Normandy Letters Full
This collection consists of 115 letters written by Ellsberg to his wife, Lucy, from May 3, 1944-September 24, 1944.
Letter #1
May 3, 1944
Sweetheart:
I arrived here quite uneventfully after a rapid passage. Weather good all the way, with the trip about as exciting as a subway ride. Came in yesterday afternoon and I am reporting this morning. So far as I can judge, there is little change around here from when we were last here. More later. I don't know my permanent address yet.
With love, Ned
Letter #2
May 3, 1944
Sweetheart:
It's been a beautiful spring day here and the place is just about as lovely as when we last saw it. Everything is much more advanced than at home. I spent most of the day doing some required reading, and in the late afternoon took a walk thru the park and around some of the spots which were once our old haunts. Contrary to my expectations, there has been very little change in the last seven years and the place looks far more normal than when it was all covered with scaffoldings and temporary stands for the celebration.
I doubt that I'll be here more than a few days, when I'll probably get a chance to go to the shore. Whether my address will be any different there, I don't know yet. Meanwhile, keep on using the one you have. If the address is different, they'll forward from here.
Incidentally, the navy post office clerk here told me the situation is the same as it was in the old days in the tropics - that no matter what kind of stamps or no stamps are put on the envelope here, it all goes out exactly the same way. He says the service is pretty good, though. You can judge for yourself.
By the way, I sent you a regular rate cable (none of this canned stuff) at noon today. They said it would be delivered in eight hours. What was the result? Practically everything I wanted to say in the cable was barred by the censorship rules, except
Much love, Ned
so that's what went.
P.S. I would have sent that cable yesterday if I'd known all the ropes in getting it cleared, which I didn't learn till today.
Letter #3
May 5, 1944
Lucy darling:
The enclosed clippings from this morning's paper, will interest you. This is the Mr. Myers who seven years ago thought it was quite all right for Germany to rearm as a shield against Bolshevism for the rest of Europe. Well, he seems to have survived all the bombings, but now I'll never be able to learn from him whether he still thought he was right. (Well, anyway he made the front page in his death).
I made an official call today on my old chief in the Mediterranean of a year ago. He has gone up in the world since then; however, he greeted me as cordially as ever, complimented me on the improvement in my appearance, and regretted that he seemed to have run out of drydocks for me to work on. I was glad to see the old gentleman (he's all of six years older that I) still looking so hale and hearty with all he must have on his mind. However, he did look a little thinner to me, but certainly cheery and full of punch (not literally).
While I was in that vicinity I also dropped in to see Commander Davy, who was British liason officer with me two years ago in Massawa. Our pleasure at seeing each other again was mutual; he was certainly a great help to me out there. Davy came back from Massawa here a year ago, but apparently the fare available at home hasn't put a single pound on him and he's still very thin. He lives some three miles out from his office, where he says, Mrs. Davy had a tough time on rations for two only in getting very much or any variety. I told him you were having the same difficulty at home. I've invited them both to have inner with me next Monday night at the American Senior Officers' Club, which seems to be doing better than average of any of the hotels here in providing a square meal.
I never did think much of English cooking, and now, if possible, it has even gone down hill. I haven't been near Simpson's yet, but judging from my luck at other first (?) class hotels so far, a well cooked pidgeon's leg might seem attractive.
Breakfast is still the biggest problem regardless of where I go for it. When oatmeal can be such a delicious dish, why the porridge should everywhere be served as an unpalatable mess I can't understand (and no other cereal seems to be served). No fruit, no eggs (I don't miss them), standard English toast, and (God help us) English coffee that you can't drink black, served with hot double skimmed milk. Quite a combination.
All this is going to be good for me. I just have a hunch I'm going to do some needed reducing without the necessity of hard work to bring it about.
It's very quiet around here at night. If you think Hanford Place is quiet, you should drink in the absolute silence of this spot. And yet I'm only a couple of blocks from Victoria Street, a main thoroughfare.
With love, Ned
P.S. Len Quackenbush will be interested in the news of Myers' death notices enclosed. You might let him know when convenient to you. Mr. Myers seems to have been quite a figure in London.
Encls: 2 obituaries, one dated May 7, 1944 (Ed: this may have been in with letter #4)
Letter #4
May 7, 1944
Lucy darling:
This was Sunday, and with nothing much else to do, I looked the town over, mostly on foot. My respect for the accuracy of newspaper reporters has sunk still lower. The general effect is about what you'd get from taking a look around Manhattan. I personally believe more vacant space exists in Manhattan where buildings have been torn down to make parking spaces and save taxes, than I note here.
When next you get here, we can once again visit the Cheshire Cheese in all its ancient glory, despite newspaper stories that it was washed up. I visited St. Paul's also (it being Sunday) and found it looking unchanged, except that it had been smacked twice with amazingly little damage (though the intentions were undoubtedly of the best) - as I remember it, Lincoln Cathedral had more scaffolding up to repair the ravages of time than were visible in St. Paul's.
Selfridge's is quite as it was, except they've given up the fiction they're so well known they don't need their name on any signs - now they have fixed and permanent name signs on every corner window.
One of the poor lions on Nelson's column has lost a right paw and his left one is badly maimed, but on the whole, I have an idea Herman Goring would feel quite sick at heart to survey his handiwork. The poor fellow tried so hard, too.
The weather is lovely so far as sunshine is concerned, but cold. All heating ceased (such as it may have been) on May 1, so I wear my windbreaker in my room, and regret that I packed my heavy underwear in my baggage to follow. Tomorrow I intend to wear my heavy overcoat.
I still feel that if anyone wants to know what's going on in the world, he'd better read the New York Times. Around here, the papers are just a shade ahead of those in Massawa and that only because they are all in English with no space given to the stories in Italian. Four pages make a standard newspaper.
Censorship restrictions are carefully applied here (as well they should be in this situation) and I'm told that as a consequence, the mails are not as fast as they used to be. This may apply only to the mail going out. Among other security regulations, I note that the keeping of diaries is strictly prohibited and those who had any have been required to destroy them. Inasmuch as I've never kept one in this war, that hasn't bothered me, but I'll bet there were some heartaches among those who had.
I see Vera Brittain is addressing a meeting next week on what to do with Germany - forgiveness, of course. Thomas Mann has an interesting article on the same theme in the May Atlantic. I have an idea he knows more about it.
I am enclosing a couple of clippings from the Times. This is the third day straight there has been one on Mr. Myers. Apparently he was quite a figure in London to get all the space he did, considering the scarcity of newspaper space.
The clipping "Let God Arise" by the Dean of St. Paul's impressed me, particularly since the revered gentleman had a couple of bombs through his own roof, one right on the altar. I feel he expresses the case well, and I earnestly hope the whole meaning of the battle cry Monty has revived will sink deeply into all our hearts.
With love, Ned
Encl: Clipping "Let God Arise!"
Letter #5
May 9, 1944
Lucy darling:
I had as dinner guests last night, Commander Davy who was the British liason officer a couple of years ago with me in Massawa, and his wife. He was away from home 21/2 years on that stretch - quite a trial for all hands. He finally got back here a few months after I got back myself. We had dinner at the American Senior Officers' Club (where they really serve a good meal) and after that went out to Regent's Park where they have a small flat - of all places, over a garage behind someone's house! This town is rather crowded.
I'm living in a hotel myself just now, but as it seems I'll stay around here a while, I thought I might preferably change my residence, so I took a walk over to look at Marsham Court. It was quite as usual when we stayed there last time, but no vacant apartments. I'll look around a bit tomorrow in the vicinity of our other former residence, Grosvenor House, which area may be more convenient to me.
By the way, I neglected to mention the matter before, but the per diem called for in my orders is paid officers here, so I should get along all right without any need to modify my allotments from what they've been during the last year.
I managed to acquire yesterday the necessary British fittings and a resistance to cut the voltage down to suit my electric razor and now I can use it again. That's lucky, for every day I've been here and had to use a Gillette, I shaved off parts of my epidermis and my face was getting both sore and bloody every morning. Now that at least is cured.
I suppose by now Mary and Ned (Ed: his daughter and her husband, my father) have probably gone back to Fort Benning. I wonder what all happened with them since I left. I hope the troubles looming up that departure morning cleared away, but did they? There were some basic questions that were far from settled.
No letters from home yet.
With love, Ned
Letter #6
May 12, 1944
Lucy darling:
Today I received the first mail from home - your letters #2, 3 and 4, one from Mary, and one you forwarded from Lt. Aldrich. Your #1 is missing.
It was wonderful to hear from you again and to see your beloved handwriting - even that is some part of you and makes you seem a little present, though only a little.
There is no reason I can learn here why you should not now let any of our friends know in general where I am, the country, that is. Reference to a specific station is forbidden. As regards the address, which may or may not be changed for a while, you can give it out to those you care to.
Your letters came through uncensored and unopened. Of course all mail from this end is more rigidly supervised and censored than ever and at present, is I understand, subject to considerable delay for security reasons.
I am glad to note Mary and Ned bought the car. I think the price was fair all around and the car is easily worth the price, though from your father's point of view, he could certainly never have got it in New England and even around New York the sale of such a large engined car was a difficult problem. Down south that car should be worth far more.
I'm glad to see Forrestal was made Secretary. I believe that was by far the best solution.
Tragic is the word for Jean Pilling's married life, all right. Fate has hit her with nearly everything, poor girl.
My passage here was quite uneventful and not record breaking. Just an ordinary trip, good weather all the way, no delays anywhere, no excitement.
I'm glad to know my cable was received the same day it was sent, which was the day after my arrival here.
Remarkable that Clara's (Ed: Lucy's aunt) book finally returned after a year and a half's wandering.
I am pleased to learn of young Jack's promotion to Captain. I'm sure he's earned it.
And meanwhile I'm fine.
With much love, Ned
Letter #7
May 16, 1944
Lucy darling:
I received your #5 a couple of days ago. Your first letter is still missing.
I've gone to the shore now where I guess I'll stay awhile. In a sense it annoys me, because I find that the sea shore hotels charge even more than the metropolitan ones, though I'd hardly call this the resort season, even in this area. It's damned cold around here - colder than it was in Scotland last winter one of the men here assures me. And meanwhile all my heavy underwear is still at sea, much to my regret. I still more regret it because when it comes, there will be a further delay before it can possibly be rerouted to me down here.
Unlike London, this spot reminds me more of Algiers. Last night (my first here) the sirens blew, the ack-ack guns performed and some bombs burst. Quite like old times.
Night before last they knocked down 15 German planes along this coast, according to the papers this morning. A couple were bounced into the drink by the guns and fighters close by where we're working. That seems to have been one of the worst nights the Luftwaffe has had for some time.
I'm glad Mary and Ned seem satisfied with their car purchase. I believe the price was mutually advantageous.
I'm much afraid mail transmission here may be slower both ways than before. Stick to the present address, however, for I doubt there will be any gain in changing it just now.
With much love, Ned
Letter #8
May 18, 1944
Lucy darling:
As I look forward to our anniversary, which this time we shall have to spend apart, I am doubly glad to remember that kind fortune at least gave us a chance to spend our twenty-fifth together. This, I'm sure, will be the last separation. Thank God I was home for the last one and for Mary's wedding.
There is a feeling of loneliness especially acute at being apart for that day. Every thing else here goes to accentuate it - quarters in a seashore hotel, unheated now in weather colder than last winter here, the chill breeze from the water, the desolation wrought by four years of intense bombing which have left a large part of the town in ruins. This place, and the towns like it all along the shore come fully up to the newspaper reports of the devastation of the blitz and since then.
Sunday and Monday night we were bombed again, but nowadays the ack-ack and the night fighters make the raids relatively ineffective and very costly - for one stick of five bombs which missed their target and damaged only a pub and a few houses, the Germans had 15 planes knocked down Sunday night and 6 more Monday. The last couple of nights the weather was bad and there were no attacks.
Five years ago today I think it was, I journeyed north to spend a week with John and Lucy, who were kind enough to take me in when the whole town was jammed with visitors. Somehow history seems to be repeating itself, for once again I'm in a town packed with unseasonable crowds but this time no good friends to stay with and I'm damned lucky to be able to get into this delightfully cool summer hotel.
I haven't been completely among strangers, for I've met various officers I knew in the Middle East several years ago, mostly of the Royal Navy. And oddly enough, on the beach yesterday where I went for a conference, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy came up to me and said,
"Wasn't your daughter married last December?"
"Why yes, I answered."
"Well" he said, "I was invited to the wedding but at the last minute, I went on duty and couldn't come. You wouldn't remember, but a Mrs. Davis called to ask whether she couldn't bring a British lieutenant as her guest and was told 'Why, of course.' I was the lieutenant - my names Houston."
Wasn't that odd to meet your unknown guest three thousand miles away literally on a foreign strand?
The curtain has gone up in Italy. Too bad Wagner is not available to write what would have been his grandest score - the Gotterdammerung of the new pagan gods. May I contribute a few notes.
Ned
Letter #9
May 21, 1944
Lucy darling:
I've really gone to the shore at last, away from any towns and it seems like old times (not quite) in our cottage at Southwest Harbor. Believe it or not (and in this chill weather it seems unbelievable) I'm living again in a summer cottage right on the beach with plenty of sea breezes to keep the place cool, and some nice cold water right off the front doorstep to go swimming in (if any one were such a fool). The water is nearly as cold (not quite) as that Labrador Current which laps our rocks at the Anchorage (Ed: in Southwest Harbor, ME), and the weather reminds me of Maine in October.
The cottage itself (unoccupied by its owners apparently since the war started) is of usual summer cottage construction, wood, but it is not badly fitted out - a real electric stove, running hot and cold water (an electric hot water tank), toilet, shower bath, real beds, and grass about a yard high in the area around the cottage. Also several steamer chairs and a beautiful view of the water across the barbed wire entanglements.
I had some luck today. I've just about been freezing to death ever since I got here, for all heating stopped on May 1. (Of course, they never really heated anything over here anyway). My stuff by sea hasn't come yet, and Heaven knows when I'll get it. So I managed to draw two suits of heavy woolen underwear from a Seabee outfit this morning, and I was inside one of them just as quickly as I could jeep back to my domicile. For the first time since I left New York I feel warm again.
The second thing I collected today was a tin hat, which is also very useful when the ack-ack shells come down out of the sky (frequent around here).
Which is the more useful, the underwear or the tin hat, is quite a question. Personally, I think pneumonia is a greater danger out here than the war.
I'm sorry to say that I haven't had a letter since I left London, which is the result of very poor communications this way. The mail service going out of here is, I hope, better. (The last letter I received is #5).
Everyone in our area is quite busy, as you can well imagine. We see flocks of planes every day bound both ways to make it hot for our friends abroad (altruistic, certainly, considering how cold we are here) and what the papers say about hundreds of planes on each attack is certainly so. On the contrary, the German attacks are very slight in numbers comparatively, which I notice is a repetition of the old Algiers experience.
I trust I stay here awhile till summer weather really comes, but I doubt that that ever happens. Why the English have summer cottages anyway, I can't see. I don't think it ever really gets hot here, and certainly the water really never gets warm, so why bother?
I suppose you've heard from Mary since she got back to Fort Benning. She is probably plenty hot down there now. How did the Buick run on their trip?
Well, the attack in Italy seems to be progressing favorably. That should give the Nazis a foretaste of what's in store for them elsewhere.
I've just about run through the magazines and reading matter I brought over. When I'm certain about the mails both ways, which I trust maybe settled in a few weeks, I'll send for some of my own books. Aside from rereading them myself, some of the people here I meet have read some of them and manifest an interest in some others.
With much love, Ned
Letter #10
May 23, 1944
Lucy darling:
We had another air raid last night around midnight which lasted about an hour. There was quite a display of ack-ack shells bursting high in the darkness, the roar of bombing engines you could hear but not see, searchlights fingering the heavens, chandelier flares dropped by the Nazis to illuminate the targets, and a perfectly dazzling effect of rocket batteries firing salvos. The lonely beach we are on wasn't the target, it was a town a few miles away, where however I was most of last week. (It got bombed a couple of times then, also). What the damages were, we don't know here - I heard a pub got smacked. Most of he churches there and a good part of that town are already flattened out, since a couple of years ago it was one of the most blitzed points in England, continuously receiving far more attention than London. But the Nazi raids aren't what they used to be then. And this morning an unusually heavy air force of our own went out over the coast in retaliation, so I have no doubt we finished ahead on balance.
