Hq XIX Corps Arty
APO 270
6 September 1944
My darling adorable Sminx,
Last night I had a wonderful surprise. A sack of mail arrived here containing three letters from you. I had not heard from you in ten days and you don't know how happy it made me to get these letters.
* * *
I was sorry to hear that you have had a little trouble with Billy. But I imagine it is a stage which all kids go through. From this distance it is a little difficult to say what you should do to discipline him. I would say, however, that as a general rule it would be best to ignore him and to save the spankings for the more important breaches of discipline. I wish I were there to help you.
* * *
You will be pleased to hear that the attack by the lice was only temporary. I have not been troubled by them lately although some the bites still show on my arms. I hope they continue to stay away.
Yesterday afternoon I was especially homesick for you. I went to see Rita Hayworth in "Cover Girl" which you and I saw together at Camp Campbell. The circumstances were very different here. The power kept going off because of trouble with the generator and the color seemed to have failed somewhat. Do you remember the night when we drove to Campbell from Hopkinsville to see it and how much we enjoyed it? We certainly had a lot of fun together.
We have run across a number of aviators who were shot down by the Germans and who have been living for different periods of time under the noses of the Germans. The local population gave them civilian clothes, forged papers and kept them well hidden. One of them told me that he was just sitting down to supper in a French home when a German general walked in demanding food. So the American gave up his place at dinner and ran upstairs. He said the General was not at all polite about asking for supper but he demanded it as a right. It is evident that the French and Belgians did a lot for our airmen and it took a lot of courage to do it because it meant instant execution if they were caught hiding an Allied aviator. Of course there were some traitors and collaborators but the majority of the people hate the Germans thoroughly and especially the Gestapo and the SS.
You asked me if I could tell you the commanding general of XIX Corps. I can tell you who it is because it has been published in the papers. His name is Maj. Gen. James Corlett.
I must close now darling. I love, worship, and adore you.
Your devoted husband,
Bill
_________________________________________________________________________________
Letter, General Corlett, Napoleon and “Nuts”
We see common themes in Dad’s 6 September letter (note how he has adopted the European way of dating the letters right from the beginning, probably from his previous time abroad in 1935, I think) such as how happy mail from Mom makes him; his homesickness, this time brought on by Rita Hayworth, and a shared memory of seeing the movie together earlier; his growing respect and admiration for the French who have been risking their lives to aid Allied soldiers and airmen; and his faithfulness to the rules of censorship. What are new topics for Dad are dispensing advice for the disciplining of a 1 1/2 year old which is probably given weeks after the event - he thereafter kept his general rule that it is “best to ignore him and to save the spankings for the more important breaches of discipline” whereas Mom wasn’t quite so patient to follow that rule; reporting on his own health, other than “I am well;” and his inadvertent disclosure that he hasn’t exactly been hanging out with General Corlett. His real name is Charles H. Corlett and his nick name is “Cowboy Pete.” Don’t you wonder if it was he, Cowboy Pete, who drafted the article in Le Tomahawk with all that talk about “hardest-hittin’, fasted-movin’, straightest-shootin’, best damned soldiers in the whole history of warfare?” Finally, showing Rita Hayworth movies doesn't exactly fit in the picture of a Corps at full gallop - I understand they outran their supply line.
Corlett, age 55 at this time, had seen service in the Pacific before being assigned to lead the XIXth Corps in Europe. Wikipedia has a good bio of him, and for this purpose, it is noteworthy that he was relieved from his command on October 15, 1944 due to illness. During the period from the time the XIXth landed in Normandy on June 10, 1944 to October 15, the Corps had fought well in the hedgerow country, and followed it up with the pounding of the Germans in the Falaise Pocket and then giving hot pursuit to the fleeing German army, being the first to enter Belgium, and shortly thereafter entering Holland and Germany. They captured 29,867 prisoners, shot down 55 enemy planes, built 160 bridges and crossed five major rivers. The month after being relieved, he was in Honolulu assigned to take charge of the XXXVI Corps and plan the invasion of Japan.
