Tag Archives: World War II

by | March 27, 2024 · 11:25 am

From the Farm to the Farms

As we know from books like Code Girls, And If I Perish, and A Woman of No Importance, American women served in World War II out of duty and patriotism.  But for some, the war also offered an opportunity for adventure and the chance to escape their small towns for a unique experience of the wider world.  One of them was 19-year-old Dorenda Martin, who left her family’s farm in Smiths Grove, Kentucky in the summer of 1944 for a job in Washington, D.C.

In a letter to her parents, Dorenda described her work as a clerk-typist (“We are called Junior Clerks instead of Secretaries because the pay is less”) in the Washington Building, part of the city’s financial district anchored by the U.S. Treasury Building.  Once there, however, she quickly found her racial prejudice put to the test.  She was allowed time off work to attend an afternoon class to improve her typing skills, but found it populated mostly by African Americans (the boys were even called “Mr.,” she huffed) and switched to a morning class. 

Near the Washington Building was the White House, where Dorenda and some coworkers chatted with an officer about getting a personal tour.  President Roosevelt was out of town, they were told; as to the indefatigable Eleanor Roosevelt, laughed the officer, “didn’t any one know.”  Dorenda also planned to visit the Pentagon, “a large war building” with its own shops as well as offices.  She heard that the Duke of Windsor (whose Nazi sympathies were causing consternation in the intelligence community) had recently tried to enter, but didn’t have a pass so “he had some army officer to come help talk his way in.” 

When not at work or sightseeing, however, Dorenda’s life revolved around “the Farms.”  Located on the family estate of Robert E. Lee, Arlington Farms was a sprawling complex of temporary housing for female civil servants and service members.  Residents were supplied with laundry, shopping, cafeteria and recreation facilities, and the lobby of each hall served as a rendezvous point with the servicemen who “just come out here and look around till they find a girl that looks to suit them.”  Dorenda was more impressed with the military women: the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, a branch of the Naval Reserve) who congregated in their blue and white uniforms for church services; and the WACs (Women’s Army Corps) who “were a lot of fun, & asked us to come to chow.”  She was also intrigued by individuals like Juanita, a petite young woman from Puerto Rico; Vera, who had escaped the German occupation of Czechoslovakia; and a barefooted walker, who Dorenda “hollared” at to inquire where she was from.  “I was expecting her to say Ky. because she said she didn’t wear shoes where she came from.” 

After bringing her parents up to date with this lengthy letter, Dorenda concluded “I have a lot of fun here.”  But duty called, and she “might not write for a month now.”

Dorenda Martin (far left), at a War Bonds event (Harris & Ewing photo)

Dorenda Martin’s letter is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  Click here to access a finding aid and typescript.  For more collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | May 1, 2023 · 9:32 am

“I am going to report myself”

The Allies called him “the most dangerous man in Europe.”  Vienna-born Otto Skorzeny (1908-1975) was an early convert to Nazism, a German Army officer, and a member of Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard regiment. A man of both considerable height (6 ft. 4 in.) and ego, he was easily recognized by the long dueling scar etched across his left cheek.

While recovering from battle wounds in 1942, Skorzeny became a student of guerrilla warfare and special operations.  His enthusiasm put him at the head of several daring missions, including an attempt to kill Yugoslav partisan Josip Broz Tito; the deposing of Hungarian regent and fair-weather Axis friend Miklos Horthy; the infiltration of Allied lines during the Battle of the Bulge by German troops dressed in American uniforms; and perhaps most famously, the 1943 rescue of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini after he was bounced from power and imprisoned in a camp in the Abruzzi Mountains.  These and other exploits earned Skorzeny a reputation as “Hitler’s favorite commando.”

But in May 1945, with Hitler dead and the war lost, Skorzeny found himself holed up in the mountains above the Austrian resort of Annaberg.  Contemplating his inevitable surrender, he was determined to seek out the Americans rather than fall into the hands of the Soviets.  He prepared two notes dated May 10, one in German and the other in English, announcing that in six days he would “report” himself to the Allies at Salzburg, about three hours to the west.  Descending to Annaberg, Skorzeny handed the notes to Allied officers.  They were forwarded to Salzburg with the notation “this came through Annaberg.”