It is amazing in point of time how close we are to the enemy. Planes taking off from the fields around us in ten minutes are over enemy territory; conversely, in about the same time, the enemy can reach us. It is a striking instance of our air superiority that not one enemy plane in daylight have I seen over our coast, while on contrary our planes by the hundreds pass overhead morning, noon, and afternoon (let alone night) to smack the enemy bases in northern France.
I hope somehow in the next few days I can manage to get to London & see what's holding up my mail.
With love, Ned
Letter #11
May 27, 1944
Lucy dearest:
The mail situation has been very confused lately. Since I left London for another spot, I received nothing at all. Then I was shifted again to the beach, and still nothing. So yesterday I went up to London to see about it. I was told there three letters had been forwarded a few days before to my first change via the British post but on my return here via that place, they hadn't yet come. At any rate, while I was still in the London office, a new mail arrived, and I received four letters from you - your #1, 7, 8, and 13, and one from Mary. They also told me in London a "telegram" (or cable?) had come some days before for me, which had been forwarded with the mail. I haven't that either, nor could the London Western Union office find it for me, since I couldn't even give them the exact date it was supposed to come, and they have thousands every day. If you sent it, please repeat its contents in a letter.
You will observe that airmail stamps do you no good. I am assured here, everything goes out the same way, regardless of stamps or no stamps. I am certain looking at the stamps, regular and otherwise, on your letters, that everything gets exactly the same treatment in the Fleet Post Office in New York regardless of stamps. Your letters arrive here uncensored and without even a censor's stamp on them, which is interesting.
I note from Mary's letter (of May 17) they've been transferred to Fort Meade.
The weather here has warmed a bit, and last night was gorgeous, with a lovely sea and a crescent moon. No bombs.
I listened last evening (in a nearby cottage with a British radio) to Radio Berlin, being the first time since leaving Africa I've heard it. There were two programs in English of special interest. The first was "Midge" broadcasting in excellent American to "her kids," "the Yanks" in England for whom there were tears in her voice over their being sent soon to slaughter. Her program consisted of an excellent jazz orchestra, playing nostalgic American love songs (not new) after each of which in a much concerned voice Midge would ask "her kids" didn't they wish they were back with their girls, and remind them girls get tired of waiting and run off with the boys at home (which the Massawa experience of my young army officers confirms). Then they played "Were you sincere?" and Midge asked was Roosevelt sincere when he sent us here, and were we sincere in being here at the direction "of Roosevelt, who never keeps his promises, and of the Jewish interests?" After which Midge enquired, "Am I right, or am I? Good night, kids!"
Quite a program. I shall take a deep personal interest when I get to Berlin in personally helping to wring Midge's neck if I can ever locate her.
Then William Joyce, "Lord Haw Haw" took over with the news as seen from Berlin. It appears that the Germans have withdrawn from the Italian coast to higher ground inland. To avoid the malarial season coming on, I suppose, since he didn't suggest the Americans had anything to do with it. About the "much advertised invasion, he would leave us to speculation and doubt, doubt and speculation." And then he turned to a long analysis of Churchill's recent speech in Parliament on foreign affairs, showing his listeners that Britain had lost her power in world affairs and was now but a tool of the Kremlin and the White House. So why should another Englishman sacrifice his life for such leaders?
William Joyce is another traitor I shall enjoy seeing hanged before too long.
It interests me to note that in these broadcasts Germany has reached the point where no longer is Nazi might going to dominate the world or decide the issue, but the Nazis are now clutching at such straws as American nostalgic sentiment and British fears of their allies to ease the blow on them.
Well, they are wrong. There isn't an American soldier here who isn't eager to get home, but they seem to realize the road lies through Berlin and they are chafing for D day to get started on it.
Meanwhile, all hangs upon the British and the American navies. I have no doubts about Eisenhower's army crashing through once they are on the far shore, but our navies must first put them there and the real battle is going to be fought out by ships, mostly small, of which the world will never hear, and which look very little like conventional ideas of warships. Our weird little ships of all kinds against German mines and beach obstructions - on these prosaic little Davids rests the result. Ranged about them are tremendous preparations, in no way exaggerated by the press reports. And overhead an overwhelming air umbrella, the worth of which no one depreciates. But it is on what is in and under the water that we must combat with our little ships that the problem lies. Germany thinks it has there an impregnable Atlantic Wall. The Nazis will soon learn it's about as good as the Maginot Line.
With much love, Ned
Letter #12
May 29, 1944
Lucy dearest:
No more letters since I wrote before. Those so far received are #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 13. At least 3 letters and a telegram (or cable) received in London about 10 days ago are still chasing me over England and seem lost for the present. If you sent me a cable, please repeat the contents in a letter since the cable company can't locate a copy of it.
Since I left London two weeks ago, the mail delivery has slumped. The forwarding from there is terrible, though they have my new address. However, I do not dare to change my number, since before you got it, it might be changed again and thus make matters even worse.
Air raid alarm just sounded. (A little after midnight).
I have just been rereading your letters, particularly the last four - 1, 7, 8, and 13 which I managed to collect myself a few days ago on a brief trip to London. So in answer to your questions:
There is no reason now why our friends cannot be told I'm in England.
As regards myself, I haven't a particularly strenuous task, right now at any rate. I'm supposed to be a technical advisor on one phase of our preparations, so I have only a thinking part right now, while I watch others do the actual work. I'm getting quite a rest at the shore. The only strain about it is inactivity.
(Twenty minutes later. All clear. Some distant firing heard for a few minutes. Nothing close by). (Yesterday all day the cottage shook every few minutes as from earthquakes. I have an idea the coast of France was getting quite a beating).
Yesterday (Sunday) I attended services (Episcopal) at an army chaplain's nearby here, it being Whit Sunday. Solemn enough. I thought the hymn with which the service closed, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," particularly appropriate.
I'm glad to know you met Mrs. Howe. I've never met her so far as I can remember, but Howe thought we had years ago. I trust you found her companionable.
I am pleased Walter will go to Officer's Candidate School. I'm sure he'll make a fine officer. Pass my congratulations along to him.
Remember me to Mr. Beard. I whole-heartedly appreciate his thoughts of me.
I can't shed any tears over Commander Carmine's having to come away from California. So far as I am concerned, he can keep on coming all the way over here to relieve me, and I'd be overjoyed to spare him the need of standing the New Jersey climate. I could stand it with great pleasure myself, plus what goes with it. I've had more than enough now of separation and I earnestly hope when this one is over it will be the last forever. The remembrance of your smiles is with me always, and looking at your picture seems in a slight way to bring your presence a little to me when I roll in at night.
(1 a.m. Another alert).
And I particularly appreciate your prayers. The card you sent May 16 (#13) "God keep you in His loving care, Every day and everywhere," I felt deeply. I feel moreover He does. I've had a couple of minor accidents that might have been serious, but weren't. About a week ago I dropped eight feet down a vertical ladder on a small Dutchman converted into something else for us, and came down in the hold squarely on my right heel, with nothing else touching. I got a stiff jolt so I couldn't bear any weight on that heel, so the surgeon carted me over to the main naval hospital where they took three Xrays of my right heel. There was no fracture anywhere, so I got a sponge rubber cushion and a cane, and in a few days was able to get around with nothing except the rubber pad. However, it didn't work out too well, for a few days ago later in jumping from another vessel to a boat alongside, my leg missed the rail and I went overboard into the Channel. I came up all right and swam to a fender hanging down the side, from which they fished me thoroughly soaked. My waterproof wristwatch got a good workout and emerged satisfactorily. I was interested to note that the water, which I had feared was cold enough to be numbing, didn't feel cold at all, but quite comfortable to swim in, at least fully clothed (with woolen underwear on also). I went back to the cottage to hang all my clothes, including my shoes, on the line to dry.
My heel is about well now, so I don't need the rubber cushion, and I appreciate two solid legs more than ever.
(This time the planes passed directly overhead, with the guns banging away right alongside. However, the target was further to the westward - no bombs around here. The all clear has just sounded again. 2 a.m.).
I note in the English papers that air-raid precaution watches have been abandoned at home. I guess they don't need them there any more. And I hope now it won't be too long before the Nazis are shoved so far away from here that this coast also can dispense with sirens.
With much love, Ned
Letter #13
May 31, 1944
Lucy darling:
Tomorrow is our anniversary, our last apart I trust. I cherish memories of our twenty-fifth, which by the grace of God we were happily able to spend in each others arms. May the next one and all others yet to come be lightened for me by your glowing eyes and softened by your caresses!
This one will be lonely enough, in spite of the planes continually roaring overhead and the flotillas streaming to their anchors just offshore. God alone knows how many hundreds of thousands of men there may be strung out along this shore waiting with the planes and the ships for the signal for action which cannot now be much further off, but one can still be very lonely in a crowd when the single person who gives life any meaning is not of it.
So now on the eve of June, I wait with very different thoughts from those of twenty-six years ago, for June and the storm that will break with it this time. The preparations are tremendous, our forces immense but the obstacles at sea and on the beaches across the water are of great magnitude. Here Hitler stands or falls and his resistance will be desperate. Regardless of what happens, we have the power to crash through ultimately, but I hope that with good seamanship, good weather, and the help of God in this undertaking, we will crash through on the first assault and swiftly scuttle the last Nazi hopes of any stalemate.
With much love, my dear, Ned
Letter #14
June 3, 1944
Lucy darling:
Our anniversary came and went, marked mainly by a Dutch commander, a Royal Navy lieutenant, and a Royal Engineer's subaltern all wishing me happier ones in the future over the tea cups in the Dutchman's little cabin aboard an insignificant Dutch ship on which I had been working over the pumping equipment all the day. It was heartening to know they really felt their good wishes. My heart ached for the Dutch three-striper, though, for he was in the East Indies when Holland fell four years ago and he hasn't heard from his family yet. But now the day of reckoning draws near and no one puts his soul more wholeheartedly into the preparations than this exiled Hollander.
The weather is good and we all pray it remains so. It has turned warm the last few days, and nature at least is propitious. And overhead in swarms our bombers and our fighters stream out over the water to prepare the way. Last evening just at sunset (10:30 pm here) some fifty Flying Fortresses headed homeward passed inland right above us quite high up in a stately procession with the setting sun gilding the under sides of their wings almost as if they were aflame. But there was a sombre note to the occasion, as one of the planes twice fired a red flare - the signal that she had wounded aboard and for the ambulances on the field ahead to stand by her when she landed. To complete the picture, several miles behind the main formation, a solitary Fortress, unable to keep up with the others, straggled behind, with four fighters, Lightnings (sic), hovering protectively in her rear, apparently having shepherded her safely across the Channel.
The hours of daylight here are amazing. England, even the southern part of it, lies much farther north than usually we realize in the U.S. Then they have double summer time here, with the clocks advanced two hours over Greenwich time, and since we are practically on the Greenwich meridian, we get the full advantage of being the whole two hours (less only a few minutes) ahead of the sun. The result then of all this is that it is light outside till about 11 pm by our clocks, and the darkness lasts only till 5 am. Some long day!
About the allotment, I suspected that you might get two conflicting notices regarding the amount. If the actual check you received on June 1 was not for $560, I suggest that the quickest way to clarify the situation is to go to the Navy disbursing officer at 90 Church Street, 14th floor, officer's accounts, and ask them to clear it up. It was in that office that my allotment change requests were made, and they have the records. I think you'll get quicker action there in person, than by writing to the Allotment Office in Cleveland or Chicago or wherever it is.
I received four letters from you last night - #14, 15, 16, and 19. It appears they reach here in batches about once a week, but apparently with some gaps as the above numbers and past experience show. I still have not received three letters forwarded me from London nearly two weeks ago (including a telegram from Heaven knows who) which were sent down here via the British mails and have not since been seen. I think those missing letters probably comprised most of your 9, 10, 11 & 12, which haven't yet been delivered. Do you know anything of the telegram (or perhaps it was a cable)?
Up to now, I certainly haven't been overworked, having done mostly a thinking part, with plenty of time to rest. And I may say I have no intentions of doing any diving, aside from which there appears to be no need anyway.
So far as I know there is no reason why you can't tell our friends (or the Leader) (Ed: Westfield, NJ newspaper) that I've gone to England.
In this cottage, the breakfast problem is solved. I get my own - usually coffee or tea and oatmeal. No fruit or fruit juices are available, but toast and marmalade are. I wouldn't use the milk around here, and I don't care for the evaporated kind, so the coffee is always black (as for connoisseurs?).
I'm glad to hear your mother is with you and I trust she stays a while. I did not understand your reference "to what the doctor told her." Perhaps you elaborated on that in some of your missing letters. What did the doctor tell her?
I am sorry to learn Mr. Hastings is no better. I certainly shall write them in a day or two.
I'm afraid there isn't much in the way of alleviatory advice I can give Ned or Mary now. I'm just a little afraid this last transfer was a result of that gorgeous rejoinder Ned made to his unsatisfactory fitness report - it is about the normal manner a commanding officer would take to end an unsatisfactory situation without a rumpus. The only answer I know to the situation is to bury the past and even in an unpromising position to do the best possible.
As regards the new war bond drive, I believe it desirable to buy $1000 more. However, you'll have to judge that situation yourself. Certainly for the present I won't need any more money than I get here.
I see from your letter about Matt's telephone call that he is still exactly his old self.
How long I'll be here is uncertain; no great while, I judge. And where I'll go from here, I don't know yet, though I may learn soon. But from the way things are moving now in Italy, I have great hopes that when Montgomery gets another smack at Rommel, the old chase will be resumed with all its former vigor. I note that the German radios have a new song. That old one of 1940, "We Sail Against England" has been supplanted by "The Watch on the Channel." I'm afraid that watch is shortly going to be suffering from a busted mainspring.
It's midnight now. The roar of British bombers passing overhead for the last hour has finally ceased and they must all be over France now, dropping bombs into the works of that watch. So I'll turn in. Tomorrow is Sunday, and a very busy day here.
With love, Ned
Letter #15
June 5, 1944
Lucy darling:
The major feature here is watching the Forts fly over, very high. They aren't camouflaged any more, they are just a glistening aluminum, and the way they shine in the sunlight now is gorgeous. Yesterday in one formation nearly two hundred passed overhead, a stately and magnificent sight, though I doubt they looked so beautiful to the Germans a short while later. There must have been a thousand tons of high explosive cascaded down the necks of our Nazi friends from that formation alone.
Yesterday the weather wasn't good and today it isn't much better. It blew fairly hard and kicked up quite a sea. Inasmuch as I had to make a trip on a sub chaser with a number of British army brass hats and a few of their top civilians, it had at least an advantage in giving some of those gentlemen an idea of what effect sea conditions have on operations. We were out in the clear in the worst of it at noon, when dinner was served - a grand dinner, steak, mashed potatoes, peas, and a real fruit salad. Some of the army decided they weren't hungry and stayed on the topside, while half of the others after a few nibbles came to the same conclusion and fled to the deck. It was about the best dinner I've had since I landed here.
We had quite a trip and saw plenty, and it was plenty. Under the conditions, the puny efforts of the Germans to interfere by air remind me of the same situation in Algeria - I guess they just haven't got the stuff now any more than they had then.
We all got pretty well soaked from spray coming over as our little sub chaser took the seas over her forecastle, but I had taken the precaution to don my woolies before we started, and I wasn't cold. However, when we got in and I had dried off, I could literally wipe the salt off my face. Reminded me of sailing days on the Argo (Ed: his 27' "A" class gaff-rigged sloop in Southwest Harbor, ME), which by the way, would be useful here, for this is the world famous center of British yachting (except that the sailing yachts are all stowed for the duration, and I haven't seen a single sail while here).
I visited Chichester Cathedral a few days ago. It isn't as big as Lincoln or York, but I thought it was decidedly more graceful than York, and definitely less severe. It has the most graceful stone spire I've seen, hexagonal, beautifully proportioned, with lovely sculptured stonework at the one-third and the two-thirds points of its height (the lower tracery different in design from the upper). This cathedral is reminiscent of the Florentine ones in that it has a bell tower entirely separate from the cathedral building, standing about fifty feet from it, and apparently older than the cathedral itself.
