“Dear John” clubs are composed of G.I.’s—and officers, too—who have received letters from home running something like this:
“Dear John: I don’t know quite how to begin but I just want to say that Joe Doakes came to town on furlough the other night and he looked very handsome in his uniform, so when he asked me for a date—”
Obviously the letter has infinite variations, but the impact on the recipient is always the same. He is “browned off”—and a deep, dark, blackish sort of brown it is.
This cropping up of “Dear John” clubs is symptomatic of the effect mail has on a soldier, no matter where he serves and what his job. Probably the one most dominant war factor in the lives of most people these days is separation—a concept which to many who grew up in traditional American homes was virtually unthinkable before the war. Now sons, brothers, sweethearts, husbands and fathers from Maine, Carolina, Utah and Texas abruptly find themselves in places as unimaginable as Algiers. And the link between them and what they know and love best is much less an abstract patriotic ideal than a very tangible if often humbly written letter from home.
A long-legged G.I. lounging in front of the Red Cross club here the other evening was asked what kind of letter he liked most to receive. “Brother,” he said, and you knew at once he came from Carolina, “all Ah evah want is a lettuh.” As a matter of fact, soldiers repeatedly tell you they would rather have bad news than no news.
Recently an OWI bulletin was credited here with giving these suggestions for the kind of things to write soldiers: (1) How the family is doing everything to help win the war. (2) How anxious the family is for the soldier’s return. (3) How well the family is—giving details. (4) How the family is getting along financially. (5) What is doing in the community, news about girls, doings of friends, who’s marrying whom, exploits of the home team, social activities, effects of the war on the home town.
When Private John Welsh 3d of Houston. Tex, saw the bulletin he did a little letter writing himself, and what he did to the suggestions approximated what Allied blockbusters have been doing to German cities. Sgt. H. Bernard Bloom, a former Indianapolis advertising man, has some equally strong opinions on “type letters,” although the categories are his own, not ours.
Like his buddies, Bloom regards the “Oh, you poor boy” type as one of the commonest and “most disgusting.” This is the kind in which the correspondent “weeps over your body” before anything happens to it. He is equally bitter about the “I’m having fun” type. This is the kind of letter, first cousin to the “Dear John” species, in which the sender tells all about her gay whirl of parties, dances, cocktail parties, romantic walks in the park with Air Force officers on leave, etc. Bloom goes on to list the “Gee, things are terrible,” “I’m sorry to tell you,” “I wish I could be with you” and “Look up Cousin Zeke” type as others which plague him and his comrades.
But it would be grossly misleading to suggest that men in uniform are more critical of mail than appreciative. On the contrary, it means everything to them, and certain types of mail in particular can buck up a soldier more than any pep talk by his general. Soldiers carry their letters around with them, save them in footlockers, pull them out at mess table. Their faces light up when letters come, and drop when they don’t.
At the risk of attempting a formula, just as OWI did, it would appear safe to say most soldiers and Wacs like to get letters from their loved ones telling, first, that all is well at home; second, that the folks are proud of them—without laying it on thickly—and, third, amiable, chatty details of things close to the soldier’s peacetime way of life. And they like answers to direct questions they have written home; nothing is more exasperating than to ask for the specific address of a friend or how certain crops are doing and to have the query completely ignored.
In letters from their sweethearts and wives, soldiers want what every lover since the world began wants—that he is still the sole object of the girl’s affection, that she misses him and will wait till kingdom come. There is a difference of opinion on love letters as such, some soldiers saying they don’t trust girls who “give out a lot of that goo.” But they are not representative of those who have left behind sweethearts, fiancées and wives who mean the world to them.