Skorzeny’s surrender notes were in English (front page shown) and German (back page shown)

On his arrival in Salzburg, Skorzeny was placed in the custody of Major John C. Perkins of the U.S. Third Army’s 30th Infantry Regiment.  A native of Webster County, Kentucky, Perkins was a graduate of Bowling Green High School and had joined the Army ROTC while a student at Western Kentucky University.  A communications officer, Perkins was a veteran of campaigns in Africa, Italy, France and Austria, but currently had his hands full with the new responsibilities of an occupying military force.  So it was not surprising that, according to Skorzeny’s biographer Stuart Smith, Perkins was initially unaware of “just what a valuable haul the Americans had landed.”

But Perkins, a capable record keeper by any standard, was careful enough to retain Skorzeny’s two surrender notes, and these unique and historically significant documents are now housed in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  They are timely and exciting donations in light of the 78th anniversary of VE Day on May 8.

Click here for a finding aid to the John C. Perkins Collection and scans of the Skorzeny notes.  For more of our extensive World War II collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | March 6, 2023 · 8:51 am

A guest of that “Austrian pest”

James “Jimmie” Stewart

On May 14, 2016, the Bowling Green Daily News ran a story about James Minor “Jimmie” Stewart, a 99-year-old World War II veteran who spent more than two years as a prisoner of war in Germany. The story highlighted Stewart’s “wartime log,” a journal issued by the Red Cross that invited POWs to document their experiences with diary-style entries, drawings, poetry, and keepsakes. The objective was to create a “permanent souvenir” that would serve as a “visible link” between the soldier and “the folks at home.”

While we are sorry to report Jimmie’s death on April 26, 2017, we are very pleased that his wife Ruth has recently donated his wartime log to the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of  WKU’s Special Collections Library. It is both a poignant and inspiring record of Stewart’s life behind barbed wire.

These hardcover journals were somewhat bulky, and many soldiers shed them as unwanted baggage when they, like Jimmie, were moved around from one prison camp to another. But Jimmie took the volume’s instructions to heart. Included in his wartime log were poems, drawings, lists of his fellow prisoners, envelopes from home, German banknotes, and even an official military ballot from the 1944 presidential election. 

Some of the content was created by Stewart in his meticulous hand, while some was added by fellow prisoners.  In “Poems by P.O.W.’s,” contributors dream of freedom and of those waiting at home (especially mothers), mourn lost comrades, and warn draft dodgers to “keep away from my girl.” One poem recalls the aftermath of Sidi Bou Zid, a battle in Tunisia that saw a smackdown of American soldiers by more experienced German troops. Its author nevertheless mocked Hitler by using the name of his father, the born-out-of-wedlock Alois Schicklgruber, and promised revenge: So now we’re the guest / Of that Austrian pest / “Shickie” The boy with my heart / But our buddies are coming / To fix up his plumbing / Or maybe to take it apart.

Mail from home in Stewart’s wartime log

Perhaps most surprising to see are the many photographs in the journal: of camp buildings, Stewart’s fellow prisoners, two young ladies of  his acquaintance, and camp activities. When they were not put to work, the men found time to stage musical performances and South Pacific-style theatricals featuring comely fellows in wigs, dresses and five-o’clock shadows. 

A loose flyer in the journal told of the approaching end for the Nazis in April 1945: stand your ground, it ordered soldiers who were thinking of putting down their weapons and scattering. For Stewart, fortunately, liberation came in May, then repatriation to Bowling Green, where his wartime log survives to tell his story to the “folks at home.”

The Red Cross brought food packages to Stewart and his fellow POWs

Click here for a finding aid and full scan of James Minor Stewart’s wartime log.  For more World War II collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | May 8, 2022 · 9:19 am

What Does Victory Feel Like?

“Photograph of a Young Nazi”

It was clear that it was May 8, 1945, but in his eagerness to reach out to his family in Bowling Green, Kentucky from “the Heart of Germany,” Captain Harry Jackson misdated his letter April 8.  “To-day is VE day in Europe!” he exclaimed, but rather than “a day of great revelry and excitement . . . the day has been spent in sober reflection and rest.” 