The cathedral hasn't been bombed, nor has the town to any extent, though it isn't far from two of the most bombed parts in England. I understand, however, many of the parishioners would like to take their bishop out and drown him, for he is one of the leading lights in England who is opposed to bombing Germany; some think they see a connection between his expressed opinions and the immunity of his cathedral, but I doubt that. The town is a little out of the way, with far more attractive targets nearby, and I think that's the answer.
With much love, Ned
Letter #16
June 6, 1944
Lucy darling:
This has been D day. From everything I have seen or heard here, it has gone better than any expectation. I have said before that the preparations have been terrific. The vast number of ships that launched this expedition was beyond any belief as I saw them before sailing. Let alone any enemy hazards, the traffic problem across the channel was of itself immense.
All last night bombers roared overhead to plaster the enemy beachheads. In the distance, behind the mine sweepers, the bombarding warships steamed away and then a veritable avalanche of landing vessels and transports. Strange as it may seem, a real surprise appears to have been achieved in the point of attack and in the time.
Today more planes than ever were seen anywhere before streamed continuously across the channel. If any German plane showed itself over Normandy (few did) it couldn't have lasted but a moment in the face of the swarms of fighters we had there. And this afternoon we saw the second paratroop division stream outward - an interminable line of transport planes each towing a glider. One towing plane, flying low but trying to climb unsuccessfully, was obviously in difficulty and I headed out in my boat to stand by when suddenly it let go from the glider a shower of parachutes over the water. We started for the spot to rescue the men but it soon turned out they had dumped only their equipment, not the men. The plane, its load somewhat lightened, turned back toward land which it managed to reach and then cast loose its glider, while the plane itself gained enough altitude then to make a nearby field apparently.
Here on our beach we have been sending away special craft all day - so special and so odd you'd think them nightmares if you sighted them in ordinary times at sea.
Our last reports - this is after midnight of D day - are that the beachheads are firmly held. What a cause for thanksgiving that is, only those here can know, for all our advance air reconnaissance data showed tough beach obstacles, heaven alone knows how many mines, and what other surprises, one could only guess. Now we are over that, the end is sure.
What has already passed over to assault the beaches is nothing as compared with what is ready to follow. The attack in Italy, ending a couple of days ago in the capture of Rome, was a fitting enough overture. Now will come the crashing outburst of forces that will overwhelm the neo-pagan gods and that Wagner alone could set proper music to. Hitler is going to learn what force really is. As for Goering, if only he could have seen the skies today, he might have turned green with envy.
And so ends the first day.
With love, Ned
Letter #17
June 9, 1944
Lucy darling:
Just a note to say I'm busy but everything is going well.
Love, Ned
Letter #18
June 9, 1944
Same place
Lucy darling:
Your cable of the 29th arrived here June 3. Your "canned" cable of May 13 never has reached me, though I judge now it actually reached London about May 20 and was lost in transit between there and here.
Your letters #6, 10, 11, 20, 22, and 23 all reached here together last night, together with the one from Glen Galvin (ex-Massawa) which you forwarded to me.
You might as well quit worrying about erratic mails either way. I regret to tell you that the mail coming here from you arrives quite irrespective of air mail or ordinary stamps, to which no attention whatever is paid by the Fleet Post Office in New York. Apparently it all goes out by the line (air) on which I came, when, if, and as the planes sail, and no doubt to some degree haphazardly depending on which bags get on the first plane out and which don't.
As regards the mail from here to the US, I am assured that it all goes (or doesn't go) the identical way regardless of whether it is "Free," ordinary postage, or so plastered with airmail stamps you can't see the address. They don't care here; it all goes into the same bag, and when there is a plane going back, some bags go on that one, and the rest, if there isn't room, wait for another.
That the Army (and Jane's boy friend) may get better and more regular service is of no moment to the Navy and I can't do anything about it. All Navy mail must go through the Navy post office; it cannot be sent by regular civilian service regardless of my desires; and it cannot go with the Army mail or thru an Army post office. That is a Navy censorship rule which cannot be broken.
The Army service is undoubtedly better. The Army runs its own air transport service which carries its mail, and the number of flights each way are very great. The Navy has none such. It works only with the air line on which I came over, and I need hardly tell you what the delays on it are or can be.
On top of all else, I am in an out of the way spot, and there are delays between here and London both ways which amount to several days or more and are quite unpredictable.
So please quit worrying that delays mean that I'm sick or incapacitated. They don't mean anything more than that the mail service for the Navy varies from excellent to rotten. There was one further factor. I understand that from about mid-May to D-day, there were some intentional holdings of the mail for strategic or security reasons. If that was so, it may be over now.
At the present moment, your still missing letters are #9, 12, and 21. The last received is #23 of May 31, including the "News of the Week."(It had no air mail stamps on it, by the way).
Darling, I hope the above explains the mail question and ends it. I hate to waste letters to you on that subject; I'm not trying to save money on air mail stamps; and if I spent a dollar in stamps on each letter (which I'd gladly do if it helped delivery) it wouldn't get it to you any sooner.
Right now we're still busy here where I've been some weeks, dispatching quite odd craft (in which business salvage figures in a queer way) to the shore. I'll probably be here a few weeks yet.
I was exceedingly sorry to read in one of your delayed letters that your mother has cataracts in both eyes. I earnestly hope Dr. Childers' examination indicates a more promising outlook than the Willimantic diagnosis.
And I'm terribly shocked to hear about young Talbot Malcolm. You are quite right; the situation of that family makes the tragedy a continuing source of fear while this war lasts.
I was both interested and pleased to receive the letter from Glen Galvin which you forwarded (and read first, so you know what's in it). Glen was a college graduate, a Rose Bowl football player on Southern California's team, and quite an unusual person, who was coxswain in my personal launch at Massawa. He made a fine sailor, and never dreamed that a college degree put his task beneath him. It was good to hear that he thought I taught him something.
I was glad to hear from Mary directly and from you, that she likes her job, though it's out of her line. She mentions she's getting $146 a month which is fine and should be quite a help. However, it's finer that it interests her and keeps her busy.
As regards the allotment, I suppose that is straightened out by now. I can hardly do anything about it from here; it will be no use my writing. All the records on file at 90 Church show what's wanted. I quite expected you to get notices about stoppages, starts, and what not. However, the check you got June 1 is the answer. If it is not for $560 don't waste time writing anybody letters but go and see the allotment officer at 90 Church St.
About my old Navy overcoat, I'll never use it again, so I guess you had better donate it where it will do some good. As you say, the Navy buttons had better come off first, but I'm quite willing to pay for having a set of ordinary buttons put on before we pass it along.
The weather has been bad the last couple of days (worse today) and as we have to work at sea, it hasn't helped any. It's clearing tonight and I hope tomorrow will be passable.
Since it's now 1:30 am, I'll close.
With much love, Ned
P.S. I'll be interested to receive a list of missing letters (if any) at your end.
Letter #19
June 12, 1944
Lucy darling:
Yesterday was Sunday, but for us it was only D+5. We worked all day with our pumping equipment on more stuff for across the way. Quite a breeze here; it seems as if one fair day at a time is all that can be expected; otherwise it blows. It has rained every day but one since D day; for a month before that not a drop of rain. I'm still wearing my woolen underwear all the time and appreciating it. God knows if we'll ever have any summer weather this year. In a way, Massawa with all its faults, had at least one compensation - it was the land of eternal summer.
It will be a while yet before the armies on the far shore are built up to the size for offensive operations but the built up progresses well. We are now over the danger point, which was a successful first seizure of the beaches. That was an unknown in spite of all the preparations, the major uncertainty being the German mine fields in the channel. The little ships, the mine sweepers (into which the YMS that Mary christened, it was first a PC but was finished as a mine sweeper instead) had to go first all unprotected to sweep the channels through to the French shore so that the large warships could get in for their bombardment of the enemy shore batteries. Heaven only knows what that could have meant in losses and disaster had the Germans been a tenth as good as they bragged, but the mine sweepers did a magnificent job and our naval losses in getting up to the beaches (and in the following troop ships) was amazingly low. With that success, the rest was in the bag.
There was hard fighting on the beaches after the landings, especially on the middle American beaches. Don't let the newspaper reports that that was a walkover, impress you. The first wave had a tough time but they fought it through.
Now it's a race between Rommel's efforts to bring up his reserves by land and Montgomery's to get a build-up by sea. The advantage is on our side. No German plane by day has been here since a week before D day, nor in the Channel. On every good day here (and those not so good even) clouds of our planes go over to strafe Rommel's communications on a scale the world has never seen before. I wish Goering could be on hand to watch it.
I'm well and busy, and dream of you each night.
With love, Ned
P. S. Your canned cable of May 15 finally arrived yesterday together with your letter #9. They had chased me all over England, mainly due to the fact that they were misdirected to the Queens Hotel, Plymouth (which city I've not been in) instead of to the Queens Hotel, P----) where I was for a brief time three weeks ago.
Letter #20
June 12, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your #25 of June 3 arrived today. Your #9 and your "canned" cable of last May arrived day before yesterday. Your missing letters are now only #12 & 24. Apparently the mails from the U.S. have not been held up.
I am very sorry to hear from you that no mail has reached you since my #7 of May 16. I heard over here that about that time there would be a delay in delivery for security reasons, but I did not imagine it would be a complete stoppage. However, now that D day has passed, I imagine the hold up is over, but if the mails were held on this side all that while, the delays will be prolonged by the tremendous accumulations of letters now to be transported. Other officers report their families also have received nothing since letters sent in mid-May. Let me know when the mails come through again, and also a complete list by numbers of the letters you have received.
As regards the allotment, of which I note that the June check you received was only for $460. That shows atrocious management in the allotment office. Don't write any letters to anybody. Go yourself to the allotment office (13th or 14th floor at 90 Church Street) and ask them to check these facts: (take this letter with you)
1) About April 26 I asked them to reduce my allotment to you from $560 to $460. They made out in that office the necessary forms which I signed.
2) Next day (about April 27) I asked them to cancel the above reduction, and leave it at $560. They demurred on the ground of office records, but recommended making out a new change as of that date from $460 back to $560 for which they made out new forms, which again I signed. All the above records are in their office.
3) I was further told the second change would cancel the first, and as there was over a month till June, the June check would still be for $560 due to change #2.
4) As the June check was only for $460 the matter has been badly bungled either in their office or in Cleveland.
5) It's up to 90 Church to straighten up the confusion, and see the matter cleared in the future, with the shortage of $100 in the June payment made good to you.
6) But for Heaven's sake, don't write anybody any letters. Go to see them, and make them check their records.
When you get this, I can't guess. If the matter isn't cleared up by then, proceed as above.
To change the subject, please quit using the thin somewhat pinkish airmail paper you have been using. The paper is so thin the ink shows through on both sides and it makes reading very difficult. (The light here is very poor). As I've said in several letters before (none of which you have yet received) airmail either way is a complete illusion. You gain nothing by airmail stamps; neither do I. But if it still pleases you to use airmail stamps, at least use ordinary paper and throw that thin stuff into the fire (including the transparent envelopes).
Sorry to have to waste a whole letter on the mail situation, allotment bungling, and delusions about airmail. As it's now after midnight, I can't write any more.
I'm still well, busy, and acquiring a very salty complexion from constant contact with the spray in the Channel.
With love, Ned
Letter #21
June 18, 1944
Sunday
Lucy darling:
This is the first letter I've had a chance to write in four or five days, and inasmuch as I am at sea at present returning to my former base, I haven't my number list with me and I may be off on the proper sequence.
I went over early this week aboard some of our special equipment and I've put in the time since on our new beachhead helping to get it going. I just finished that today and I'm on my way back.
I must say our project was a grand success and the results are making Jerry rub his eyes as he sees the terrific amount of heavy tanks and artillery smacking him on the front lines, all of which is coming through without a regular port in our hands. I'll bet he never counted on that. I believe this project, which I can't describe now, but which will probably soon be released by the censors, is the most amazing thing which has been done anywhere in this war. The idea is British (you would never have given them credit for that much imagination) but the execution on the American beachheads was in our hands and has gone beautifully.
I went over on the queerest craft that ever floated, and am coming back on one of our empty LST's, which is carrying a heavy passenger list of some 250 of our wounded (I'm not one of them).
The main beachhead has probably been adequately described by now in the press, so I won't go into it. Taking it was a tough job, and as General Montgomery said, the first two days our troops clung to the beach only by their eyelids, under heavy machine gun and mortar fire. But now it's well in hand, the front line is over fifteen miles inland moving on St. Lo, and the Germans will shortly feel the effects of the huge tonnage moving over that beach.
We had a beautiful guard both ways over the Channel (which was crowded with ships) and no signs of enemy aircraft or surface ships. Mines are however, still a danger but a decreasing one.
When I get back (it's nearly midnight and we should be in in about an hour) I'll probably report back to London in a day or so for what's next. This job is over.
When I get a chance, I'll send you a little something I picked up in Bayeaux (with some difficulty in settling the price since my French is still exceedingly nebulous).
I found the French glad to see us, but when it comes to shopping, it appears that the French are still the French so far as Americans are concerned.
I have an idea the American soldier is very quickly going to acquire a first class hatred for the Nazis. This business of booby traps and mining the roadsides after they've cleared out doesn't go down well, and a few other things since D day make it easy to believe for our soldiers that the stories they read in the last war about German atrocities weren't wholly the propaganda that our friends of the goodwill fellowship would have us believe. It looks as if the Nazis haven't changed their stripes any.
Our naval losses in the first crossing and assault were amazingly low, due to excellent preparation, excellent guarding and minesweeping, and a first class air cover.
No German planes ever show up over the beachheads in the daytime, but each night there we got raided. However, the damage the Germans have managed to accomplish with their night raiders has been negligible.
I hope I find some new letters from you when I get in, and I trust the mail is now going through to you. And I could use some sleep tonight.
With much love, Ned
Letter #22
June 19, 1944
Lucy darling:
I returned to England this morning after a week across the Channel on our beachheads and inland. My task in connection with the actual invasion is now completed. This morning I packed up all my stuff from my seashore cottage, locked it up, and returned to headquarters where I originally reported to await my next assignment.
I bought you a small present in Bayeaux a few days ago. I had intended to mail it to you from here, but I found today that a Mr. Loveland (a civilian in the War Shipping Administration) who has been here a few weeks on a shipping problem, is returning late this week by air and he offered to take it with him and forward it to you when he gets to New York, which should be before you get this letter. I hope it reaches you soon, and not the way the one I sent you from Pernambuco. Think of me a little when you use it.
My greatest joy on setting foot on English soil again was to find six letters from you waiting for me - your numbers 24, 26, 27, 28, 29 & 30. There is missing now only #12.
Your letters are a joy and a breath of your own lovely presence. No man ever had a more lovely and a more loving wife and in a lonely and a dismal situation of war and desolation and destruction, they provide a beacon light to remind me of better hours in the past and happier ones to come.
London is under fire now (it's midnight) from the Nazi pilotless-plane bombs. So far since I reached here early this evening there have been about six siren alarms warning of them coming over, and one explosion (the only one I've heard at all) close enough to shake this hotel noticeably.
I understand the Nazi radio claims London is in a panic and is being evacuated. Actually London is paying about as much attention to them as New York does to Norman Thomas, and the military effect is nil.
Yesterday one did hit a church full of worshippers and the casualties there were considerable - an episode reminiscent of World War I when one of the shells of the German long range guns hit a church in Paris with similar results.
A number of these flying bombs have already been shot down on their way over, and I have no doubt but that an effective antidote will soon end them all.
My post office number is now actually Navy 100 again, and I can receive my mail here without its being reforwarded to me, which should save some days.
With mush love, Ned
Letter #23
June 20, 1944
Lucy darling:
I hope long before this that the holdup of mail for security reasons has ceased and the held up letters have been delivered. I have all your letters now (up to #30) with the exception of #12, which I’m afraid has gone permanently astray chasing me around the south coast before D-day.
As you will observe from my last two letters (#20 written at sea on my way back from the far shore, and #21 yesterday evening from here) I’m through with the first phase of my job which was wound up with the actual invasion, and I’m now back where I originally started here (and even in the same hotel) with a new assignment which is practically the one I came over for originally. There will be an interval right here working on plans before I can do anything with the actual work, for it appears that I shall have nothing to do with what is at this date Bradley’s main objective.