There was a sergeant named Eddie whom I met in a London restaurant last spring, because they always double up male patrons who come along. He began telling me of the woman he had married just a month or so before leaving. He had a letter with him and in the few paragraphs he read aloud he somehow communicated more of the terror and beauty and solemn anguish of separated lovers than I have ever heard: “And so I don’t really worry about you, my darling,” his girl wife had written, “because I know that my husband is the best and the bravest and the strongest of all the men who have gone out to fight. Yes, and the gentlest. And I know God will not let anything happen to him because he is like that and because he isn’t anyone else’s husband. And that makes me very happy.”
Maybe the impact is not in the words themselves; perhaps it was in the way the boy read them, eyes aglow, his voice low. And perhaps you had to realize that he was a rear gunner in a Flying Fortress assigned to a station that had had and was having particularly heavy casualties.
Soldiers are more likely to be inspired and bucked up by personal things—how a namesake nephew is growing up or how the girl friend loved his picture in uniform—than by impersonal notes. They like to know how the war effort is continuing at home, but prefer to take for granted that it is going smoothly than to hear about strikes and wage arguments. They hate complaints about shortages of gasoline, rubber, candy, silk stockings or anything else.
One soldier here was infuriated the other day by a letter from a friend complaining that you could no longer get a hot dog big enough to see for a dime, while on meatless Tuesday you had to eat, etc., etc. “That so-and-so should have had what we had to eat in Kasserine Pass,” the soldier said, “and the sound effects, too.”
In general the men dislike the approach of those who write, “Don’t let anyone tell you we at home don’t know there is a war going on.” He doesn’t like to hear of his girl friend going out with other men, but he is likely to be pleased and amused by her lament that the only men left in town are “4F’s, old men and babies.” And he is also a sucker for all sorts of photographs of his family, his girl friend, his pets and friends, as well as for any clippings about him that may have broken into the local newspaper. Pictures and clippings never fail where written words may. One soldier said candidly his girl friend wrote him eight pages twice a week—and “frankly, after the first two pages I don’t know what the hell I’m reading.” He said he would prefer one V-mail letter every day and a longer letter every week or ten days.
OCTOBER 11, 1943
INDIAN CITIES MARKED BY SIGNS OF FAMINE
CALCUTTA, Oct. 10 (Reuter)—It is impossible to go from one place to another in famine-stricken Calcutta and Bengal without steeling one’s self to the indescribable sight of men, women and children lying where they fell from starvation, either dead or too weak to utter a sound.
There are fewer beggars in the streets, compared with several weeks ago, but thousands more are too ill to beg or drag themselves about. The Calcutta hospitals, which started to take in “sick destitutes” nearly two months ago, are now mostly overcrowded. Many doctors say that they have seen more suffering in the past month than in the past twenty years.
In the week ended last Thursday there were 527 deaths in the city’s hospitals. Countless bodies were picked up in the streets. From Aug. 1 to Oct. 6 two public organizations, one Hindu and one Moslem, together with police squads, disposed of 4,152 bodies, though they were not all starvation cases.
All care of the sick is being coordinated. At free rice kitchens, rice and vegetables are ladled out from huge spoons into the earthen bowls that are the only possessions of the thousands who crowd the kitchens. Some 1,350,000 persons are being fed by free kitchens in the province.
OCTOBER 4, 1943
DANISH JEWS POUR ACROSS TO SWEDEN
Many Fugitives Are Pursued Through Jutland—1,600 Reported Already Arrested
FIGHTING IN COPENHAGEN
Stockholm’s Offer Of Haven, Ignored By Germans, Bars 2,000 Earlier Refugees
By Wireless to The New York Times
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct. 3—Fleeing the Gestapo terror introduced into Denmark on Thursday, more than 1,000 Danish Jews reached Sweden, most of them last night.
Braving the icy Oeresund, Jewish refugees of all ages and conditions arrived on the Swedish coast. Some even swam the strait—two miles wide at its narrowest point. Others were rowed across by Danish fishermen, who charged $375 to $750 for the passage.