Casting his mind back on the struggle – which, for him, had begun at Normandy only days after D-Day – Jackson found it difficult to appreciate the significance of the occasion.  He and his men felt less like conquering heroes than “bewildered children contemplating something too powerful to comprehend.”  No one could quite believe that, all of a sudden, “there will not be any more guns, snipers, buzz bombs, rockets, mortar shells, blood, suffering, death, and devastating destruction. We cannot realize that the hour is free – that the fighting here is over.”  Overshadowing any relief Jackson felt were the ghosts of “our men drifting and driving through the maelstrom of battle endlessly, tired, weary, footsore, cold,” and of those “who have fallen along the roadside in the mud . . . awaiting the Graves Registration units to come pick them up.”  His reserves of emotion, he admitted, were empty – “and yet moist tears even now trickle down my cheeks.”

Three days later, Jackson took up his letter again.  Still unable to sort out his reactions, he had wandered the sunny streets of the medieval village in which he was staying, then tried to shake off his indolence and reenter the “world of reality” and resume his officer’s duties.  “I must finish this letter now,” he wrote apologetically, “although I have failed miserably to fulfill my intentions when I began it.” 

But if Jackson could not yet understand the meaning of victory he had, only a month earlier, contemplated the wages of hubris, aggression, and defeat.  Billeted in a house in Hanover, Germany, he had come across a photograph of a German soldier. The discovery had moved him to compose a poem “Written Upon Finding a Photograph of a Young Nazi”:

Oh!  Imperious young man – Thou!
Where lies thy destiny?
Has the pillars of thy philosophy withstood
The gamble of the conqueror’s game,
the fanatic’s creed –
Which leads blindly into hate?

Think! – when returning to the remains
of thy heritage,
Of what price you have paid
…….
Weep! and survey the ruin.

Harry L. Jackson’s papers are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Special Collections Library. Click here for a finding aid.  For more collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | April 11, 2022 · 9:06 am

Have something to say, then say it

Harry Jackson (tallest, at rear) with “my crew,” Kerkrade, Netherlands

When Captain Harry L. Jackson landed in France five days after D-Day, the special services officer with the 120th Infantry Regiment, 30th Infantry Division had yet to encounter the worst of his war experiences.  His tour, however, was preceded by lengthy service in the National Guard and, after his unit was activated, by duty at stateside camps and by training at Officers’ Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia and Special Services School at Washington and Lee University.  His training groomed Jackson to be responsible not only for a variety of tasks but for coordinating the activities of his staff to best serve the needs of soldiers and civilians caught in the European theater of war.

Jackson learned that military life was more than the receipt of and obedience to unfathomable orders and meaningless procedures; rather, leading and motivating others required skills that were necessary in any well-functioning organization, military or civilian.  Included in his papers, part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Library Special Collections, is a two-page list of 28 points summarizing the “Management of the American Soldier.”  Among the items of advice:

Treat the American soldier as a man; look him squarely in the eye when you talk to him and treat him justly.

Give short talks to men on subjects which they ought to know.  Be sure the talks are short.  Have something  to say; say it; then stop.

Be extremely careful about your manner in dealing with soldiers; they are entitled to a respectful and patient hearing.  Some officers seem to go on the theory that military efficiency consists in a loud voice and an impatient manner.

[Soldiers] respect and admire an officer who requires a strict performance of duty.  The true rule for handling soldiers is: Don’t nag them; don’t neglect them; don’t coddle them.

Look carefully after the company mess.  Much of the discontent in a company is founded upon dissatisfaction with the food and the way it is served.

Be an optimist; cultivate that habit.

Remember Napoleon’s maxim, that in war the moral is to the physical as three to one.

There is always something to be done; the efficient officer sets to work earnestly and loyally to do it, overcoming obstacles as he goes along.

Prohibit the use of dirty, vulgar language – Punish offenders and see that your instructions are carried out.