I still marvel at the results achieved D-day. Compared to the number of ships we had figured on losing to torpedoes, radio controlled glider bombs, air attack, and mines (and mostly mines) what few we actually lost seems unbelievable. A special large squadron of coast guard cutters had been sent over for the sole purpose of picking swimming soldiers by the thousands from lost transports. They had practically nothing to do on the main crossing. Not a single regular transport was touched. The air attack, the glider bombs, the torpedoes, never showed up. The only danger encountered was the mines, and the mine sweepers working ahead did such a fine job, only a few destroyers and an LST were lost on the way over, and only on the actual beaches where the small craft had to go with no mine sweeper protection, did mines among the beach obstructions give real trouble.
The one uncertainty I had about the operation was what the mines in the Channel might do to us. When you consider the thousands of ships that crossed during the night before D-day dawned, it was easily conceivable what defended mine fields could do to us. But the Germans weren’t up to it and the actual crossing cost us less in troopships than the North African invasion.
That one uncertainty has now long since gone by the board, and the answer is a foregone conclusion. On our main beach there were two hazardous days because it so happened by chance that on that one beach a German division was practicing invasion defense and was right on the spot when the real thing happened, so there the battle hung in the balance a couple of days. But now that the beachheads are no longer beachheads but well-secured in depth, the men and equipment pouring in can have only one result. Rommel and Rundstadt are going to get smacked an awful smack in the next month or so when Montgomery’s men and material put him in about the position he was in at El Alemain in late October, 1942. History is going to repeat itself on a grand scale.
It seems Goebbels is running wild on what the pilotless bombs are doing to London. The thing is a complete flop. Yesterday I heard only one explosion, today none at all. There aren’t any fires, and if anyone has evacuated this place, it could only have been because his creditors had caught up with him.
My estimate is that by now the British have pretty well mastered the technique of knocking them down in flight, so that today few, if any, are getting through to London.
I enclose some clippings on the subject. The first couple of days, a number of people were killed by the bombs which came over, but that hazard is now slight. I don’t believe on even those days, the Germans did even a fraction of the damage that a small sized bomber raid achieves.
I judge from the various allotment notices you have received stopping this, starting that, stopping the other, that the allotment office will have caught up with itself so that the July check will be correct anyway. It may take some time (maybe they’ll never do it) to rectify the June underpayment, but if they finally say they can’t, I’ll collect the unpaid $100 over here and send it to you. Let me know the outcome after you’ve been to 90 Church Street personally. (As I said before, writing will do you no good).
I learned today that my baggage arrived at a northern port on June 9, with an estimated three weeks or more to get it here from there. The supply officer here is going to make an effort to have it flown down. I don’t care so much just now for the clothes I had in it, since I’ve duplicated the heavy things and I’ll not need any whites this summer, but I do badly need the technical books.
I’m glad to hear you bought the $1,000 war bonds. If you find yourself short, I can help to the extent of a couple of hundreds, as my per diem covers all my expenses and possibly a little over, so that I still have the $150 intact that I brought over, plus the $70 for May due on my pay account above the $560 allotment.
My mail address is again (and yet) Navy 100, and I’ll get my mail here directly with no reforwarding, so I should get better delivery than I’ve had the last month.
With regard to that seashore cottage I had (but not any longer) two other officers and I had it together. But now it’s deserted again. The other two are still in France and I’m here with no likelihood of any more duty on English beaches. The cost was quite reasonable down there, only two guineas a week for the whole cottage. We did our own cooking and got along much better than the hotel meals in London. (I did also my own laundry, and my share of the cleaning).
With much love, Ned
P.S. Will you please cut out the financial pages of the Times (any day but Sundays) and send it to me. I’d like to get an idea of what the financial situation is.
Encls: Various newspaper articles
Letter #24
June 21, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your #32 arrived today. 12 and 31 not yet here.
Since my 8 & 9 have reached you, I judge they have resumed mail deliveries.
About the allotment, I checked with the paymaster here and his records show that he deducted $560 from my pay in May to cover the allotment to be paid you on June 1. So far as he is concerned, its $560 which he is checking my pay each month, and as he has already checked it against me, it is up to the allotment office to pay you the missing $100.
I wrote you yesterday (concluding about midnight) about the slight damage in London of the pilotless bombs, including the fact that I had heard none yesterday. Immediately after that letter, I turned in. A little later, I heard the air raid siren and went to sleep again. Shortly after that I waked to hear a hell of an explosion with the hotel shaking as if it were going to fall apart. After debating whether I should look out the window, I decided to roll over and I went to sleep again. This morning when I waked, I wasn’t certain whether I’d dreamed it all or whether there had been an explosion. But I found out shortly there had been one and it was real enough. Not far from the hotel, one of the plane bombs had landed on a paved road in a park and exploded. I examined the damage carefully. Since it was all open ground there and after midnight, no one was hurt and the visible damage was otherwise slight. A brick wall edging the park road (a wall about eight feet high) was knocked flat for a length of 180 feet. Every tree within a radius of 100 feet had lost all its leaves, together with some branches cut by shrapnel, but beyond that radius the leaves even were intact. The crater was amazingly small – hardly two feet deep and not over fifteen feet across, but then the pavement was evidently strong and the blast had expended itself upward. There was no evidence of fire.
To my knowledge, that was the only pilotless plane bomb that reached London in over 24 hours. A view of the results would have made Hitler sick. About 20 trees stripped of leaves, a section of old garden wall knocked flat, a small hole in the pavement, easily repairable in a day, and a lot of broken window glass in the nearby streets – only that as a result of his secret weapon for a whole day. I enclose a clipping on the subject. Between our fighters knocking them down and our bombers knocking out their launching platforms, I don’t think this secret weapon is going to be heard of much longer.
It was quite cold today, so my topcoat came in handy. Even the English say they can’t remember a June like this. All of which is no help, for the Channel weather has been unfavorable most of the time since D-day.
I came back from France on an LST carrying 250 wounded and I learned something. Ten of the "wounded" didn’t have a scratch; they would have been called shell-shocked in the last war. In this one they are suffering from neuroses. Of the lot, about half had been through plenty but oddly enough they (that half) had practically to be dragged aboard the LST as they wanted to go back to their units in spite of what the doctors thought. The other half were unquestionably half insane with fright – one in particular could not talk coherently and looked as wild-eyed as if a ghost were after him. The doctors thought their imaginations had run riot with them and doubted that any of the second half would ever be of any value in a combat job. I looked at them and tried to be charitable, but I like to see a person dressed like a man act as if he were one. I don’t blame anyone for being afraid of danger, but he ought at least make an effort to stand up to it. It is distressing to see a male carried off on a stretcher, gibbering with fear when he hasn’t even been touched.
Then there was another batch of ten cases all of whom (except one) had shot themselves "accidentally." The one exception admitted he had shot himself through the ankle deliberately. He looked like a plain rat. The others varied in personality, but it is highly improbable there was any accident in any of their cases.
So that accounted for 20 out of 250. Most of the others, wounded mainly by shrapnel, but some by machine gun or rifle fire, were quiet men who took their wounds uncomplainingly, discussed the actions they’d been in, and confessed that in spite of lots of training, they’d been at fault themselves in not keeping covered when they might have. But they said everybody was learning fast. Some of those men had been in England 19 months waiting for the invasion!
In my opinion, Rommel is not doing as well as was expected of him in his defense. I think he is going to be knocked out of France more quickly than was anticipated. He is having trouble enough now, but wait till that vicious brute Patton gets after him, in addition to Bradley and Montgomery.
With love, Ned
Letter #25
June 22, 1944
Lucy darling:
A quiet day, and quite undistinguished because it brought no letter from you. That makes it just another day.
We had several air alerts, but all I heard was one flying bomb about noon which I judge exploded about a mile away. Early this evening, a formation of about fifty Liberators flew over the city homeward bound (for planes to cross the city is quite rare) flying very high, their aluminum bodies and wings glistening beautifully in the rays of the setting sun, a gorgeous sight. One plane, however, lagged behind the formation, a trail of smoke streaming from one engine. He kept his altitude, however, and I earnestly hope he made his home field.
I’m having rather a quiet time just now, working on plans for Act II. I’ll probably not have anything very active to do for several weeks, so I’ll get plenty of rest after a salty month in the Channel.
A copy of the June Reader’s Digest landed in our office here, and I’ve been reading the abbreviated book on Justice Holmes, "Yankee From Olympus." I was particularly struck by the quotation which forms the concluding paragraph. I heartily agree with him and I have always felt that the only real satisfaction one gets from a task is the inner satisfaction of realizing that on it he has done his best, not the rewards that may or may not come from a capricious world.
I trust the change of scene is doing your mother much good, and I know her presence with you is doing you good. I trust she can stay quite a while both for her sake and yours.
With love, Ned
P.S. The last letter I received from you was #32 yesterday.
Also I asked yesterday to have the financial pages of any issue of a recent N.Y. Times (except Sunday) sent me. I’d like to check the general financial situation. And by the way, has Commonwealth and Southern ever come to any decision as to what they expect to do in the way of a stock redistribution
Letter #26
June 23, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your #33 arrived today, ten days in transit, which is fair. Missing are 12 and 31. 12 is lost, I think, chasing me around southern England. 31, I imagine was also sent there before I could get reforwarding stopped after my return, but it will probably be returned.
I’ve written Mary four letters, including one last night. I think the first three got caught in the holdup, but they should start to come through.
Dan Noce left England before I got here. He ought to be back home quite a while ago.
I doubt whether we have to worry any longer about counter attacks by Rommel. I think he has about everything he can get up to the line there now and he’s not making any progress. Monty is holding him off at one end of the line while Bradley finishes off Cherbourg at the other end, and the only worrying that anyone is called on to do is by Rommel who is no doubt worrying plenty as to where he’ll catch it next when Bradley’s army is released after the capture of Cherbourg. And meanwhile our forces are building up to greater strength all the time. Rommel is going to catch it worse this time than he did in Libya and Tunisia.
And I further think there is going to be an awful let down in German morale when the Nazis there come to (Ed: learn) that Goebbels has been feeding them the worst mess of lies yet about the effects of the flying bombs. I have an idea the Germans were clutching at the secret weapon as their last straw. They are practically delirious over what they think it’s done to England, and when they realize it hasn’t done any more than kill about as many people a day as are bumped off daily around New York in automobile accidents, their reaction is going to be very bad.
Last night they had their best night in a week with the bombs. So far as I could judge, about four got through. One woke me up at 2 a.m., the motor roaring very plainly. It’s an odd feeling, I’ll admit, when you hear one. As long as you hear the jet motor, everything is all right – the thing is still in flight, and if the noise fades gradually away, you know it’s not going to land in your vicinity. But when the motor noise suddenly stops – that’s something else. For then in a few seconds, it’s going to crash. And that’s something to make your heart skip a few beats.
The one last night suddenly went dead silent while the exhaust was easily in loud volume and therefore somewhere near, and in less than a couple of seconds later it exploded. Still I guess it landed over a mile away for the concussion wasn’t bad. Even at that, it more or less spoiled my night’s sleep, for once I wake up at night, I don’t get solidly to sleep again. As a result, I heard about three more before dawn, none so plainly, though.
Changing the subject, my financial position here is quite sound. I’ve got about $400 in cash, with which I’m going to open an account in the Berkeley Square branch of the Chase National Bank here. (This includes the $150 I brought with me.) In addition, I’ll have coming to me about $180 on the paymaster’s books on my pay account as of July 1, which I’ll leave there since I don’t need it. This satisfactory state of affairs is mainly due to the fact that living in an English seashore cottage in the off season proved to be dirt cheap, while my per diem stayed up. Now I’m back in the metropolis, I’ll just about come out even for a while, but meanwhile I have quite a reserve for a rainy day, even if I never save any more.
With love, Ned
10:30 p.m. and the air raid alert sirens are just starting to wail again. I guess another bomb got by the Tempests patrolling the South coast.
Later: nothing happened.
Letter #27
June 24, 1944
Lucy darling:
I have just received an urgent order to proceed for the far shore where I was before. I imagine I’ll be gone about a week, during which I won’t get any mail since I’m not having it forwarded for fear of loss. However, I should be able to write from there with usual results.
Love, Ned
Letter #28
June 27, 1944
Lucy darling:
I am being more permanently assigned now for my specialty on the far shore. As I told you in a brief note, #26 (Ed: #27), I was ordered here on very short notice June 24 to cover an emergency situation, but it will require attendance here for some time, and I guess I’ll be on this side for good from now on, though not necessarily on this station later.
This has been a lousy summer so far for weather, as everybody knows over here, including the Germans. The weather has set us back far worse than the enemy.
I’m going to have plenty to do for a while. If you’ll remember the episode which occurred the week after we bought The Anchorage (Ed: their summer cottage in Manset, ME) and the night we had dinner with Mrs. DeLong (Ed: Mrs. Emma DeLong, wife of the Arctic explorer) and Stefansson (Ed: the Arctic explorer), you’ll get a mild idea of the situation I’m to play with.
The days here are very long. The sun rises about 6 a.m. and doesn’t set till about 10 p.m. (due to double summer time) so I may squeeze in some time for reading to take my mind off work when the sun has set. As a complete change, I’d like to relax with Hell on Ice (Ed: his book about the DeLong expedition to the Arctic), which I think a rereading of would help in reminding me that other peoples troubles were worse than any here. I’m asking for that particularly, because when I’ve finished it, I’d like to pass it along to a Major General Gale of the British Army who mentioned it to me in Algiers, saying he intended to get a copy when he got home. I met him in London a couple of weeks ago and he reminded me of it, saying he’d tried to buy it in London but couldn’t find it, and I promised him then I’d get a copy from home for him. Don’t send the Armed Services edition but the regular one, since it’s to be a gift when I’m through with it.
With love, Ned
P.S. Cherbourg fell today. Thank God I’m to have nothing to do with it.
Letter #29
June 29, 1944
Lucy darling:
I am just shoving off for my fifth crossing, southbound this time. I have been detached from my original assignment under which I arrived, and assigned as (my specialty) on the staff of the newly designated flag officer for what we have and what we expect to acquire. I made a flying (not literally) trip to London to wind up my affairs there and get my clothes, and now after only a few hours there, I’m on my way back to the far shore.
My mail address remains the same. Mail will be forwarded (I hope). But I’m afraid a change will only result in worse confusion.
In a great measure, my London trip was a flop. First, some four or five letters from you they were holding in the London office were forwarded yesterday when I was detached in my absence. I hope I’ll find them awaiting me on the far shore. Second, my baggage which arrived in Scotland June 6, and for which about June 20 a truck was sent up (for a special pickup) couldn’t be located there, is not in London, and some day may be found. It’s probably under a mountain of other stuff, or just plain bogged down in transit. If ever I move again, I want to go on a ship with my stuff with me. Then practically all the laundry I couldn’t do for four weeks went to the laundry from my London hotel ten days ago, and is not ready yet. So I couldn’t get that either. I’m down to about one pair of sox and one khaki uniform that looks like hell already.
Since my assignment is technically one afloat, my per diem stops as of today. However, of course I’ll get quarters on one of my ships and I think be provided for in the general mess, so I shouldn’t have any expenses. My financial situation gives me quite a cushion. I have $300 in the Chase National Bank (Berkeley Square branch), $148 due me tomorrow on the paymaster’s books for pay, about $35 additional due on subsistence account, and $110 in cash with me. So my European assets total about $593, which should more than take care of any possible needs till I’m home again. Aside from the above, I will have coming about $70 a month more on my pay account, which alone will more than cover expenses in the future.
I enclose a clipping from the Stars and Stripes of June 27. This will indicate why my presence on that beach is desirable. If the enemy had done a tenth the damage to our ships that this clipping mentions, Goebbels would be screaming yet (and rightly) of a tremendous German victory. So I’ll be busy there a little while.
There is always lots of excitement on our beach, (which was the scene of the main American landing) where we suffered more casualties on D-Day than on any other beach, and also more than in the whole campaign since. It’s a good place to be careful, because German mines are still being exposed by shifting sands and every once in a while, one gets touched off.
