & Paul is killed nearly. we must look forward toward meeting him is all we can do. Also very sorry about Clyde & I have wrote Anna several times writing her again tonight. I will appreciate the paper more than a X-mas present. I meant to send Lexie a Cablegram right back, but on the Cablegram we can send from here don’t fit in much all I could of said is Cablegram recieved Many thanks. tell her for me. Love to all. Your Son. Dillon

Learning of his nephew’s sudden death tore at Dillon’s heart, as his response shows. Lexie was his older sister, and Paul was her husband. Their son Donald had just started school. Hazel and Jean, mentioned early in the letter, were his younger sisters, Hazel being my mother and Jean the youngest of the Summers children. Verlon was Dillon’s younger brother. There were seven children total in the Summers family. (I am not sure who Clyde and Anna were or to what Dillon was referring when he said he was “sorry about Clyde.”)

(Cpl. Dillon Summers standing in front of a mockup of a German Panzer V tank)

Hundreds of thousands of service members had to deal not only with the dangers of front-line combat and tiring hours of labor making it possible for those front-line personnel to wage the war but also personal and domestic problems and tragedies. Then there were the family members who were back in the States, each of them worrying about their loved ones in the military.

Such realities should make us even more appreciative of our nation’s service members and their families. Remember this as Memorial Day approaches, and say a prayer for them all.

Learning History from Personal Letters

I recently finished reading a second book by Joy Neal Kidney. The first one I read was actually her second, soon-to-be-published book, Leora’s Dexter Stories. The one I just finished reading was her first: Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family during World War II, published in 2019.

The more recent title covers the family’s history during the trying years of the Great Depression. The older book deals with the family’s experiences in World War II. Although the two books were written out of chronological order, reading the second book first actually made it easier for me to follow the narrative in Leora’s Letters. Nonetheless, each book is a standalone that can be read separately from the other, but reading both of them is even more satisfying.

For reference material, Kidney had a treasure trove of hundreds of letters exchanged among the various family members (and there were a lot of them!) throughout the pre-war and wartime years. Those letters cast well-deserved light on not only Iowa farm life and individuals’ aspirations for their futures but also the extensive training the military required, the chronology of the war in both the European and Pacific theaters of the war, and the stresses and anxieties of everyone who had a family member overseas at the time. Of Kidney’s five relatives who served in that war, three did not return home.

For anyone who knows the details of the war’s history and the ships and airplanes involved in it, this book will confirm that knowledge. Kidney especially reveals an amazingly broad knowledge of the numerous aircraft used in both the training of pilots and actual combat operations, from the iconic Stearman biplane trainers to the lesser known Cessna AT-17 Bobcat and the Ryan PT-22 Recruit to the legendary P-38 fighter and B-25 Mitchell bomber. Although I am generally familiar with World War II aircraft, even I found myself googling some of the planes mentioned, and in every instance Kidney was correct in everything she wrote about them.

For any reader who is unfamiliar with the war’s history and aircraft, however, he or she will quickly gain an appreciation for Kidney’s expertise in those subjects. That familiarity only further cements the credibility of the author.

As I read with riveted interest the letters quoted in this book, I found myself envying the author her storehouse of family history those letters contain. I only wish I had access to a fraction of such letters from my uncle Dillon Summers, who was serving in the same war as Kidney’s relatives. Not having such a trove on which to draw makes me appreciate all the more the few letters of his that I do have. They are by no means as thorough a history as Kidney has produced in Leora’s Letters, but they are enough to give one a glimpse, fleeting though it may be, of what life was like for the soldier and the loved ones he left behind.

I will be sharing some of my uncle’s letters in a future blog post, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, why not check out both of Kidney’s books on Amazon. I highly recommend them both. Just a personal opinion, however: consider reading them in chronological order.

Making Military History Personal

As a teacher, I always insisted to my students that the study of history was about much more than dates and elections and battles; it is about people. History is best learned, I think, through the study of people, biography. That is even more true when you know–better yet, are related to–those people.