This last admonition was, perhaps, more honored in the breach than the observance, as indicated by the motivational techniques of another officer whose words were also preserved in Captain Jackson’s papers.  A week before D-Day, legendary General George S. Patton gave a speech to the men of the Third U.S. Army.  Here is some of what he had to say by way of motivation (edited for PG-13):

Death must not be feared.  Every man is frightened at first in battle.  If he says he isn’t, he’s a #&%@# liar.

All through your army career you men have bitched about what you call “this chicken$#&* drilling.”  That is all for a purpose.  Drilling and discipline must be maintained in an army, if only for one reason: INSTANT OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS AND TO CREATE CONSTANT ALERTNESS.  I don’t give a damn for a man who is not always on his toes.

An army is a team.  Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team.  This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap.

Why, by God, I actually pity those son-of-a-$%&# we’re going up against.  By God, I do.

Every man in the army plays a vital part.  Every little job is essential to the whole scheme. . . . Even the Chaplain is important for if we get killed, and he was not there to bury us, we’d all to go to Hell.

Sure, we will all want to go home.  We want this thing over with, but you can’t win a war lying down.  The quickest way to get it over with is to get the #%&$#&.  The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home.

Thank God that at least, 30 years from now when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you what you did in the Great World War II, you won’t have to say, “I shoveled #&$@ in Louisiana.”

Click here to access a finding aid for the Harry Jackson Collection.  For more World War II collections, search TopScholar and KenCat.

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by | February 28, 2022 · 9:13 am

“There is nothing romantic about it”

Harry Jackson despaired at homes blown out “like the bowels of a butchered pig”

As a U.S. Army Special Services Officer during World War II, Warren County, Kentucky’s Harry L. Jackson (1907-1985) saw combat up close.  Landing at Utah Beach five days after D-Day, he and his men pushed toward Germany via France, Holland and Belgium.  Jackson’s duties included arranging recreation for the troops, writing a regimental history, distributing ballots for the 1944 presidential election, and preparing applications for decorations.  Before long, however, he found himself doing much more: burying war dead, helping to manage waves of refugees, and juggling pleas for favors from desperate civilians.  He experienced the far-away look in the eyes of exhausted combat soldiers, and the utter destruction that war brought to once-beautiful cities and villages across Europe. He also learned to cope with his own emotional tailspin after witnessing a vast panorama of human suffering that included a visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp in summer 1945.

So it was with much authority that Jackson reflected on the bitter fruits of war in an October 9, 1944 letter to his sister Juanita:

While I write this there is a terrible battle raging. . . you will never know (thank God) the terror of war – all evening long I have been listening to the artillery fire – the concussion of which shakes the building to its foundations – then there are the mortars and machine guns – then the tanks. . . the planes are over most every night. . . then to-morrow the casualty lists. . . . 

I went out today – all of the houses are torn to bits – everything blown from the inside with large holes blown through the walls – all the inside contents spilling out like the bowels of a butchered pig – there are no windows – just large gaping holes in the walls through which the wind and weather plays jauntily with the lace curtains – curtains hung by some proud hand to make a home. . . makes one feel ashamed to look into the intimate privacy of these houses as they stand stripped of their raiments and stand naked before you.  The people – the people that once called them home have been driven, helpless away . . . to make way for the mighty god of war and destruction. . . . .

No there is nothing romantic about it.  Beauty and the lightness of life is gone. . . . but we are winning – and there will be a to-morrow of a better world I hope whether I am here to see it or not. . . . My eyes have seen too much – and my mind is filled with revolt at the scene – but I must go on – for them that have gone and for those that are out there to-night and for you at home.

Harry Jackson’s letters are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  A finding aid can be downloaded here.  To browse our World War II collections, search TopSCHOLAR and Ken Cat.

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by | May 31, 2021 · 9:16 am

“A flock of hawks”

On the Memorial Day weekend of May 29, 2021, the remains of Barren County Navy seaman Howard Scott Magers, killed aboard the USS Oklahoma during the attack on Pearl Harbor, were finally brought home.

Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941

On the morning of December 7, 1941, nineteen-year-old Logan County, Kentucky native Warren Tinsley was asleep aboard the U.S. Navy destroyer Aylwin, moored near Ford Island at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  He and his mates were enjoying the looser discipline of that Sunday morning, when many sailors were sleeping off hangovers from their shore leave in Honolulu; some, in fact, including several senior officers, had not yet returned from liberty.   