I’m crossing on a small coast guard cutter, hence the letterhead. Five days ago I crossed on another of the same class, when its skipper a young Coast Guard ensign by the name of Peter Chase told me he had often raced against me at Northeast Harbor, he being on the A30 as crew. To top off, it appears that he is now the owner of "May Mischief" which he bought from Malcolm McDuffie. It’s a small world.
The capture of Cherbourg winds up the second phase of the invasion. I shan’t have anything to do with that port.
A few days ago I went through Isigny and Carentan. Unlike Bayeux, both had been severely pounded by naval guns firing at long range for troop support, and the centers of both towns were badly smashed, Carentan especially. I just have an idea the Normandy villages are not too enthusiastic about being liberated, for many of them it has meant having their homes shot to pieces, in an area where before in this war there has been no fighting whatever, and where from all appearances, food has always been plentiful for the population during the occupation. It is interesting to note that the Free French have hastened to explain that conditions in Normandy are not typical of the rest of France, for many an allied soldier has lifted his eyebrows in astonishment over a situation where the French shops overflowed with food in abundance, completely unrationed, and particularly steaks. There is a devil of a difference between here and Algeria, where the French workmen were always hungry and the country stripped of everything. In Normandy at least, I see few signs of the enthusiastic welcome we got in Algeria, and there are good reasons to believe that some of the stories of French snipers, especially women French snipers, are true. There is no opposition, but there is also no enthusiasm – not in Normandy. The French resistance movement must have its centers elsewhere.
In my last letter, I asked you to send me a copy of Hell on Ice. In case that letter miscarries, I repeat the request here. A copy of that (regular edition) will just about exactly fill the bill for reading here and for a gift afterwards to a Major General Gale of the British Army who manifested a keen interest in it in Algiers nearly two years ago, but who hasn’t been able to find a copy in England.
With love, Ned
Letter #30
July 2, 1944
Lucy darling:
I wrote you a few days ago crossing the Channel, and possibly misnumbered the letter as 27 when it should have been 28. I didn’t have my check list with me then.
Since returning here, I have been quite busy, but I expect things will ease off somewhat now.
Yesterday I made a quick trip from here to captured Cherbourg to look over the place as a matter of professional interest. I must say the Germans are slipping badly. So far as wreckage in the harbor is concerned, the damage is slight. Compared to the Mediterranean ports I have seen, it is nothing at all. As against Oran or Massawa for instance, it could well be considered practically unsabotaged. Ashore the Germans pretty well blew up most of the dockyard shops and damaged the drydock caissons (these are not floating docks) but from a military viewpoint, I should say the damage won’t hurt us much as we don’t much need what was damaged. There are, of course, an unknown but suspected considerable quantity of mines in the harbor which must be swept out before the harbor is usable. No doubt you’ve read all this in the papers. The town of Cherbourg is practically undamaged, either by battle or by the Germans, which is in great contrast to the towns leading to it, of which I found Valognes especially terribly smashed by artillery and bombs.
Cherbourg is naturally a fortress easily defended and protected on the land side by high cliffs crowned with forts. If the Germans couldn’t defend Cherbourg from capture, they can’t hope to defend anything. By all accounts, they fought hard, but they were mashed by the weight of our fire, our air attack, and, I may say, our generalship.
Rommel, I see, is making the same strategic mistake at Caen he made at El Alemain, letting a major battle take place with his opponent’s supply line practically at his back, while he (Rommel) fights a long way from his own. He’ll pay for it. It’s a damned sight easier for Montgomery to smash his enemy at Caen than it would be for him a couple of hundred miles inland and far from his own beachhead supply. When Rommel falls back from Caen, his army is going to be what is known as decimated. Day before yesterday a huge flight of Fortresses flew directly over our beachhead headed for Caen. There must have been at least 200 of them aside from fighters. Fifteen minutes later at most they flew over again, northward bound to cross the Channel. In that brief time they had been over the enemy, unloaded, and started home. If that flight had dropped bombs on us, it would have obliterated everything on our beachhead harbor. I can imagine what those bombs did to Rommel and all his supply lines. 45 minutes at most from their home fields puts our bombers over Rommel’s head, and I’ll bet he’s having a hell of a time. But it will be worse before long.
The weather is perhaps typical Normandy. It rains every day, sometimes very hard. Today was warm for a change, but still it rained.
As I told you in my last, some five letters from you were rerouted via a changed number a week ago and haven’t yet arrived. The Lord knows when they’ll get here. I’m afraid the dispatch to France is going to bungle the mail terribly. The last letter of yours I have is #33 received June 23. Nothing since.
As I mentioned before, I shall have nothing to do with Cherbourg and don’t expect to get there again.
I noted the natives on the Cherbourg peninsula seemed much gladder to see the Americans than the Normandy peasants back of our beachheads. Those on the Cherbourg peninsula reminded me more of the French in Oran.
I hope from now on I’ll have somewhat more time to write. And the situation by and large looks quite hopeful, better than I had any sound reason to expect before D-Day.
With much love, Ned
Letter #31
July 4, 1944
Lucy darling:
I haven’t yet had anything from you since your #33. My own mail has been trying to catch up with me for nearly two weeks with no success yet. I’ve changed back and forth across the Channel so that it’s missed me on both sides. Now I’m back at Navy 100, have instructed the mail clerk to deliver here and not forward anymore, so I hope to get a letter soon.
I was just transferred back yesterday and after my sixth crossing (which was very rough for a small craft), I arrived here today to find that yesterday a dispatch had come from Bu. of Personnel to the following general tenor:
"Newspaper story states Captain Edward Ellsberg 8713 USNR
narrowly escaped death in jeep accident. Report if injured
and extent of injuries."
The office here answered today to the general effect that I wasn’t injured and I sent you a cable today as follows:
"Perfectly well. Never injured. Love."
What happened was the following: About D+5 or 6, I was going up a French road about a quarter of a mile inland from our main beach, in a jeep with another officer. The road was a rather narrow paved road with stone walls each side, with two or three feet of grass each side between the paving and the stone walls. A white tape marker was run on top of the stone walls both sides, showing that the road shoulders had been searched for mines each side out to the tapes, the search having been made by the army engineers with detectors.
We met a six-wheeled army truck coming towards us. As there was not room where we were for the truck to pass, we stopped, and as search or no search, I had no desire to veer off onto the grass, we backed up about a hundred feet to where the road pavement widened a little and stopped there for the truck to pass. As the truck approached, it swung out to its right to pass us. The front wheels and the driver’s cab passed all right, but as the forward rear axle (both rear axles have double tires and are consequently wider than the front axle) came abreast us, there was a roaring explosion and the truck came to a sudden stop.
Both of us in the jeep were plastered with sand and mud and my eardrums were ringing badly but when I found I was still in one piece, I hopped out to see what had happened to the truck driver. As he was farther from the explosion than I was, he was uninjured also but standing dazed in the road. I then examined the truck. Both tires on the right forward rear axle were torn to bits, the steel wheels were ripped to bits, and the stone wall alongside those wheels had completely vanished for a length of about eight feet. In addition there was a fair hole in the ground where the mine had been.
As I figure it, the single front wheel had passed safely, but the double rear tires, protruding sideways further, had touched off the mine. Fortunately for all of us, the truck was very heavy and as the wheels were right over the mine when it exploded, the blast went both ways sideways without coming up, ripping out the stone wall on one side and passing under our jeep on the other.
A more careful look showed the after rear axle of the truck still reasonably intact, so as the road was blocked, I told the army driver to try to drive his truck clear on that, but he’d had enough and refused to get back in the truck so we drove the truck out for him. It went fairly well to an open spot near the beach where we all left it. It was somewhat damaged underneath in addition to the sagging axle.
Now I told that episode to various other officers to warn them that even searched roads were still dangerous and to keep them off the road shoulders. I never expected it would receive any publicity, and can’t see why it did. What the "newspaper story" that Bupers. referred to said I don’t know yet. The above are the facts. I wasn’t hurt in that accident; neither was anyone else. The only casualty was the truck. Even the jeep, which was only eight feet from the explosion, ran all right afterwards.
I wrote Mary briefly of this occurrence, but I didn’t mention it to you because I expected to tell you of it at greater length when I got home. I’m sorry the damned thing got in the papers in any form at all for it might (from what I know of newspaper inaccuracy) have sounded very alarming.
I’ve seen plenty of the effects of German mines on and off the beaches and they’ve caused us plenty of trouble. I hope every Nazi has to sit on exploding mines in hell throughout eternity.
With love, Ned
P.S. As I’ve left the other side and may be busier over here, I’ll have less time for reading, so you needn’t bother to send the book I asked for unless you’ve already sent it.
Letter #32
July 5, 1944
Lucy darling:
Today I received the first letter from you in two weeks since I received your #33. #43, a V-mail letter, arrived today. For your information, I am sure it took longer than your airmail #42, which you mention as going in the same mail or the regular mail letter to go also at the same time. The only reason I got your #43 V-mail and not the others is that the others probably beat it here several days at least and were forwarded to France, while the V-mail 43 arrived after I returned and stopped the forwarding yesterday.
The letters missing are #12 and 31 from some time back, and letters from 34 to 42, both inclusive. The lot from 34 to 42 were forwarded to the far shore in a very roundabout manner and may take weeks to get returned to me (if they ever do). If there was any special information or requests in any of them, you’d better repeat it in your next letter.
I have unfortunately for mail purposes not been in any one place either long or predictably. The last time I went over, I expected to stay at least a month, and instead stayed only four days. That created a tough situation for me in another way, for all my laundry for a month (including most of my khaki uniforms) wasn’t ready when I went south, so I left orders to have it forwarded. It was, last Saturday, too late to reach me on the far shore before I returned here, so now it’s there and I’m here, and I’m down to my last two white shirts and two pairs of socks. Heaven knows whether in the turmoil on the far shore it will be sent back here as I asked. To top off all, my baggage sent by the Navy Yard, which arrived in Scotland June 9, can’t be found anywhere nor even any shred of a record concerning it, except the fact it arrived on a certain ship on June 9. They’ve been trying to trace it since June 20, with no luck so far. I livened up the search when I got back yesterday, but it doesn’t look hopeful.
I have firmly resolved in the future to do all my own laundry so it doesn’t get out of my hands, and to travel only by ship so I can carry all my baggage with me. But when it comes to the mail, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave that in the hands of God.
There are a few compensations. I have had two periods now of a week each when I have come back to London with little to do there, so I could rest. That has broken up the periods of activity.
So far I have made six crossings of the Channel, three of them in small tubs only about 70 feet long. The little ones are bad actors in Channel weather, but even they haven’t made me seasick, and they have one great advantage – they are of such shallow draft that they could hardly hit a mine, and that’s a lot, for mines are our major danger. Practically all our losses afloat have been from mines, though even there, the losses have been far below our expectations. But when you see a sizable ship hit a mine and vanish before your eyes in a few minutes, it makes you thoroughly sick.
I note from the last line of your V-mail #43 "But I wait with an anxious heart to know whether you were injured last Sunday" that it is a probable reference to the newspaper story which formed the basis of the Bu. Personnel enquiry cable.
When I learned of that yesterday on arrival here, I cabled you directly, as I wrote you yesterday in #30 (Ed: #31). I repeat here in case that letter goes astray, I repeat here I was not injured except my ears rang all the rest of the day.
You may have referred to that episode in the missing letters. If you have a spare copy of the newspaper story, you might send me a clipping, since I haven’t yet seen what got published (and I never gave out anything for publication).
The weather is and has been abominable all through June. It has particularly helped Hitler with those damned flying bombs, for in clear weather, day or night, the fighters can see them and knock most of them down, but in rain and low clouds, they have a better chance of getting through. I have heard five explosions this afternoon and evening, two of them not far off. And I saw my first flying bomb this afternoon, going by about a quarter of a mile away at perhaps 1000 feet elevation. It looked like just what I’d heard, a small, fast plane, flying low with engine roaring. It went out of sight over some nearby buildings, when the engine cut out shortly thereafter and in about five seconds more it exploded, perhaps about a mile away judging by the concussion.
This is a good evening for the bombs, with low clouds and some rain.
I have a radio set at last. I tried unsuccessfully for nearly two months to buy one in England, but they just aren’t available. I finally acquired a portable radio set as part of the spoils of war from the Cherbourg naval arsenal, along with a German tin hat nicely decorated with a swastika. The radio set is a French one, which the Nazis probably confiscated from some poor Frenchman. It’s a fair set (long wave only) but it works on both 110 and 220 volts, which is a great advantage, as I used it both in France when I got it, and now in England on the higher voltage. I can now listen to Lord Haw-haw and other lovely English and American voices, male and female, broadcasting from Germany to the invasion forces in dulcet tones, singing nostalgic songs and ending each broadcast with the set line,
"Don’t you realize all your sacrifices are only to advance Jewish
power politics directed from Washington and Moscow?"
It is an interesting development of the Rhein-madchen theme to hear these modern sirens out of Germany endeavoring to seduce their listeners once again with their songs in the best Wagnerian manner.
Poor Hitler, that shining knight of the pure heart and the high purpose, beset by the evil minions, on the Normandy beaches, of the sinister Jewish power politicians in Moscow and Washington! How my heart bleeds for him!
In between the broadcasts to the invasion troops they spill insidious poison in other programs following Hitler’s old policy of dividing his enemies by playing on their mutual suspicions. Last night there was a program to England on how the Yankee capitalists were digging themselves in in South Africa and North Africa. And another on how both the U.S. and Britain were being made catspaws of Stalin’s communists. It’s an interesting thing to listen to Goebbel’s agents suavely going about their business of dividing to conquer. So far as the troops are concerned, they are wasting their time. But on the civilians? The Lord only knows. People are such fools! Have they convicted those 30 American Nazis in Washington yet? Or has American justice got itself so tangled in solicitude for the accused that it cannot protect itself against its avowed destroyers?
With love, Ned
Letter #33
July 6, 1944
Lucy darling:
I received your #48 (June 28) and #50 (June 29) this morning. Being here has some advantages as the mail gets prompt delivery. Your #50 was postmarked at Westfield June 30, 12:30 p.m. I note both letters had only regular mail stamps. As I learned before, letters get the fastest dispatch, regardless of stamps on them. V-mail takes about four or five days longer.
As regards Cherbourg, as the clippings you sent me indicate, there is relatively little to do there. As the clippings also noted, Sullivan is in Cherbourg, and except for a professional interest inspection I made there, I have nothing to do with it. I worked the main beachhead, both in the early days and right after the freak storm, which as the papers noted, did us far more damage than the Germans have in the whole campaign. However, we have our beachheads working more than full blast again, at a capacity which Cherbourg never approached in its palmiest peace time days, and which I doubt it can ever approach. But for the present, I’m through with the beaches and back in my original station where I’m getting a rest this week (maybe longer).
At long last my baggage has finally been actually located at a Scotch port. I’m promised once again it will receive special attention in transport here. We’ll see. I earnestly hope it gets here before I shove off again. Now if I can only retrieve the laundry that is chasing me over the French beachheads, I’ll be all together (materially only; spiritually, I’m in two pieces).
I’m glad to hear that Mr. Loveland succeeded in delivering that bottle of perfume. He’s a nice chap, and if you manage to see him on your visit to Washington, I’m sure you’ll enjoy talking with him. He did a fine job over here with the tugs.
Missing letters to date are 12, 31, and all the letters after 33 except 43, 48, and 50.
Under separate cover (numbered #32) (Ed: #34) I am sending you a copy of today’s Evening Standard which contains in full Churchill’s speech on the flying bombs. The whole paper should interest you, as the other news items and editorials cast a light on life now in England. To save weight, I have cut out of it one page which does not contain any part of Churchill’s statement.
Churchill’s statement is true and accurate. In spite of absurd German statements (there have been plenty more today on the radio) there have been no fires in London as a result of these bombs, there are no signs of panic around here, and it is a fact that no target of military importance has been touched. People are getting killed (about 100 a day) but they are practically all civilians in their homes, churches, or hospitals. So far as they can be aimed at all, the bombs seem to be directed against the residential section.
When the weather is good, very few bombs get through. Today (which has been very fine since morning) I haven’t heard a single bomb. Yesterday (when the weather was bad) I heard perhaps two dozen in twenty-four hours, with five explosions within ten minutes.