I rediscovered this truth when I got sidetracked while doing genealogical research. I had begun following my uncle’s footsteps through World War II. Uncle Dillon was a tank driver for forward observers in the 391st Armored Field Artillery Battalion of the 3rd Armored Division, the famous “Spearhead” division in the drive across Europe, breaching the Siegfried Line and entering Germany. My quest was somewhat stymied, however, when I learned that most of his personal military records had been destroyed in the great fire in the St. Louis military repository in the Seventies.

But I soon found another avenue of family history to research when I was trying to find information for my wife’s aunt, whose husband had been in the U.S. Army’s 8th Air Force during the war. I got some basic information from the aunt and began delving into the online resources. Here’s what I learned.

Uncle Paul was a crew member on B-17s in the 384th Bombardment Group (Heavy), 546th Bombardment Squadron (Heavy), operating out of Grafton Underwood Airfield in England. (He is second from the left, front row, in the accompanying photo.) During the course of the war, he rose in rank from sergeant to staff sergeant. He received credit for 31 combat missions, his duty designation being tail gunner, although on nine of those missions he was designated a waist (or flexible) gunner. I was exhilarated when I discovered a website that gave every imaginable detail about every one of the missions he flew, including those on which the plane had to turn back because of mechanical problems, weather disruptions, or inability to locate their formation.

Interestingly, I also discovered that he had been involved in several missions that indirectly involved my Uncle Dillon, who was either on the ground in France at the time or soon would be. On June 6, 1944 (D-day), while my uncle, with the 391st AFA Battalion, was preparing to join U.S. troops after they had established a beachhead in Normandy, my wife’s uncle was on a mission to bomb two bridges in Caen, France, helping to ensure that the Normandy invasion was successful. On July 18, the day before my uncle landed in France, my wife’s uncle was flying a mission as part of Operation Crossbow, a bombing run against V-weapons in Zinnowitz, Germany. V-rockets had been causing havoc for the troops on the beachhead, and the B-17s were supposed to end that threat.

Then, on July 24-25, Uncle Dillon was poised in his tank to participate in Operation Cobra, the offensive to break out of the deadly bocage region of Normandy and begin the drive toward Germany. But first, the German front lines had to be pummeled from the air. The ground attack would be launched before the ground stopped shaking from the bomb blasts. Uncle Paul was in a B-17 in the air above dropping those bombs. The sad thing is that the wind had picked up and was blowing the colored smoke from bombs that marked the drop zone across American lines. Many of the bombs fell on our own soldiers, killing many. The attack was delayed until the next day. Again a preliminary bombardment was ordered, and again winds blew the marker smoke over American lines. More U.S. soldiers were killed, including the general who had gone to the front to determine what had gone wrong the day before. Nonetheless, the attack went forward, and U.S. troops broke out of the bocage. The race to Berlin was on.

Uncle Dillon won two Bronze Star medals during the war. Paul and his fellow crewmen also won numerous medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. (In the accompanying photo, he is the dark-haired airman standing on the far right, waiting to to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross.)

I discovered a similar incident of crossed paths during the war. My father-in-law was on the other side of the world, serving as a seaman aboard the heavy cruiser USS St. Paul in Tokyo Bay during the signing of the surrender documents. Flying overhead in a show of American air power that same day was a waist gunner in a B-29. Years later, I would attend church with that airman. He and my father-in-law met years later when my father-in-law visited us and went to church. They shared an immediate bond when each related where they had been on that historic day.

If you want to study history “up close and personal,” do so by tracing the steps and actions of a single person. It’s even more rewarding and instructive if that person happens to be a family member! It’s exceptionally exciting when individuals’ paths cross! And it’s especially important that we learn, save, and tell (and retell) these servicemen’s stories as more and more of them are passing from this life. We must keep that personal history alive.