As a consequence, no one stirred right away when the general alarm buzzer sounded, as it was used for everything from “man overboard” to a fire drill.  But the catastrophic news came quickly: the Japanese were attacking.

Tinsley emerged from below decks to see the attack already under way.  Hit below the waterline, the “old battleship Utah was slowly turning over,” its starboard side high in the air.  Its dazed crew were either struggling in the water or trying to get over the starboard side to swim to Ford Island.  Tinsley hurried to his battle station to find four junior officers trying to decide who would assume the duties of the absent captain.  As the crew rushed to break out the Aylwin’s ammunition, Tinsley saw hostile planes everywhere.  “They reminded me of a flock of hawks attacking a chicken farm in the Kentucky hills.”  Low-flying fighters were “bombing our ships at tree top levels,” giving special attention to the mighty battleships.  One of his mates yelled “There goes the Arizona!” as the vessel exploded, the casualty of a direct hit on her ammunition magazines. And there was the battleship Oklahoma:  it had “turned over as a result of the hits that she suffered and lay like a dead whale with its belly shining in the air.”

Returning fire, Tinsley’s ship managed to make it down the western channel of Pearl Harbor and out to open sea, past the “burning and smoldering mass that was Ford Island.”  After a day of searching for the enemy, the Aylwin returned to the “graveyard of what had once been a formidable fighting force.”  Tinsley also returned to a changed Navy, in which the military routines of peacetime had suddenly vanished.

Warren Tinsley’s vivid account of the attack on Pearl Harbor is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  A finding aid and full-text download can be accessed here.  For more of our collections detailing the service and sacrifice of veterans, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | May 7, 2021 · 8:17 am

“Never stop singing, mother”

When the U.S. entered World War II, Charles Henry Duff of Jackson, Kentucky had already been in the Army for 17 months.  A few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he accompanied his infantry unit to Hawaii to begin 3½ years of active duty in the Pacific theatre.  He would earn a Combat Infantryman Badge for exemplary conduct on Saipan.  Though wounded, Duff came away with a Japanese pistol and saber as souvenirs of the battle.

Charles Duff’s mother, Linnie Duff

But the day after Mother’s Day in 1943, he was just another soldier happy to receive a letter from his mother, Linnie Duff. Worried that she was worried after having received no recent letters from him,  Charles made up for it with a heartfelt reply that paid tribute to his mother’s hard work and sacrifices throughout his life.

“Thinking of the times when I used to sit in the kitchen,” wrote the grateful son, “and watch you cook dinner and how you would scold us kids for fighting over who got to sit on the stool or who got to lick the cake pan. . . And how you used to come home from work so tired you could hardly walk.  And start right in ironing a shirt for me to wear to town.  And oh how it hurt me to see you have to work.”  He recalled the guilt he experienced when, as a young man, he couldn’t contribute financially to their Depression-era Breathitt County household.  “I couldn’t even get a job big enough to wear decent clothes, much less take care of a family.  Who wanted to hire a little ole boy seventeen years old and not big enough for a boy of twelve.” 

Charles remembered the “fuss” his mother made when he wouldn’t take medicine, or how she “used to lay awake nights waiting” for him to come home.  “But the one thing that stands out more than anything,” he wrote, “is the way you would sing.  When you were washing, ironing, cooking or anything that had to do with work you always did it with a song.” 

Attributing his own passion for music to his mother, Charles made one request.  “Music to me is everything.  It’s life, love and even death.  So never stop singing mother, no matter what happens.”  And if he didn’t make it home from the war, she shouldn’t cry over him.  “Just sing for me instead like you have always sung.”  In the meantime, he told her never to doubt that he was thinking of her, because to this son “every day is Mother’s day.”