It doesn’t directly effect the war, but when 100 civilians a day get killed around here, it can hardly be said the place isn’t dangerous. My admiration for the Londoners goes up, however, as I observe them. It takes more than danger to chase them off their jobs.
But it hurts. People I know (in a way) around here are getting killed. A couple of weeks ago, an elderly lady in this hotel who always came down to breakfast with a blue feather boa round her neck, was killed on a Sunday morning in a nearby chapel where she went to services that morning (together with 116 others in the chapel. The rector, protected from (Ed: the) blast by the pulpit perhaps, was about the only person who came out of the chapel alive). That happened three blocks from here. And day before yesterday, when I got back from France, I noted the head waiter (who always served me) was missing. I wondered casually a bit about it, but without attaching any significance. Later I learned that the afternoon before he had (as usual) gone to his own house for a rest after lunch (he lives a few squares away). A flying bomb crashed the house, killing him and his two daughters, and putting his wife in the hospital. A son, working out, escaped any injury. That poor head waiter, a fine Englishman, had fought through World War I, but was too old to bear arms in this one. But he died on the front lines, all the same.
England will not forget nor forgive so easily this time. Neither will the Americans here in London with them. And I like to listen to the master race on the radio squirming and squealing (no longer arrogant) trying to seduce American soldiers with their poisonous lies, and I like to be reminded every evening hour by a voice in cultured English,
"Do you realize all your sacrifices are at the direction of Jewish
power politics in Washington and Moscow?"
It keeps me in a proper frame of mind.
I also hear by the radio tonight that Rundstadt has been bounced as C. in C. on the western front by der Fuehrer (sic). Bring on the next victim for Monty’s steam roller. (See attached clipping). It appears as if some of God’s enemies are getting scattered already. (Notice Monty’s shield in the center of the floral arrangement).
I’m glad your mother could stay with you so long. I trust she goes back to Willimantic much rested.
And I’m also glad you’re going down to visit Dora, except it’ll be hot down there. I presume you’ll have a chance to see Mary and Ned in their own post. Give ‘em both my love.
It is pleasing to hear that the allotment trouble was finally corrected satisfactorily. When you get a chance, I’d like to hear what your financial position looks like. I suppose you bought the $1,000 bonds you mentioned in the 5th War Loan.
I had myself weighed today. I weigh about 160 lbs. (stripped) now, which is about 10 lbs. less than when I went. I seem to have lost most of it around my stomach and in my face (especially under my chin). I could stand somewhat more, if necessary, but this isn’t bad. I’ve got a tan like an Indian from a month and a half in the Channel.
I took the afternoon off to call on the Mitchells at 9 Hammersmith Terrace, but it was wasted. They don’t live there any more. A neighbor told me that Ayla took the children and went to Ireland during the blitz four years ago. She’s been back only once on a brief visit a year ago. Her husband (he was an architect) went into the army but was invalided out several years ago as a nerve case (shell-shock, I suppose). He is supposed to be in London now working with perhaps the same firm, but the neighbor didn’t know it’s name. I’ll try to find him if I can.
To repeat, in case previous letters and my cable weren’t delivered yet, I wasn’t injured in that explosion on the Normandy beachhead.
With much love, Ned
Letter #34
Postmarked July 7, 1944
Newspaper clippings only.
Letter #35
July 7, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your #49, a V mail, came today. This leaves 12, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46 and 47 missing. I imagine these have all gone, except the first two, to the beachhead and may ultimately be returned here.
I mentioned yesterday that Rundstadt had been bounced. The belief here is that there was a difference of opinion between Rundstadt, who wanted to fall back inland for defense, and – (I just saw my second flying bomb pass nearly overhead. This one passed fairly close and low, but kept on going. I didn’t hear any explosion. It must have landed some miles beyond.) Rommel, who wanted the main defense on the beaches. Rundstadt is out, but I think he was right. Rommel is making the same mistake he made at El Alemain – fighting a long way from his own base while his enemy enjoys short supply lines. It’s easier to mash the German army close to English bases than across some hundreds of miles of French territory, as Rommel will learn before too long. Particularly he is a damned fool to fight within range of battleship guns, as he does at Caen, for if he starts an offensive he’ll be smashed, and if he stays on the defensive, that will suit Montgomery fine as it keeps Rommel off while Bradley breaks through in the west. (Another flying bomb went off just then about a mile off. That makes the third one this evening. There haven’t been many today.)
The German radio is lying like hell about our losses. They say we’ve lost 1000 tanks, 900 of them on D-Day. Goebbels is working his imagination overtime. We didn’t lose a dozen to the enemy on D-Day, and not such a lot because of bad weather. And every day now we lose half a dozen destroyers and cruisers to the German Navy. That’s a good laugh. I’ve crossed the Channel six times now without seeing a sign of the German Navy or Luftwaffe; neither has anybody else. No vessel of the Nazi navy has ever got farther than the outer edges of our screens before they’ve had to turn and flee. We have had some mine losses, but compared to the traffic and what we expected, they’ve been trifling. But the Germans are broadcasting the most outrageous lies in their efforts to impress the neutrals, intimidate their shaky satellites, bolster up their home morale, and possibly scare Americans back home over the (supposed) terrible losses in the invasion.
The invasion losses have been slight compared to what was honestly anticipated. The Union Army lost far more in the one battle of Gettysburg than we’ve lost so far in a month’s battling in Normandy.
Things are looking up a bit with me. Today I actually received my trunk and suitcase from Scotland. On unpacking them, I found that missing box of cigars in the trunk. I’m especially glad to get my technical books. The woolen army trousers, I find, I can now get on again; I've shrunk enough around the waist and hips for that. Just now I don't need them, though, nor the woolen underwear either. A blue uniform (standard in this town for summer) is just comfortable. The white shirts came in the nick of time. The white uniforms will not, I believe, get worn at all.
I concluded it’s safest to do my own laundry, even in a hotel, so today I bought myself an electric flat iron for the absolutely necessary ironing of the cuffs and bosoms of white shirts. I got, I think, the only electric iron in town. Selfridge’s clerk, after looking me over when I enquired, dragged the solitary one they had out of concealment (a la bootleg days) and decided to let me have it – sixteen shillings. This evening I ironed the shirt I washed last night – strictly a wartime ironing job, cuffs and front only. Lucy Giles (Ed: their housekeeper; actual spelling is Jiles) would laugh. Now if my laundry (for which I’ve already paid one pound) would only come back from France, I’d be on easy street.
I visited the dentist this morning for a long overdue scraping of my teeth. (Another bomb just went off – about two miles away, I judge).
That bit in your letter of June 29 about saving the perfume to put a drop behind each ear when I got home so you could feel I was close enough to you to enjoy it with you, won’t do. I’ll have to get closer than that, perfume or no perfume. I have to have your heart beating against mine before I feel you are half way close enough. We are only close enough when lips and bodies and eyes and souls are all melted together in one inseparable ecstasy – may that be soon! How I long to be bathed in your smiles, caressed by your breasts, revel in your kisses, and once again to be swallowed up in your burning embrace, enveloped in your loving arms, and make you one with me!
Ned
Letter #36
July 8, 1944
Lucy darling:
I came to my desk this morning to find my incoming basket loaded with letters – 16 of them to be exact – of which 9 were from you, 2 from Mary, and 5 from miscellaneous persons, of which last group I enclose one for your perusal when you have finished this letter. Don’t look at it yet.
Your letters received today were #31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 44, 47, 51, and 52. That leaves as missing now #12 (which I am afraid is definitely lost), 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45 and 46. I imagine all except 12 will shortly be returned from France, as part of the lot received this morning already have been.
Of course I just reveled in that flood of your letters.
I see you’ve heard from Mary already I wasn’t hurt in Normandy, though you must know it now from other sources, including my cable. I didn’t mention it to you before, since as I wasn’t hurt, I thought I’d save the story till I got home. If I had been hurt, I would have let you know immediately, but to ease your mind against wondering whether anything is happening you are unaware of, in the future I’ll let you know whatever happens (if anything does).
If you are still with Dora and Lute when you get this, give them both my regards and tell them I also hope before too long to see their new home.
I received the N.Y. Times financial page. I’d appreciate having it sent about once a month. And by the way, when it’s convenient, please check the records and see whether we have 100 or 150 shares of General Motors. You’ll find the totals listed for each of us separately on some sheets in the "Investments" folder in the tin box in my study (or else the lists are in the safe deposit box).
It’s a pleasure to know the La Salle is shining again. I hope you get gasoline enough to use it occasionally.
They had a 5th War Loan drive over here, but I didn’t buy any, as I understand you have bought $1200 for both of us, and I think that’s a lot. Is that correct?
Sorry I missed Dow Mills at the Netley Hospital where I went nearly two months ago to have my heel x-rayed. I suppose he’s there yet, as it is the main American naval hospital for England. There’s nothing broken about my heel, but even today it is still tender when I have to do much walking. I was darned lucky. Another lieutenant who was with me then on that English beach, went over to Normandy with me later and there he made the bad error of jumping from a ship to a barge deck, a somewhat lesser distance than I dropped, with the result that he broke both his ankles and injured his spine also, so he went back to England a casualty in great agony. I suppose Dow has him as a patient in Netley now. So far as I’m concerned, I’ve been dunked in the Channel, dropped down the hold of a ship, and had a mine explode in my face in Normandy, and all I’ve got out of it is a tender heel. But I’m a very careful boy now. I believe in all the signs (except when they say a road has been cleared of mines to the hedges), wear my tin hat in the battle areas, and put on a life preserver when I’m afloat. (I enclose a clipping on the mine situation).
As I mentioned yesterday, my trunk and suitcase were finally delivered. "A Bell for Adano" came in the suitcase. I’ll read it shortly (I hope). I don’t care for any candy, cakes, or magazines. I don’t want any hard candy, and I’m afraid the package delivery situation is such that chocolates and cake would spoil long before delivery. The magazine delivery here is terrible – about two months seems to be average; I prefer to buy fresher British magazines. I’m glad you’re getting at least the 1944 Naval Institutes; I’ll look them over when I get home.
I appreciate getting the Times News of the Week. You get a far better picture of the war from the Times than any of us here on the spot can possibly get. The Times is a marvelous paper, which I appreciate more and more (when I see it).
I’m afraid I’m not likely to get near the Nevada in the near future. I saw her several times a few miles off some weeks ago while she was engaged in hammering inland targets, but I didn’t get aboard, so I think my chances of seeing young Tilden are not good.
I have been working independently of Sullivan. I did the main beachhead; he is handling Cherbourg as you’ve seen in the papers. What’s next I don’t know. Just now I’m having a rest.
That your mother was with you so long is a blessing. I don’t like to have you stay alone for any long periods if it can be avoided, so I’d suggest if you have any more visiting to do, you get it in this summer while I’m gone. I hope to be back in the fall, so you won’t have to spend the winter alone.
It is pleasing to hear that the stranded boats have vanished from the yard next door. I trust we get some interesting neighbors.
It intrigues me to hear of Will Stevens’ mother at 102+. It intrigues me a lot because I trust that we’ll so strangle Germany this time, that even if I live to 102, I’ll not have to live through any more wars on her account. How would you like to listen to radio Berlin broadcasting to the "Yanks," "Let me call you sweetheart" and following it up with a dulcet voiced damsel saying, "Now those of you who survive may see your sweethearts again," after which comes the cultured suavity of "Do you realize that all your sacrifices are made for Jewish power politics directed from Washington and Moscow?"
What I realize is that any softness towards Germany this time is purest idiocy. About Germans fighting to the last bullet, that makes me laugh. (See Goebbels clipping). When I went into Cherbourg, I heard there was still some sniping going on, and as I had come unarmed, I thought I’d better remedy the deficiency. The remedy was simple. Alongside the road where I was were dozens of abandoned German rifles and heaps of cartridges in leather belts. So I just helped myself to a German rifle, picked up a few dozen clips of German ammunition, loaded the rifle and went merrily along in my jeep with the cocked rifle over my knees, ready for the snipers. The last bullet, forsooth! You could have loaded trucks there with all the German bullets our valiant Nazis left scattered around when they suddenly came to the fact that such a word as "capitulation" existed. Cherbourg was a disgrace to the German army. The place is naturally as defensible as Gibraltar, and a determined army could have held it for months more easily than the Russians held Sevastopol. That Bradley knocked it over in less than a week is a great credit to him and his men; I don’t see yet how they did it, but it’s about on a par with the French surrender at Sedan in 1870 as an epic in military history – the Nazis should hang their heads in shame over Cherbourg. 40,000 men captured at Cherbourg doesn’t look like fighting to the last drop of blood to me; they may have fought till the cognac gave out, but that’s about all.
And now for the letter in the envelope enclosed. At this point, please read it.
Well, now you’ve read it, you see what competition you are up against. A widow with blonde hair who can pass for 40! But I don’t quite get the remark about spreading Liberty. Where she got my address, I can’t imagine, considering the date of the letter. At that time, very few people could have known I’d gone to London. The letter itself looks to me like a form letter (my name isn’t in the letter itself) and I shouldn’t wonder she sent out a couple of dozen copies to as many men as she could get addresses of. I always knew Los Angeles was full of crackpots, but I’ve never seen it better illustrated.
And that’s all for now. There haven’t been many flying bombs today. I think our bombers smacked their launching bases last night and today and the weather has been better for knocking them down – maybe both things produced the result.
With much love, Ned
11 PM
P.S. Just as I started to fold this, one of the bombs came roaring along to pass nearly overhead. As it is dark out now, it passed clearly lighted up like a meteor by its flaming exhaust. This makes the third one I’ve seen, but the first one at night.
The bomb kept on roaring along without cutting off till the exhaust noise faded away. Apparently that one ran quite a distance beyond here.
The enclosed letter: Addressed to Captain Ellsberg, London, England, marked personal, %Admiral Harold M. Stark, Commander Naval Forces in Europe. Los Angeles, Calif, May 15.
Dear Friend:
I read about your fine luck. I would like to hear from you. I was born in Ohio. It is a very beautiful state. Been out in California a long time. It is very beautiful, too. Am a widow. Have blonde hair. 5 feet 1 tall & pass for 40 yrs old. You know Liberty is the one thing you can’t have unless you give it to others. I weigh 124 lbs. 5 feet 1 tall & blue eyes. Please write & may God bless you this day & every day here after.
From: Mrs. Hester Owens, 424 S. Broadway, Los Angeles 13, California, Box 268, R 706.
Letter #37
July 9, 1944
Lucy dearest:
Your #55 of July 3 arrived this morning, less than six days on the way. I note it was a regular mail letter. So long as I am around here, I imagine we’ll get rapid transmission both ways, since no delays in forwarding are now involved. They are what tie things in hard knots both going and coming. I’ve met men on ships on the far shore who haven’t had a letter delivered to their ships in weeks.
Both yesterday and today the daylight hours were free of flying bombs. About four came over just at 11 P.M. last night. None yet tonight.
I hear by the radio today that Monty took Caen and Bradley took La Haye du Puits. It shouldn’t be long now before they get Rommel moving, though both have difficult terrain to fight over for a ways yet. We needn’t worry about any German counter thrusts any more. It is evident that Rundstedt threw everything he had in from the beginning, including armored divisions drawn from Russia, which is one reason the Russians have been able to run wild on the Eastern Front.
All I can say is that if there is anything in having the weight of guns and good generalship on our side, the Nazis are going to catch hell from now on. Rommel is going to learn what a real blitzkreig is like.
I took a walk this evening, which was lovely in spite of the coolness, around the Victoria Memorial and through St. James Park, where the flower beds were gorgeous. My hotel is quite close to Buckingham Palace. It’s the Hotel Goring (no relation to Herman) on Ebury Street. I’ve stayed there all the time I’ve been in London, and each time I’ve left, I’ve been lucky enough to get back in on my return.
It was finally announced on the B.B.C. radio today that the Guards Chapel had been hit. It was that chapel (I couldn’t name it before) which I mentioned in several letters earlier as having been hit with practically the whole congregation killed, only the rector escaping. It was there on that Sunday morning that the elderly lady from this hotel (whom I referred to a few days ago) was killed. I examined the chapel this evening; it was practically torn to pieces by the bomb coming through the roof – only the walls back of the pulpit still stand.