Having spent the night in Waterloo, we could not leave without visiting the Champ de Bataille where Wellington dealt a fatal blow to Napoleon’s chances of continuing on as Head of State. We had some difficulty finding the visitor center, in part maybe because there is no sign and it is in fact underground. But when we did find it, it was worth the slight difficulty. For 16 euros, we each were treated with a wonderful museum where you could spend two hours going through each exhibit with your audio guide, or you could skip many of them and listen to the presentations especially marked by a soldier’s silhouette on the wall next to the exhibit. So we were able to run through the French revolution, the Directorate, the guillotines, Napoleon’s coup d’etat, the Napoleonic Code and other improvements to civil society, his ascendancy to Emperor, and various military victories and eventually defeats flowing from his disastrous invasion of Russia, to his escape from Elba, his Hundred Days, all ended by the battle outside of Waterloo. We then entered a theatre, again in the round (or semi-circle in this case) as in Arromanche, and what a spectacular movie of the battle. And you are right in the middle of the cavalry charges, the infantry advances, the yelling, the cannon shots, the gunfire, the maiming of horses and blowing apart of bodies, the ebb and flow of the various outfits, and then, late in the day, the eventual arrival of Blucher’s forces which saved the day for Wellington.
Exhausted from participating in the Battle, we then went outside to climb the Butte de Lion, the large hill with a statue of a lion on top constructed as a monument to a wounded relative of the King of Holland, I believe. In a howling wind, spitting rain, a temp of about 45 degrees, it was not a climb for the meek. Both Sugar and I made it to the top, 225 steps from the ground level (Sugar counted every one of them), and in the lee of the base for the lion statue, you could get a great view of the battlefield below, mainly consisting of farmer’s fields and intersected by roads then and now. Much of it has remained as it was in 1815, except that area in which the Lion Monument is situated since the ground which was used to construct the mound came from that part of the battlefield. Ever since 1828, I believe it has been illegal to change the grounds of the battlefield. The mound is near where Wellington’s forces were arranged in preparation for the battle, while his official headquarters was in the Town of Waterloo, about 4 kilometers away.
Finally, we descended the mound, and went to see the panorama painting showing scenes from the battle in a circular room, the paintings taking up the full 360 degrees, as at Gettysburg.
Rather than heading back into France, I had decided to head for Bastogne, Belgium in honor of my pilot friend, Carleton Willey, who had been captured just outside Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge, December, 1944. It was only about 1 1/2 hours away and when we arrived about 3:30 at our Hotel Melba, we were told that the Bastogne War Museum, which is located 23 miles away in Luxembourg, was closing at 4 pm, and would not be open on Monday. “Nothing here is open on Monday,” the desk clerk informed us. I asked if there was another museum actually in Bastogne with the same subject matter, the Battle of the Bulge, and he said there was. Checking his computer, he advised that it was closed on Monday, as well. After being told it closed at 5 and was right around the corner, we headed out the door without even bringing our suitcases in and ran over to the museum dedicated to the 101st Airborne. The museum was packed with four stories of memorabilia, life-size displays of soldiers in their habitat in Bastogne, cooking by a fire, having a drink in a bar, having shrapnel removed by a surgeon while a burn victim was waiting to be seen and a priest was giving another soldier last rites, etc., displays of all the weaponry carried by the soldiers of both armies and of their uniforms, displays of their food supplies, medical supplies, cigarettes, candy and gum, and a special display case about General George C. Patton. The piece de resistance was going into the bomb shelter in the basement and undergoing an actual bombing from Junker bombers on Christmas Eve, 1944. You find yourself sitting in the darkness, listening to a baby screaming, a tank going by outside, dogs barking, orders shouted, anti-aircraft guns being brought up the street to park next to your house and firing constantly, in rounds of three, at the invisible planes, the steady drone of the bombers high overhead, the whistle of the bombs as they exited the bomb bay doors and headed for you, the light of the explosion and shaking of the entire basement caused by the bomb blast in the house next door, and the shaking and explosions of the scores of other bombs trying to turn Bastogne into a ghost town. All this while, the noise is unbearable and you jump when a bomb hits nearby. And it is of course unbearably cold, with a foot of snow covering the ground, and not many sources of heat. Being outnumbered and surrounded by an overwhelming enemy force, when asked for his surrender, General McAuliffe replied in just one word: “Nuts.” General Patton couldn’t have said it better himself.
It is surprisingly very exciting to be here in Bastogne. There is an old tank parked in the main square. The placemat in Maxim's, the restaurant where we ate tonight, had old pictures taken at the time of Bastogne's encirclement by the Germans. I saw a picture at the museum of a street in Bastogne with a cow walking down the middle of the street, and distinctive buildings on the left side of the street. I showed the picture to the people in Maxim's, they took the picture to an old man eating there, and they came back and told me the picture was taken right around the corner. Here are the two pictures (maybe I can get a better one of the 2016 picture tomorrow):
Maybe tomorrow we will head back into France. We better - our reservation for our hotel in Paris starts Tuesday.
Bonne nuit. Love, Nat
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