Not all those who have tried to cross have succeeded. It is thought probable that most swimmers were seized by cramps and sank. Others crossing in boats were surprised by German Navy mosquito craft patrolling the strait and their boats were sunk by gunfire.
The refugees said that when the Gestapo intruded on their new year celebrations, some Jews had resisted and both sides had had many killed. [Many are being hunted through Jutland, The Associated Press said.]
Municipal authorities and Red Cross branches in coastal communities in southern Sweden are lodging and feeding the refugees in schools and other available buildings. Many are destitute. Copenhagen reports said that the Gestapo had concentrated on poorer Jews, apparently giving those who could afford to pay huge ransoms a chance to negotiate.
Travelers reaching Sweden tonight said that Heinrich Himmler had arrived in Copenhagen to superintend the round-up of Jews but this was not confirmed by any other source.
Jewish refugees in Malmo, Sweden, 1943.
OCTOBER 12, 1943
BISHOP DESCRIBES HONG KONG HORROR
O’Gara Gives Details Of His Escape From Execution And Suffering In Japanese Camp
MAKES PLEA FOR CHINESE
Urges Repeal of Exclusion Act and Wants U.S. to Exercise More Influence After War
Recounting the story of his narrow escape from execution and subsequent ordeal as a prisoner of the Japanese, Bishop Cuthbert O’Gara, the Vicar Apostolic of Yuanling and head of the Passionist Missions in western Hunan, China, urged in an interview yesterday that the Chinese Exclusion Act be repealed and also advocated greater American influence in China through offering “cultural and technical assistance to Chinese institutions of learning.”
The interview took place in the offices of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, 109 East Thirty-eighth Street. Bishop O’Gara, who was born in Ottawa, Ont., and is 57 years old, has recovered from his six months of internment by the Japanese at Hong Kong. He expects to return to his post in Yuanling after a stay of two or three months here.
20 YEARS IN CHINA
Bishop O’Gara has been connected with the missionary work of American Passionist priests in China for twenty years and has received high praise from the Chinese Government for his relief activities on behalf of the refugees driven into the interior by the Japanese invaders.
He told of the “fine impression” American airmen and soldiers have made on the Chinese population, both for their fighting ability and faithfulness to their religion.
The Bishop explained that he had flown from Yuanling to Hong Kong for medical treatment eight days before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“I was at our Catholic hospital in Stanley, just outside Hong Kong, on Christmas morning, 1941,” Bishop O’Gara continued, “when the Japanese took me prisoner along with thirty-two of our missionary priests and brothers. We were stripped to our underwear and our hands were bound behind our backs.
“We were taken to a firing line and kept there for about an hour and a half. Then we were questioned and afterward we were put in a garage near by, with our hands still bound.
“I don’t know why we were not executed unless it was because Hong Kong surrendered that afternoon—a few minutes after six British officers were bayoneted to death. We expected it to be our turn next.
REMAINED BOUND FOR TWO DAYS
“For four nights and three days we were kept in the garage, still in our under-clothes, and for two of those days our wrists remained bound behind our backs, while we were given nothing to eat. On the third day our captors gave us a little milk and hardtack.
“Then we were given outer garments and taken to a dark, filthy Chinese hotel, exactly thirteen and a half feet wide and four stories high. For three weeks we were interned in this place, four prisoners to a cubicle measuring 8 by 10 feet and crawling with vermin.
“After that horror we were moved to a big concentration camp, which hardly deserved its designation by the Japanese as the Stanley Civilian Recreation Center, although it was a great improvement in our lot as prisoners.”
Bishop O’Gara said he believed his release, after more than five months in the internment camp, was brought about “through the good offices of the Holy See.” His physical condition then, he said, made it necessary to remain in Hong Kong another month as the guest of the Italian bishop there, Enrico Valtorta.
Asked how he felt about the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Bishop replied: “I feel rather keenly that if relations between China and the United States are to be built on mutual admiration and respect, obstacles such as the Exclusion Act should be removed from the way of a better understanding.
“In the reconstruction period after the war there is much that the United States can do to aid the Chinese. It can give cultural assistance in the way of educational facilities and technical development.”
Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the new China, turned to Russia for aid after his first appeal to the United States was virtually ignored. Consequently there has been a strong Russian influence in the new China’s development, especially in the last twenty years.
OCTOBER 15, 1943
ARMY GETS BOMBERS DWARFING FORTRESS
B-29 Carries More Explosives and Can Range Deep Into Enemies’ Territories
FULL REIN IN 1944 LIKELY
Output Rate Rising But No Let-Up in Liberator and Boeing Production Is Planned
By The Associated Press.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 14—A new American super-bomber carrying more explosives and having greater range than any existing war-plane is in actual production.
An unspecified number of the new giants have been delivered to the Army within the last few weeks. An increased rate of output is scheduled for this month.
Dwarfing the Consolidated Liberator and the Boeing Flying Fortress, the new dreadnaught of the sky is reckoned to be capable of bringing the innermost production centers of Hitler’s European fortress and the Japanese Empire within reach of United States bombardiers.
The plane has been identified as the B-29 by the Army weekly newspaper Yank in a recent article which said:
“A new super fortress, the B-29, is being built which will have a greater bomb capacity and longer range than any existing bomber.”
From previous guarded reports which have cleared military censorship, it appeared that officials did not expect to see the new airplane in combat before 1944. This is presumably because of the time required to attain full-scale production, train crews and eliminate any “bugs” which may show up in the early models,
A prediction that the new heavyweight puncher would be “the determining factor in crushing Germany” came last summer from Capt. E. V. Rickenbacker, World War ace. In June he told the Tenth United States Army Airforce in New Delhi, India, that the new bomber would join the Liberators and Fortresses in 1944.
He also told the American pilots and crewmen that the super-bomber would have double the load and fighting power of the planes they were flying and was especially designed for bombing Europe.
“No nation could survive the pounding a fleet of these planes can deliver and they will be out in mass production next year,” Captain Rickenbacker said.
Any statistical comparison of the new plane with the flying fortress is unobtain
able at this stage, but Gen. H. H. Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces, several months ago gave a tipoff to the difference in his remark that Liberators and Fortresses are “the last of the small bombers.”
Introduction of the new bomber into the United States’ aerial arsenal will not mean the tapering off of production schedules of present-day bombers, it was made clear recently by Charles E. Wilson, executive vice chairman of the War Production Board. Revealing in May that heavy bomber output by April would be eight times greater than in April, 1942, Mr. Wilson added:
“This does not include the scheduled output of the new super-bombers.”
Production of Liberators and Fortresses reached a righ record in August, the WPB revealed more recently, with a gain of 11 per cent from July. Over-all aircraft output in August was 7,612 military planes.
It was recently disclosed, also, that the Flying Fortress was undergoing changes to increase its bomb load to ten tons, making it, the heaviest in the world—until, presumably, the super-fortress gets into the fighting.
A B-29 bomber takes off from the air base at Saipan destined for Tokyo in 1944.
OCTOBER 20, 1943
Editorial
THE BATTLE OF THE DNIEPER
It was just about three weeks ago that Hitler reappeared on the Russian front and supposedly gave orders that the Dnieper line must be held at all costs. And for three weeks now that river has been witnessing one of the fiercest battles of the whole war, in which the resources and the endurance of both sides are being tested to the utmost. The Russians, with a stamina that is all the more remarkable because they have been fighting in a victorious advance since the middle of July, have succeeded in crossing the river at four points and have established bridgeheads which all the German counterattacks have been unable to eliminate. This drive is synchronized with another farther south, against Melitopol, where bitter street fighting is proceeding now. Together, the two great drives constitute a pin- cer movement which, unless checked, would endanger the whole German position in the Crimea and force a further precipitate retreat.
The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945 Page 104