I enclose some editorial comments from the London Times, which gives a fair picture of the situation here.
With love, Ned
Letter #38
July 10, 1944
Lucy sweetheart:
Your #54 arrived today, a day after your #55, but I think that was merely the way the mail was sorted and delivered locally here.
It warmed my heart to read your letter and to read of your thoughts. Your love and your loveliness glow in every line of your words. The longer I live the more I want you and you only – nothing else matters except as it may tend to insure my chance and my hope of living yet long years to come in peace and in love with you.
From the moment when I first laid eyes on you, your glowing eyes and lovely smile have lighted my life and made me happier than I can express – never since that day have I wanted anyone but you. The years between have taught me only to know better the depths of your love and that has in some degree at least made me also a little less selfish and a little more understanding and less self-centered person than I was. My greatest blessing on this earth is that I have been fortunate enough to have you, to be one with you as man and wife on the numberless occasions when you have taken me to your heart and in whole-souled adoration I have worshipped you.
Vivid and clear and as cherished in my memory as has been every blessed day and night in your presence, yet I know the best is yet to come and with eager longing I look forward to it. As time mellows the wood of a Stradivarius so that with each passing year it gives forth sweeter music and a harmony of overtones of which it was incapable when it was new, so has it been with us. I pluck new harmonies of love each time my fingers caress you now; I have an appreciation today of much to which I was stone deaf years ago; and the sweetness of spirit, the sympathetic kindliness of your every word, and the love in your eyes with which you envelope me leave me wanting nothing on this earth to make me completely happy – except once again and swiftly to be in your arms.
Longingly, Ned
Letter #39
July 11, 1944
Lucy darling:
I received three letters from you today, #53, 56, and 67. In addition I received several other letters from others that you forwarded. The missing list is now #12, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46. Except #12, I presume they are all chasing me over the Normandy beachhead and should be delivered after a while back here (as I also hope regarding my laundry which was unfortunately forwarded there just a day before I was ordered back here).
I received also a letter from Mary in which she mentioned that she and Ned might get leave in August and go with you to Southwest Harbor. I think that would be a swell idea, and if it is at all possible for you and them to arrange it, I enthusiastically endorse the suggestion. I don’t suppose you could finesse taking a car up there (though it may be possible for you or Mary to manage it) but if you can’t, you might be able to hire one there. And it would certainly be a relief from the heat for all of you.
Over here there isn’t any heat. The average daytime temperature appears to be about 65 degrees F; I wear a blue uniform all the time with my light (not so light) topcoat; half of all the Londoners wear topcoats daily and the rest look as it they’d like to. The weather both sides of the Channel continues lousy. There has been no summer weather at all, but continued rains and low cloud ceilings plus rough weather most days in the Channel, all of which have been obstacles to land, sea, and air activities on our part. This is the worst summer since God knows when around here; its only counterpart is that damned winter of 1942-1943 in the North African invasion. We had to lick the weather then as well as Rommel and we shall again, but it is a hellish nuisance.
I have been kited back and forth across the Channel for various jobs on the Normandy beachhead, about which I can’t give any details; the last time I went I expected to stay quite a while but I only got the job started when I was ordered back here. I think I’m now through with the Normandy part of it. The above is the reason for what appeared to you (and was) contrary and confusing information about letters. That’s over now. I’m at Navy 100 and will apparently so remain for a while. I got your letters in about six days; I suppose mine take about the same time for delivery – all without the benefit of air mail stamps, of which I trust I’ll never hear any more.
Living conditions on the beachhead were punk. I shared a stateroom on an LCI (4) with another captain, but I had already had a tent assigned on the beach and was preparing to move into it when I left. Between the mud and the rain, the tent would have been no improvement. The meals, however, were the worst. Half the time the cook on the LCI (4) served field rations right out of the packages; the rest of the time he simply spoiled good food, serving about three times what anybody could eat, and so poorly cooked one didn’t want to eat any of it. My idea of the proper way to run a war is to train a lot of cooks first – maybe that cook’s and baker’s school Ned Benson went to was more important than he thought. I suppose the Navy has so many landing craft it couldn’t get men enough for cooks who had ever seen a kitchen before. Well, that’s over now for me. Right now I get a punk breakfast in my hotel (once again a cook who can’t even make oatmeal – there isn’t any other cereal – right); go to the American Red Cross cafeteria for lunch, which is good; and get dinner at the Senior Officers’ Club (ex-residence of Sir Philip Sassoon) where they serve the best dinner in London. And I have a good room with a private bath (convenient for doing my own laundry; I just scrubbed a khaki uniform) at the Hotel Goring. It has a good southeast exposure over a lovely garden, which gives an excellent view of the flying bombs coming up from Calais. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve seen three flying by from my own window.
Whatever the reasons, the flying bombs have been considerably curtailed the last couple of days, during which time I’ve heard only a couple of explosions altogether. Quite a change from last week when on one occasion I heard six blasts within ten minutes. I just imagine some of our late bombing attacks have badly plastered both the launching platforms and the subterranean flying bomb storage in the caves north of Paris.
I’m glad to see that Commonwealth and Southern is continuing to pay on a $5 per annum basis, which is the best they’ve done for nine years. If they keep that up, I don’t care how long they defer their stock redistribution. If they send you any papers asking for assents or proxies for a reorganization, don’t sign anything however, without sending it to me first. It is better in most such cases to stand mute, so to speak, rather than to assent unless you are sure the terms are advantageous.
As regards the two shares + of Celanese common which you received lately, that was for payment of a dividend in stock instead of in cash as previously. It had nothing to do with calling their stock, which effected (sic) only the class of preferred stock Mary had, not any of the classes of stock we owned ourselves. Normally I don’t care much for stock instead of cash dividends, but right now since we can’t need the cash urgently, a stock dividend has some advantage as no income tax is payable on it. Within limits, we needn’t complain.
I asked the other day for a word on what our financial position is now, which you can answer when you get home, that is, what’s our bank balance approximately and what’s in the savings bank. I understand you bought $1200 in War Bonds in June, which may not leave much in cash, particularly after your June 15 tax payment and the money put aside for my taxes.
I enclose a few clippings which may interest you. If we leave Germany any chance to refight this war 10, 20, or 50 years hence, we will be certainly entitled to what we’ll get. This time, without any maudlin sentimentality we’ve got to finish Germany off forever as a power in Europe.
Meanwhile, Goebbel’s capacity for poisonous falsification astounds me. Tonight I listened to the following broadcast from Berlin to British soldiers:
"Aryan British school children are being evacuated from London to cities like Manchester, etc., but Jewish children were already two weeks ago evacuated by special buses to country districts which will never be attacked by V-1 bombs, while cities like Manchester may be next on the list for attack. British soldiers, how do you like that for your children? The Jewish power politicians in London are taking care that neither they nor their children are exposed to the hazards of war, while your children are being sent to cities where they may be killed next. Is this what you are fighting for?"
That all this is made out of the whole cloth goes without saying. But the bold mendacity these scoundrelly liars exhibit is without parallel in history.
Ned
Letter #40
July 12, 1944
Lucy darling:
No letter from you today, which makes it just another gray day to match the weather.
I enclose a clipping of part of the proceedings in the House of Commons yesterday. The remark of Sir Wavell Wakefield (Conservative of Swindon) makes me think that the British are not so totally devoid of a sense of humor as may have been thought. I like his phraseology, and I believe his suggestion is the most appropriate I have yet heard (the sirens are wailing again and the roar of a flying bomb passing by sounded quite distinctly) for what to do with Hitler and his satellites. I saw two more of the bombs flying overhead today (as well as hearing four others) and it would give me great pleasure (another just roared by, somewhat further off – that makes seven) to see Hitler soaring overhead at 400 miles an hour to disintegrate thoroughly, assisted by a ton of TNT, upon landing.
Maybe the Nazis don’t know it, but the one thing they are certainly accomplishing by their flying bombs is to so harden the resolution of all Englishmen that this time the wails of the muddled headed Vera Brittains will receive a scant audience now or for years to come.
I enclose also a clipping from a London paper today on Patton. I hope he’ll be in action again soon. It’s a pity the same American muddle-headedness has kept him on the bench for nearly a year now. Talking of Patton, I started to read "A Bell for Adano" again this evening, but by the time I got half way through it, I tossed it on the bed in disgust. Of course Goebbels never hired John Hersey to write it, but Hersey has certainly earned Goebbels’ thanks for his performance. Of course it’s all fiction, of course, but I think it’s a damned underhanded trick, so slickly done Patton can’t even open his mouth to say that the incidents are false. Hersey has learned his lesson on Time’s staff well – it is all beautifully done in Time’s best blackguardly and smearing style.
Ned
Letter #41
July 14, 1944
Lucy darling:
I received your #58 yesterday and #59 today, each six days after they were postmarked in Westfield (Ed: NJ), which is very good. I hope my letters get to Westfield as rapidly, though I have an idea that the mail going west flies a more roundabout route than the eastbound mail.
I agree with you that the snapshots you sent weren’t any too clear, but the one of you nevertheless shows a lovely smile which I’m glad to have.
I’m sorry I haven’t any pictures of myself. My camera never arrived till I got back here the last time, since which I haven’t had any opportunity to unlimber it.
It was very nice of Monty to give a dinner party at the Beekman Tower for eight, including you and your mother, but for Heaven’s sake, how can he afford to do it? I was under the impression that he had next to no practice any more.
I read about that circus tragedy here. The London papers gave quite a full report on it. At the time I wondered about John’s children, and I was relieved to learn from your letter they had not attended.
I note your statement about the last Craftsweld check. I doubt that we are likely to receive anything substantial in the future again from that source for I believe all the probable orders of any quantity have all been placed, and future business is more apt to be only for single commercial purposes (Ed: Craftsweld manufactured Ellsberg’s underwater cutting torch and paid him a royalty).
However, tell the Kandels I think of them often, and I certainly appreciate deeply their personal interest and past aid to all of us. I hope that launching in which Edith Kandel had an interest went off all right, as it was on her sole request that I had the particular sponsor designated.
The things you ordered from Altman’s haven’t arrived yet. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the first class parcels; I haven’t any hope at all for the cookies and the overseas box, and I do not believe it worth while to send anything further of that nature which must go parcel post.
I had a letter from Howard Lewis (Ed: from Dodd Mead, his publisher) today, saying (as you mentioned) that he was sending me a couple of copies each of the Armed Services Editions of On the Bottom and Hell on Ice. This puzzles me. While Hell on Ice is already out in that edition, it was my impression that the added book in that Armed Services Edition was to be Captain Paul, which I thought was being so printed when I left New York. Is On the Bottom as well as Captain Paul being printed in that edition, or has On the Bottom been substituted for Captain Paul?
Tonight I listened as usual to the Nazi Arabian Nights Tales, which are just as far from fact as Scherezade'’. How Goebbels gives a propaganda twist of falsehood to a statement which has a basis in fact was well illustrated tonight. A day or so ago, Ass't Sec. of War Patterson made the statement that our losses in the 30 months of this war had now equalled our losses in World War I, and the exact figures (some 250,000 men, I think) were given. As solemnly reported tonight, Goebbels gave out that Patterson had stated that our losses in "the four weeks since D-day had now equalled our losses in all the fighting in 1917-18," thus illustrating the terrific losses we had suffered in a short time on the Normandy beachheads, losses so terrible that Mr. Patterson, in spite of their adverse effects on Mr. Roosevelt’s reelection campaign, could not conceal them from the American public.
Just to top off, the Berlin broadcast added that heavy V-1 attacks continued on London with serious results. As a fact, London was completely free from flying bomb attack last night, and today while we had one alert, I did not hear a single explosion and I doubt that any bombs got through. Frankly, the evacuation of London of which much is made on the German radio (and perhaps elsewhere) consisted mainly of children, accompanied by their mothers in some cases, whose school period has just ended, and who are seizing with avidity the government offer to take a vacation in the country with free transportation furnished. I’ll bet a hat that the evacuation of New York by school children and others going on vacation from the heat of the city exceeds in numbers anything that London can show in the last few weeks. I live only a block from Victoria Station, one of the major stations here, which I pass twice daily, and I can assure you Grand Central can show a much heavier evacuation crowd on any summer day than Victoria Station (or any other here) has seen or will see. Then as the final touch, the Berlin broadcast added that the bombardment and the evacuation had caused such dislocation in transport and supply in the London area that rationing had broken down and only black market supplies, all controlled by Jewish interests, were available to the population at fantastic prices. Phooey. The one statement on the broadcast which was wholly true (though the language seems peculiar) was: "On the Eastern front, German troops are disengaging in a westerly direction." Somehow I gather from that that the Germans are retreating, but I suppose the word "retreat" has a vulgar sound which might annoy the sensibilities of British and American listeners.
I wrote Mary today, urging her to arrange, if possible, a vacation with you at Southwest Harbor. It would do you all good to get away from the heat for a few weeks and for as long as you can possibly arrange it. Perhaps either before or after Mary goes up, Nina and/or Monty might also come up so that your stay there might be lengthened somewhat to everybody’s benefit.
I took a walk around late this afternoon and early this evening, strolling through Trafalgar Square and then sitting a while gazing at the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey, none of which show any visible signs of damage. These are all noble monuments to the past and objects of veneration for the future and it did my heart good to gaze upon them as symbols of the continuity of the English tradition of freedom. But I should have enjoyed it far more had you been at my side, and I look forward hopefully to the day soon when we can revisit England as well as France and other loved spots as they should be viewed – hand in hand in mutual appreciation.
With love, Ned
One other site we must not pass up will be those interesting ruins of Berlin.
Letter #42
July 15, 1944
Lucy darling:
No letter from you today. To reiterate, the missing list to date is just what I last reported, #12, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45 and 46. Except #12, these are still circulating in my wake in Normandy, illustrating the delay which always happens when mail has to be forwarded. Incidentally, the laundry which was forwarded the same way to me two weeks ago hasn’t got back here either. I’ll be out of luck if it doesn’t come back as it has two of my khaki uniforms in the bundle. To add a little insult to the injury, I had of course to fork over the cost of the laundry, over $6, for something I haven’t got and may never get.
London was quiet today. No bombs at all last night and only two today. I think the Allies have won round one of the flying bomb battle and made it so ineffective the Germans are giving up their present attack. The Berlin radio announced today they had learned so much about the new weapon there would be a lull while they shifted their launching bases to better sites and would come back with new surprises and longer range bombs. I think what that means is that they have lost practically all their present sites to our bombing attacks and are trying to set up new ones farther back in Belgium and perhaps Holland. Personally I’ll back our air forces against anything Germany can produce. The farther back they set their bases, the more chance there will be for radar to spot the bombs coming and warn the fighters and the AA guns to stand by for them. And for an air force free to go anywhere to attack, as ours is, no bases the Germans can set up will be any safer from attack than were those first used in the Calais area.
Meanwhile, the weather continues cold, rainy, and wholly unsummery, all of which is no advantage to our general campaign. The Russians, however, are practically running wild on their front, due I have no doubt to the fact that a large proportion of the Nazi armored divisions have been transferred to France. However, Germany can no longer move anything from any one of the three fronts to another without risking disaster on the weakened front. So all that’s necessary now is to keep the squeeze on till some one of the three fronts cracks and falls completely apart.
That the Nazis realize this better than anyone else is demonstrated by their desperate propaganda efforts now on the radio to split America, Russia, and England wide apart by making each one of the three feel that the other two are its real enemies, both now and in the post war period. This particularly is their effort in their broadcasts beamed on England, to arouse suspicion and resentment regarding both America and Russia. I can assure you that a listener with no previous knowledge of Nazi aggression would get no impression but that Germany is battling to save European civilization, and Britain is only a tool of American imperialism and Russian communism, both directed by the Jews who are of course the common enemies and the villains who have caused all this bloodshed in an otherwise brotherly Europe. The skill, the finesse, the cultured and unimpassioned English in which all this is set out, are beyond belief. Perhaps it is due to long practice in this field, but compared to the speaker and the technique Goebbels employs for his task, the English and American broadcasters talking to Europe and to Britain appear like rank amateurs. Of course, having to stick to the facts and the truth may cramp the style of our men, but still I think they are doing a much inferior job. For our side, Robert Sherwood should be ashamed of himself. But I suppose it doesn’t mean as much to us as it does to Goebbels, who must literally now be staking his neck on this last gamble for his life.
I’m enclosing a couple of clippings which may interest you. I cut out the longer one for its story of the present flying bomb position, but then I noticed on the back an editorial on the murder of Georges Mandel, which I thought particularly apropos, so I pasted back the top and bottom of the column to restore the editorial to completeness.
With love, Ned
Letter #43
July 16, 1944
Lucy darling:
No letters today (or yesterday either). I suppose it’s the way the planes fly.
Although it was Sunday, when our office doesn’t do much nowadays, I went there anyway, mainly to see if any mail had come in. It hadn’t, so I was about to depart when there was an explosion (fairly loud) and the window curtains shook violently but that was all. As I had nothing else to do, I went seeking the site and found it about 700 yards away. A flying bomb had landed on the roof of a small building a couple of doors up the street from the place where you bought Mary that kilted dress. While all the glass was smashed within a range of perhaps a hundred yards radius, (and that was a lot of glass) the damage otherwise was remarkably small. It took off the two top floors of the narrow building it hit, but that was about all the structural damage. It being Sunday morning in a business area, there were only a few people about, and I understand only two persons were seriously injured. However, a lot of shops, including the kilt shop, are going to have to do without windows for a while. Come another war, I’m going to pass up all the stocks of the merchants of death, and put my whole capital into the stock of companies making window glass. Their business must be terrific, and it will take a long time after the war ends to catch up on the demand.
Aside from that, there were no bombs last night, and possibly only two or three others during the day.
Having little else to do, I wandered down through St. James’ Park to my hotel where I curled up in a bathrobe and slippers for relaxation. I ironed a couple of shirts, half a dozen handkerchiefs, and some collars, which, together with a lot of underwear, I washed yesterday. I’m getting pretty good with a flat iron. Then I decided to finish "A Bell for Adano," having nothing else to read. I finished it. Have you read it? As I said before, it disgusted me. I can stand listening to British traitors like Lord Haw Haw and American ones like Fred J. Kaltenbach making us out on the radio as villains and morons, but why an American author must play the same game, I can’t understand. If you have read the book, you will have observed that with the exception of Hersey’s hero, Joppolo, there is not a single American soldier (or sailor) who is not delineated either as a sadistic brute, an incompetent, a cad or snob, a barbarian, a drunk, a lecher, a syncophantic coward, a sissy, or some combination of the above. Assuming that Hersey wanted to glorify Amgot and its work, he still had no need to villify the fighting part of the Army and the Navy. God knows our fighting men are not perfect in their jobs (we have never given them a chance to become so) but still if they were what Hersey attempts to make them out to be, they couldn’t have licked even the Italians, let alone the Germans and the Japanese. I am, however, inclined to think the American public is nearly as moronic as Goebbels makes them out to be, if they take such a book to their hearts. (And from the sales of this book, that’s what they’ve done.) Where in Heaven’s name, has America’s common sense gone? Does nothing but slander, dirt, and filth appeal to it? There’s plenty of all that in "A Bell for Adano." I suppose all that passes for "realism."
Today has been the best day we’ve had this summer – sunny, no rain, clear, and comfortably warm. I imagine it got up as far as 75 degrees or perhaps even 80 degrees F this afternoon. If only it were to stay this way a few weeks.
With love, Ned
Letter #44
July 17, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your letters #60 and 62 (with their newspaper enclosures) arrived today.
I suppose today you returned home from your visit to Washington, which I hope did not tire you too much. I’m awfully sorry you weren’t feeling so well after your mother went home; it’s entirely possible the extra work and the mental anxiety over her condition, added to your other problems, were a little too much.
I suggested a few letters back that it would be a good thing for you to go to Southwest Harbor if Mary and Ned could go also, and that would certainly get you away from the heat. But unless you could get help (Mrs. Rice or someone better) perhaps you’d find that rather strenuous. As an alternative (if you can’t get help or if Mary can’t go) why don’t you pack up and go there anyway, staying at The Moorings, which I think you said was to open this summer. That would really give you a rest from housekeeping, and you could still see enough people you know there not to feel among strangers. I should say at least a month there would do you lots of good. Let me know what you think of all of this.
I’m sorry the mail has been so irregular in delivery to you. In the last month (since June 18) I’ve written 23 letters in 30 days. That there have been some long intervals in your not receiving any has been due mainly to the fact that mail dispatch from the far shore has apparently been highly erratic, not that the letters weren’t written. As an indication, of seven letters forwarded to me on the far shore before July 4 (when I got back here and stopped it) not one has yet been returned to me here, though that will be two weeks ago tomorrow. Those letters are #38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45 and 46. And this is not peculiar to me. I’ve found every one afloat, on the far shore, and on the near shore (once they are away from London) suffers the same trouble. C’est le guerre! And there is no curing the trouble by poulticing the letters with stamps of any description at either end.
Your two 1st class parcels from Altman’s arrived today, both the candy and the fruitcake. Remarkable direct delivery, certainly as good as letter receive. But while I appreciate the spirit of love in which they were sent, don’t bother to repeat the experiment. I don’t care for hard candy – I never have. I understand of course that the vendors are probably told not to ship any other kind, but I can assure you nobody ever eats them – they give them to the Arabs in Africa and to the street children in the invaded countries, which I’ll proceed to do here if I can find any English children who want them. As for the fruit cake, sixpence in any teashop here will buy its equal. So not to waste precious letter space on the planes bringing the mail from the U.S., I wouldn’t advise a repetition.
Yesterday (Sunday) and today were two beautifully clear days, real summer so the English think, as you’ll notice from the enclosed clipping. 72 degrees in the shade! I felt almost comfortable when I went out to lunch today without my topcoat, though I found it better to put it on on my way home. But the clarity of the atmosphere really meant something. A couple of weeks like this will be invaluable to our air forces, not to mention lifting our infantry and tanks out of the French mud.
I’m still holding my own financially. Since I came back here, my subsistence allowance has been reinstated, and it covers my expenses with a little margin over for incidentals. I have about $600 between my bank account and my undrawn pay here.
I had a letter from Mary today in which she mentioned that Ned’s fitness report for July 1 was excellent. I’m certainly happy to hear that.
With love, Ned
Letter #45
July 18, 1944
Lucy dearest:
Your letters #61, 63 (V-mail) and 64 arrived today, to my considerable delight.
The missing letters are #12, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45 and 46. Any my laundry.
You know by now that my orders to the staff on the far shore were marked "Duty completed" July 3, and I returned to my original station here July 4, where I’ve since been. So any implications that that might mean a prolonged stay have no foundation. I expect the war to be over before November.
I wish the military critics who are starting to grumble because there are no startling advances would drink a few barrels of their own printer’s ink and die. All they are doing is to furnish material for Goebbels to quote to bolster up Nazi morale and to cause doubt at home. If they really had any military sense they would know that the aim is to liquidate the enemy army and not just to gain some provinces in France. We are a damned sight better off chewing up German strength in men and materials close to our own sources of supply and distant from Rommel’s than we would be if we were facing the same armies 300 miles from the coast. Rommel, like a damned fool, is repeating the mistakes of Stalingrad and El Alemain. His army in large measure is going to perish where it is. Of course, to some degree, even Rommel may now realize this but know that now he has lost his chance of free retreat and willy-nilly must fight where he is, for in a retreat now he is bound to be badly cut to pieces.
But at any rate to see our mutton-headed military newspaper "experts" grumbling over progress and counseling "bold strokes." etc., gives me a sharp pain and provides Goebbels’ propaganda artists with heaven sent material. Montgomery knows his business and he doesn’t need any advice from newspaper generals. And neither Montgomery nor Bradley have any intention of getting their men slaughtered en masse to make newspaper headlines. They’ve got a sure thing in their hands and they don’t have to gamble away lives to win a little sooner. For all of which I admire them. It is their business to win, not to try to be Napoleonic in the process. They took the only gamble they had to in the initial crossing and assault (that had my heart in my mouth when I contemplated on the eve of D day what could happen if the Germans were half as good as they claimed to be in preparation) and now that that is over, you’ll find no more gambling.
Give the Hale’s (Ed: EE’s classmate at USNA) my regards. I’m glad to hear John misses me – I always got along fine with him and when I come back, nothing would suit me better than to go back to the same job till the war's over east and west.
For about a week we had no bombs at night and only a few in the day time. The last couple of nights, however, this has been reversed (perhaps because of clear daylight weather) and I’ve been wakened by a half a dozen, more or less, at intervals during the night. The Germans have never come near repeating the number they landed in the first few weeks, but from their radio statements, you’d think they had London tied in a knot. They are certainly accomplished liars. However, I can begin to see how Germans who have heard nothing but all this for eleven years are living in a world very far from any reality.
In case my last few letters are delayed, I’ll repeat here my suggestion that you go to Southwest Harbor for the rest of the summer – if you can get any help there, with Mary and Ned as your guests; and if they can’t go or you can’t get any help, that you go yourself to The Moorings which may give you an even better rest.
With love, Ned
Letter #46
July 19, 1944
Lucy dearest:
I received two of your letters today, #66 and 67, both from Silver Spring. I notice also that the delivery of my letters from here takes apparently the same time, about six days. (#65 hasn’t come yet, nor the previously missing letters).
I trust you managed to meet Mr. Loveland Monday before you had to return to Westfield. He is a very pleasant person.
As regards Nina, I’m afraid she’s merely chasing another will-o’-the-wisp, so far as her present activities are likely to lead to a livelihood. That kind of thing may be all right for a woman with an independent income or a husband with a job to support her, but for a woman who has to look out for herself, it’s just folly. However, there’s apparently no use giving Nina any advice. It makes an exciting life for her, but damned nerve-wracking financially.
I’m back on my original staff assignment since my return here, pending certain further developments on the far shore, or should I say, the farther shore? I don’t have much to do now, just a nominal office job while I wait, which has given me quite a rest from some strenuous weeks before and after D-day.
Now I suppose it can be told that till D-day I was at a stretch of English beach called Selsey, a little to the eastward of a spot called Selsey Bill which you’ll find in our atlas, along the English Channel. Selsey has now relapsed into a stretch of beach the like of which you can duplicate anywhere along the New Jersey coast outside of the coastal resorts. But then (this is no secret, for the German reconnaissance planes often photographed us) it was the center of concentration of a vast mass of equipment due to move across on D-day. The reason you’ll easily spot, since Selsey is due north of the center of the beachhead area we were due to attack, and from Selsey to the beachheads in Normandy was the shortest possible route for movement.
I shall always feel that the German High Command were absolute numskulls for not figuring out just where Eisenhower meant to strike, from their observations of us at Selsey, but the damned fools were too smart and guessed wrong.
That the Germans knew we were there was not only certain, but they even bragged about their knowledge. A couple of weeks before D-day, Lord Haw Haw put on a broadcast especially addressed to us at Selsey (naming the place) wherein he told us they had an eye on us and all our stuff and were only waiting for us to bring it over when they’d sink it all for us. And, just friendly like, he further informed us to tell our wives and sweethearts, they had a special set of white crosses all waiting for us on the other side.
Well, the Germans aren’t as intelligent as they’d have the world believe. They completely miscued on where we were going, when we were going there, and failed miserably in any effective opposition to our movement when we went. We delivered the goods practically without loss due to enemy action; out of the thousands involved in our project, we lost only 4 killed and 10 men wounded. And all that in a trans-Channel movement of odd and cumbersome equipment that could make only four knots and should have been slaughtered on the way over had the Germans been worth two cents in the air, on the surface, or under the sea.
No story on what this was has yet been released, so I can’t tell you now, but I can say that it was the reason that Montgomery has been able to build up and supply a huge army on the far shore and outmatch in equipment and ammunition everything Rommel could bring up ever since D-day. That’s what lies behind the fact that the expected counter-attack with which Rommel intended to shove us back into the sea never materialized – there never was a day since D-day when Rommel could bring as many men and as much equipment to the fighting line as Montgomery already (without any regular ports) had there. So naturally there was no effective counter-attack. The German High Command hasn’t got over the shock yet, for while I do not believe they ever honestly expected to prevent us from getting ashore, they did confidently expect to heave our ill-supported (so they figured) divisions back into the ocean in an operation which for speed and losses to the invader, was going to make the repulse of the ill-fated Gallipoli landing in World War I look amateurish. But our forces on the far shore were never ill-supplied.
I made some mention yesterday of ill-advised criticism of Montgomery’s slowness. Long ago I observed that Montgomery is in the habit of moving when he is prepared – not before. Since my letter yesterday I observe that Montgomery got conditions to suit him – clear skies, mainly – and that he gave Rommel a kick in the stomach that will seriously incommode that gentleman (and will, I hope, but not too hopefully, cause the newspaper critics to quit being such smart alecks).
Meanwhile I see that Alexander in Italy, Montgomery in France, and various Russians on the Eastern Front all had a field day yesterday. Hitler will shortly learn (as Wilhelm II and Napoleon learned before him) that there is only so much stuffing a dummy can stand having kicked out of him before he collapses into a heap of rags. His best friend, Mussolini, is also now in a position to whisper that truth into his ear (that is, if he can still even whisper).
With love, Ned
Letter #47
July 20, 1944
Lucy darling:
For a while back I had been cogitating on what to get you for Mary’s birthday; I reached a conclusion a few weeks ago and I’ve spent my odd hours since looking around London shops without any luck until yesterday afternoon when with the assistance of the American Red Cross staff here (including Mrs. Biddle, the director) who gave me some leads and assisted in the decision, I got what I wanted.
What I’d been looking for was a silver hot water kettle that would go with your tea set. I’ve seen all kinds but there weren’t any of them suitable till finally at Carrington’s on Regent Street I was put on to a British sterling silver reproduction (it’s 40 years old itself) of an Adam kettle which looked just right and I bought it for you. It follows the Roman lamp motif and is quite plain, with no engraved decorations, consisting of the hot water kettle itself, a separable stand and tray on which the kettle tilts for pouring, and an alcohol lamp which is part of the tray. It has a lovely line, I think, (so did my Red Cross advisors) and it should go very well in harmony with your tea set. It was rather expensive (more so than most of the kettles I saw) but I fell in love with it and I think you will too.
So that will be my gift to you as a remembrance of the joy you brought me on Mary’s birthday twenty-three years ago.
I am, however, left with a problem regarding delivery. The Red Cross people kindly enough offered to have it packed for shipment overseas, but after some consideration of what happened to the gifts I sent you once from Pernambuco, I concluded that the safest way was to pack it (disassembled) in my trunk (or suitcase) and bring it home personally in my own baggage (regardless of what else gets left behind) when I come home. So that’s what I’m going to do.
As a result, you won’t actually get your present on August 29, but it shouldn’t be too long delayed after that, and at least you’ll be surer of actually getting it delivered.
With much love, my dear, from Ned
Letter #48
July 21, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your V-mail letter #65 arrived today together with #68 written three days later. That’s about the usual lag for V-mail. Why use it?
The Germans changed their flying bomb tactics a few days ago and now most of them come over at night, with few in the daytime. I rather guessed they would have to do something, for it was getting so that very few of those launched in daylight got here at all. I think they probably shifted their launching areas further east (into Belgium or Holland) and are now using what bombs they have in night attacks mainly. I suppose that when our bombers get these new bases spotted, the number launched will be considerably curtailed. Meanwhile the last few nights the intermittent explosions have been somewhat of an annoyance in disturbing my sleep, since I’m not accustomed to being waked at night, and once I’m waked, I don’t get to sleep again easily. You would probably be less inconvenienced by it.
It has caused my heart to bleed to hear from Tojo that His Imperial Majesty has been perturbed; when His Imperial Majesty is hanged for his many crimes, I just won’t be able to stand it. Meanwhile, I see that in great trepidation, Tojo has been thrown out on his ear for having caused His Imperial Majesty anxiety. Since I think I can recall when Tojo was discussing how he would dictate the peace terms in the White House, he apparently has some grounds for his trepidation. He and Mussolini probably have a lot they might discuss with mutual understanding now.
The Oriental mind is wholly beyond understanding, because on the German radio (as relaying the Tokio viewpoint) the loss of Saipan is really a blessing as the Japanese will now prosecute the war in earnest. