Dad’s WWII Letters Home Series

I recently came across a bunch of old letters my dad wrote to his family while in the service from 1943-1945. It’s pretty wild to know that I’m going through letters on Veteran’s Day 2016 that were written more than 70 years ago. It’s also fascinating to see my dad talk to his parents as a young man. He passed away 13 days after my 14^th birthday so I never got to know him as an adult. Anyway, I hope that this is going to be part of an ongoing series, although it’s hard to keep the dates straight. Some letters he puts the date and year and others just the date and from what I can tell, the days or dates are incorrect. I hope you enjoy this little journey, I’m finding it fascinating!

My dad and Uncle were tremendous athletes, both state champion track stars who went to different high schools. Like many brothers, they loved and respected each other but were also competitive. My dad went to Northeastern University but chose to leave school to join the armed forces during World War II like many young men of his era. As you’ll read later on he became a tail gunner in a B-25 bomber and flew missions over Europe. In this letter, you can see him both bragging about my uncle for winning a medal in a relay race and ribbing him by saying if he was running my uncle may not have gotten his medal. I believe this is from 1943. At the end, he mentions a new house. I have no idea what house or who’s house he’s talking about. Also, the Rosemary he mentions toward the end of the letter is my mom, they were high school sweethearts who grew up next door to each other.

SERVICE MEN’S TELEPHONE CENTER

COLUMBIA ARMY AIR BASE

COLUMBIA, S.C.

March 22

Tuesday, 10am

Hello Folks,

            How’s everything back home? I hope everything is fine and that you are all in the best of health.

            I’m sorry that I haven’t written sooner but I’ve been so darn busy that I’ve had hardly any time to myself. I’ve either been flying or working on the line. When I’m flying, I fly in the morning, go to school in the afternoon, that is recently up to this week, then I’d be scheduled fly that night too. I’d sleep most of the next morning then fly that afternoon and if I didn’t fly that night I’d go to the Post Theater and that would be my only chance for a little amusement.

            As it is now I got up early this morning so that I could write to you. My best buddy left for home this morning on an emergency furlough, his father was very sick, and his pilot arranged to fly him home to Buffalo, NY. Wasn’t that lucky break that his pilot did that. That shows you the kind of pilots that we have here, there all swell fellows and good pilots.

            To give you an example of how good these pilots are, here’s an incident that happened Saturday. A B-25 was coming in for a landing when the control tower told them that their nose wheel was not in the locked position. So the pilot climbed to 5,000 feet and had his engineer try to pump the wheel down but there was a hydraulic failure and it wouldn’t come down. So the pilot just flew around for a few hours to try to get the wheel down but wasn’t successful so he received orders from the tower to bring her in and they told him how to do it. He brought her in and set her down on her main landing gear and then gently set her tail on the runway, cut off both engines and let her coast to a stop. No one was hurt and everybody on the field including some high ranking officials said that it was the most beautiful landing they had ever seen under the conditions and take my word for it that pilot set that ship down so gently that it looked as though he landed in a runway made of cotton. That will give you an idea of the training that our pilots go through and how well they have control over their ships under almost any circumstance.

            By the way, Mom, have you stopped working yet? I sure and proud of that big brother of mine and you should hear me boast about him to all the fellows. Tell him that I’ll write to him just as soon as I can find time, today if I have time after finishing this letter. Well, at least one of us has an I.C.4A championship although it was on a relay. Didn’t I tell you that Northeastern’s relay would have been a corker with Southwicks as lead-off, McCain as second man, Gus Pyrholm as third and me running anchor? We’d have won that relay championship hands down and would have beat Tufts by a large margin.

            I see where Dodds ran a 4:06.4 mile at Chicago Saturday, boy he’s really stepping now. I hope that they let him take a crack at Rice’s 8:51 because I think he could break it if he had some competition.

            How did Tufts make out against Columbia in the K of C Meet?

            You say it’s cold and windy there well it’s a good thing that you’re not down here because it rains so much down here, almost every other day but usually when it rains down here it usually rains for two or three days at a time.

            Well, now to tell you how long I think I’ll be here it’s only fair that you should know, I figure that I’ll either go the first of April or the middle of the month maybe the first of May. So you see I figure that I’ll leave here anywhere from two weeks to a month and a half from now. So you see I haven’t much time left on this field.

            Well folks, I guess that’s about all for now. Be good, take care of yourselves and God bless you all.

Your loving son,

Frannie

P.S. See you soon, I hope. Looks as though I’ll have to go to Belmont now in order to see Rosemary. How do you like the new house?