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Praetorium Honoris

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Letters from Home

(Source)

"Sorry Horst, nothing for you. Some of this mail is weeks old!" Unteroffizier Alfred Tryb was the company pay clerk and food supply officer, the Verpflegungsunteroffizier in official parlance. He also handled the mail, when it actually arrived. A single sack, stained and rather muddy, had indeed arrived from battalion that morning. Sorting through it in his dugout, he set aside the letters addressed to men he knew to be dead or in hospital.

Letters to the dead he would give to his company commander, those who were in hospital would have their mail forwarded to them. Grenadier Othmar Dietrich met him as he climbed out of the earthen shelter.

"Anything for me Herr Unteroffizier?" The young man asked, rather hopefully.

"Let me see... No, no, no, sorry, nothing here for you young Othmar. You do know that if you want letters, you have to write letters? Who does an orphan write to anyway?"

"I have a girl back in Kossen who..."

"Kossen? Never heard of it. Where is this Kossen place anyway? I'll bet you have more cows than people there."

"It's about 20 kilometers from Leipzig, near the Mulde River. It's a..."

"Oh, of course, that really nails it down for me. Hold on..." As Tryb had been talking he had continued to walk through the company area and going through the mail, the 12th Platoon was nearby and he knew young Dietrich was in that platoon, as was another man who he did have a letter for.

"Say, you know this fellow don't you, a young kid from the Eifel. Max Herrmann, he's in your platoon, yes?"

Dietrich stopped, which caused Tryb to stop as well, "Do you know him or not? There is only this one letter for your platoon, you can save me a trip."

"Yes, I know him..." Dietrich paused and looked off into the trees, "more properly I guess you'd say I knew him. He's gone missing."

"Missing! As in deserted?" Unteroffizier Tryb hadn't heard any of the latest news in the company as he had been up at regiment the last two days, trying to find food for the men, which was in pretty short supply.

"No sir, he went out to refill his squad's canteens and never returned."

"So he did desert?"

"No. We heard rifle fire that day where we assumed he went to, American rifle fire. The lieutenant sent out a patrol but the Amis were out there, in strength. So we never found him. The lieutenant has reported him as missing in action, presumed killed."

"That's terrible. Well, run along then young Othmar, I have nothing else for your platoon." Unteroffizier Tryb shook his head as he stuffed the letter to 'Grenadier Max Herrmann' back into his satchel. So little mail got through to the front these days, and when it did, so many of the intended recipients were no longer counted among the living.

"War is a horrible thing," Tryb murmured to himself as he pulled out the mail for the next platoon.

US Army Signal Corps Photo

"Damn Stump, here's another letter for you, what is that, like five? All different return addresses in Philly, except for this one, from what, King of Prussia? What the Hell man, do you have a Kraut girlfriend? Or are you dating the kaiser himself?" All the men around the platoon sergeant, SSgt Herbert Graves, laughed.

"C'mon Sarge, you're an educated guy, King of Prussia is an actual town near Philly. My folks' restaurant is close to a factory, this girl from King of Prussia came in for lunch every day. She writes me, she's nice. She ain't no Kraut, she's Italian, like me."

"Hey, the Italians are allies with the Krauts ain't they?" PFC Jack Leonard got a laugh with that one and a punch in the arm from Stump Gentile.

Rubbing his arm, Leonard said, "Gee Stump, that hurt." He looked upset as well.

PFC Flavio 'Stump' Gentile grabbed Leonard by the scruff of his neck and laughed, "Geez Jack, don't take everything so personal. My people are the good Italians, ya know, the Philly Italians, we hate Krauts."

"Damn Stump, ya got a package too?" Cpl Melvin Katz was incredulous as SSgt Graves handed a box wrapped in brown paper to Gentile. Stump was a popular guy, he usually got a lot of mail, but packages were special, his mother sent him food, Italian sausages and sometimes cheese. Stump was also popular in the platoon because he always shared the packages containing goodies that he got from home.

"C'mon Jack, I might introduce you to this one from the old neighborhood," Stump said, waving a letter in the air, "she's a swell dame, she might even like you!" Stump laughed as he looked at Leonard's face, the kid seemed amazed that some girl might actually like him.

"Gee, you'd do that for me Stump?"

"Hell yeah, we're buddies ain't we?"

As the men dispersed, most of them had mail, a couple did not, which was always the case, SSgt Graves saw his platoon leader, 1Lt Nate Paddock approaching. He held a letter up and said, "For you L.T., you got a brother in the Pacific?"

Looking at the envelope, Paddock could see that it was indeed from his brother, dated about four weeks ago. "Yup, he's a flyboy, navigator on B-29s. Flying out of Guam." As he spoke, he tore open the letter, he didn't hear from his big brother all that often.

Reading the letter, he paused and looked at his platoon sergeant, "Damn, my brother says that my best friend in high school was killed in action. He was..." Paddock paused, Jack Cleburne was more than just a friend, the two had been inseparable as kids. Cleburne's grades weren't good enough to go to college, he had really wanted to go to West Point with Paddock, but had enlisted in the Marines instead.

"Awfully sorry to hear that Nate. I know the feeling." Herb Graves did indeed know the feeling, he had lost two friends from high school in the war so far. One, a bomber gunner, had gone down over some manufacturing town in Germany, the other had been killed in action in Italy, at Salerno.

"Kinda gets ya, right in the gut." Paddock ran the sleeve of his field jacket over his eyes, they were starting to water. "It hurts pretty bad Herb. F**king Jap bastards!"

"Yup. They are bastards, so are the f**king Krauts." Graves was at a loss for words, then inspiration struck, he thought his lieutenant could use a drink, and he had just the thing. "Hey, L.T., let's go to my 'bunker', I think I still have some of that applejack from Normandy laying around somewhere. I don't know about you, but I need a drink."

"Yeah, good idea Herb."

"Maybe a couple..."




44 comments:

  1. Something all servicemen have in common. I wonder if they even have "mail call" anymore with the Internet? Although once out of training, I had my own mail box in Neubruecke. Did you ever see the movie Stalingrad Sarge? a German production about a unit sent from North Africa to recuperate and R & R in Italy, then off to the Soviet Union. I think they depicted the brutality and chaos well, to the point at the end no supplies were coming in. Wonder how many American families had servicemen in each of the branches?

    Soldiers and Sailors lived to get mail.

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    1. There's one thing the Internet can never replace, packages from home. Those are still cherished.

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  2. Got a box of chocolate chip cookies from Ma when I was in the Gulf of Oman. Couldn't effing believe it! They had traveled 12,000 miles, and were in pretty rough shape, but they were probably the best cookies I ever ate! I honestly don't remember if I shared them or not. Been a very, very long time ago.

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    1. My grandmother would send me a coffee cake every year at Christmas. Coffee cake that she made herself, they were outstanding. Then one year, on Okinawa, I was up in Korea for the holiday. When I returned my coffee cake was waiting for me, it had been in transit for a couple of weeks and had gone bad. Sigh...

      No more coffee cakes in the mail. But the letters, I looked forward to those.

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  3. We are now a full generation or more away from letters. The "problem" now is speed, comms can be near instantaneous with no filters and no vetting.
    Wonder who Herrmann's letter was from? Mutti, most likely.
    Another well-scripted piece, Sarge. A "slice of life" many of us can relate to.
    Boat Guy

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    1. Packages. Internet can't replace a package from home.

      Thanks Boat Guy.

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  4. It's not always pulling triggers is it Sarge? With over 16 million in uniform during WWII lots of families had sons and a few daughters in different branches. My dad was Air Corps, his older brother was Navy and younger brother was Marines.

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    1. No, it isn't. I wanted to examine all the facets of military life during the war.

      Had one uncle in the AAF in the Pacific, another (both of my Dad's older brothers) was an infantryman in the ETO. Then a great-uncle on my Mom's side also in the ETO in the infantry.

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    2. 3 of dad's brother's served. One in the BCI with AAF, one in Okinawa, another stayed stateside. On mom's side, it was all girls, so those that married in were the vets. And I never heard one story from their lips, just stuff dad told me.

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    3. The lack of stories, pretty typical. The talkers were not the doers.

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    4. BCI? Do you mean CBI? China-Burma-India?

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  5. That pattern field jacket was the exact one I wore when I did my chores around the house as a kid. It even had the liner. Dad kept a few things from his time in the Army. And I wore them for a few months before I outgrew them. Everything except that field jacket. I wore that until it was tattered...

    Good memories of simpler times. Thanks OAFS...

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    1. I had one of those field jackets as well, a most useful garment!

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  6. Funny how something as mundane as letters, which not all that long ago were major items of communication and often cherished, have so quickly become relics of an earlier age. I honestly cannot remember the last time I got one now that was not "staged" from one of my children.

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    1. It's kind of sad in a way. Progress moves forward, but there are some things which are missed.

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    2. some (maybe quite a few) of the younger generations have no idea how to write a letter, address an envelope, buy a stamp and find a mailbox. And no ability to write worth a damn in either block printing or cursive. It's remarkable when you see anyone under 30 who has good penmanship.

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    3. Reviewing e-mails you have saved does not have the same emotional impact.

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    4. Not even remotely. The letter you hold, was held by the one who wrote it, that makes it personal and special.

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  7. My Mother used to send my Dad cakes in the mail when he served in Vietnam. They were dried out and crumbs by the time he got them but he would get a large glass of milk and eat the entire thing. Years later we decided to surprise him on his birthday and made him a cake about 3 weeks before hand and allowed it to dry out. Then, on his birthday, we gave him a large glass of milk and that dried out cake. He was shocked and, I think, there were tears in his eyes. He ate the entire thing!

    When I was deployed in the Corps, my wife sent me boxes and cards occasionally. She is not one to write very much but when she did....I loved reading her broken english (she is Japanese) and seeing pics of the kids...all smiles.

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  8. it just struck me that your stories are a bit like Ernie Pyle's - they tell of the wartime experiences of regular folks, not generals and admirals and lower rank staff officers but the boots on the ground.
    How about including a vignette about women in service during WWII, perhaps one who ferried a plane to the UK, then hand off the story to follow that plane (P-47, maybe) as it provides CAS to the characters in your story...

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    1. My first thought on your idea was, "Nah, not really in my wheelhouse." Then I realized, this is going to tie in with another short series I wrote a while back about the Battle of the Bugle, there were a couple of Jugs involved there. Now you have me thinking. It ain't a bad idea.

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    2. And you had a Jug pilot embedded as a forward observer, so...

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  9. My nephew/Godson is being deployed overseas this year, just in time for Christmas. So I am going to bake him a Swedish Tea Ring and a Poteca and send them to him. (Swedish Tea Ring (cinnamon rolls not quite separated, Poteca (a rolled bread filled with cinnamon and ground walnuts with just a little cardamon and lemon peel) and a Jule Kage (yet another fruitcake) are family traditions. They require making real bread from ingredients and doing the whole rise, punch down, rise thingy.)

    He's also supposed to send us his e-mail addy but he's a typical Beans-Family, which means forgetful of the little pleasantries. But we have his new, much more serious, girlfriend's physical address so we'll funnel things through her via snail mail or get her or me mum to give us the e-addy.

    We've never not had him at the Ancient House of Beans (now owned by eldest brother with an unattached mom-suite) for the holidays during previous deployments, so this will be the first Christmas deployment. Not that I've been able to make it down to the AHB, but I've shipped breads down to my brothers in previous years. Now that the family is spread out, with a niece in... Austin, I'll be shipping everywhere.

    Mail call. Whodathunk?

    Good story. And, geez, the position of mail clerk must really suck in a military unit near the front. You have to keep track of who's in training, in hospital, in lockup, in the ground... Not a great position.

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    1. Yum Swedish Tea Ring, love those!

      Good clerks are worth their weight in gold.

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    2. They wouldn't survive ,but sanbakkles and krumkake always say Christmas to me.

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    3. Had to look those up, both look, and sound, delicious.

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  10. Very powerful scene in "Band of Brothers" when Malarkey picks up the laundry.

    I am also reminded of a photo from one of our sandbox engagements. The soldier has an OD bandanna on his head, wire rim glasses, and his eyes closed in ecstasy as he sniffs the envelope he has just received.

    A few months after I arrived at my unit, a package arrived from my Aunt. She sent me one of those round metal cookie tins full of nuts and dried fruit. The fruit was way too sweet for my taste. Just opening the tin would give you a cavity. So it sat in my locker.

    Not long after, we had a "Health and Welfare" inspection. Translation--roust everybody out for morning formation, the go through the barracks with a dope dog. The dog on this day was a young male German Sheppard. He was having a great time, bouncing at the end of his leash, sniffing everything, and wagging his tail to everyone.

    If you had ranked everyone in our barracks from dope smoker to straight arrows, my buddy and I would have been way down in the straight arrows. So imagine all the jaws that hit the ground when the dog alerted on my locker. Everyone from the CO on down standing as witnesses as I spun the combination on my lock and stepped aside. Yup, the fruit tin. Best I can figure, it was the dried apricots.

    Look on the dog's face was "Yeah? What?".

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    1. A tin of dried fruits and nuts, man, that's gold for a forward deployed unit!

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  11. Hey AFSarge;

    Mail call was an experience, mostly good, but some not, we had a guy get a divorce decree via VHS from his wife while we were deployed and she proceeded to "Perform for Jody" on video in the break tent for all concerned...We dogpiled the poor guy. I always hated cheaters with a passion, and Jodies, but that ranked the intensity up a few more notches. The chain of command shipped the guy home, he was combat ineffective after that. It was great to get packages from home and even now in the modern age, groups of employees where I work at send munchies and goodies to the troops deployed on a regular basis to remind them that they ain't forgotten, and it is appreciated to get something from home.

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    1. The "Dear John" letters, hate those. Seen more than one guy lose his shit over those.

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    2. “... It was great to get packages from home and even now in the modern age, groups of employees where I work at send munchies and goodies too”
      (in my best drill sergeant voice)

      I hope you brought enough for EVERYBODY

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  12. Just got back from the PO, sending a box of texas "goodies" to Little Juvat and his bride. It's hard to get Chili's and salsa, even Ranch Style Beans there. But, it could be worse, he could still be stuck in Iraq.

    I remember Mom would send care packages while I was stationed at Kunsan. Didn't share the first one which arrived right around Christmas. I don't think I was scheduled to fly that next month at all. Learned from that mistake I did!

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    1. Big Time is the only member of the tribe who still deploys, though he's safe for a while, back to instructor duty. When he was on USS Enterprise, he craved those care packages. Especially those with edible goodies! Beats Navy chow.

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  13. By the time mail got to the boat, every envelope carried the odor of cheap j.c. penny perfume. It was kinda funny.

    I got a care package of chocolate chip cookies one time. Along with the cookies was a roll of skoal chewing tobacco. For some reason those chocolate chip/wintergreen tobacco cookies weren't very popular. Ended up feeding them to the fish. Never had the heart to tell the sender. It's the thought that counts.

    Thanks for stirring some interesting memories Sarge. As always I'm enjoying the ride very much!

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    1. We didn't have mail call in the Air Force after Basic Training. But I remember going to the mail room, looking into the little window of my mailbox to see if there was anything in there. If there was, oh happy day.

      It was special indeed.

      Chocolate chip/wintergreen tobacco cookies? Nah, I don't imagine those would be any good.

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  14. Hey AFSarge;

    I can't seem to find your email addy in your page? Want to send you something it is relating to the mailcall post

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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