Charles Duff’s letter to his mother is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here to access a finding aid.  For more collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | June 5, 2020 · 11:00 am

History from Home

David Ellen Tichenor’s D-Day letter

Everyone knew something big was coming – just not when or where – but on D-Day, June 6, 1944, the mystery was solved.  As soon as she heard the news that morning in Calhoun, Kentucky, David Ellen Tichenor penned a letter to her son Thomas, then serving as a convoy communications officer with the U.S. Navy.  In short letters (her V-Mail stationery limited her to one page) she relayed something of the predicament of ordinary people: the “majority in the middle,” in the words of philosopher Eric Hoffer, over whose heads “the best and the worst” so often clash to make history.

On the morning of D-Day, “about 4 or a little later,” she wrote, “we were awakened by the Methodist bell ringing.  [S]oon all the other church bells began ringing.  I got up and turned on the radio as did every one else.  Soon a line of people were seen going to the churches to pray – the invasion had started!” – but she had stayed home, “being too full of emotion and sadness of knowing some of our boys were in it, but I did my part of praying.” 

With the outcome still uncertain, there were only ordinary things to talk about.  David Ellen reported that she and Thomas’s father had recently spent a day visiting family in Bowling Green (she was a niece of WKU’s first president Henry Hardin Cherry).  Upon their return to Calhoun, they found that a generous rain had revived their beloved garden.  “In fact it there had been quite a storm.”  Everything, however, was “fresh and pretty.”

Six days later, wrote David Ellen, everyone was still glued to their radios, but “the invasion seems to be going along O.K.”  Nevertheless, some of the Calhoun boys were “thought to be in it and their mothers are frantic.  What  a mess the world is in.”  Mr. Tichenor was gathering “big luschious” cherries from their tree, an old one that would probably expire after “making its ‘war effort.’”  Two days later: “The first ripe tomato to-day!”

Almost three weeks into the invasion, local mothers were still feeling the aftershocks.  One of them came by David Ellen’s home crying because her son hadn’t received any of her letters (“Of course she writes all the time”) and was worried that something was wrong at home.  For another, it was worse.  “Alma” was “almost crazy,” she wrote, having received word that her son had been missing in action over France since D-Day.  With so many boys being killed, the July 4th holiday was “the quietest day I have ever known around here.”

But still, ordinary life and hopes populated David Ellen’s thoughts: a lack of rain for the garden, a new veterans bill promising servicemen a college education, local marriages and babies, and especially her postwar plans for her son.  Although the world was “a mess,” she didn’t think for a moment that it would stay that way.  “I like your idea,” she told him, “of going to school a year when the war is over and getting your masters degree and a place in a college. Bowling Green would be a nice place.”

These are some of many World War II letters in the Tichenor Collection, held in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click here for a finding aid.  For more collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | May 28, 2020 · 4:02 pm

Planning in Uncertain Times

The year 1946 marked the beginning of the “baby boom,” a dramatic increase in the U.S. birth rate following the Depression and World War II.  Signs of what was to come, however, had appeared at the outbreak of war, when many couples hastily married and conceived their first child before the husband shipped out for military duty.  Afterward, there was always the opportunity for “furlough babies” to enter the world. 

During the war, the question of pregnancy was challenging and complicated, as shown by collections in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  For example, family planning was on the mind of James C. Browning, an Edmonson County, Kentucky teacher who joined the Army in 1941.  A year earlier, “J.C.” had married his wife Lila and they had recently become the parents of a daughter.  Lila, however, had suffered health problems after the birth and was anxious about another pregnancy. In letters from training camp in Arkansas, J.C. was equally anxious to reassure her, for among the many dreams he shared with his much-loved wife—of paying off their debts, buying a small farm and building a life for themselves after the war—was the prospect of “a good time” with her when he made his scheduled return to Fort Knox.  If she didn’t want more children, he assured her, “we will try our best and use the best remedies available.”  She should go to the doctor and arrange to be fitted with a diaphragm, he instructed; then “[m]aybe you won’t be scared all the time.”  Inquiring about her progress in successive letters, he even offered to “get the diaphragm for you if you don’t want to get it.”  He finally advocated a “double preventative”—diaphragm plus condom—as the solution to their problem: then “surely there won’t be anything wrong.”  The young husband trying to avoid “anything wrong,” however, couldn’t plan for the attack on his ship off the coast of North Africa that took his life in 1942.

Click on the links to access finding aids for these collections. For more, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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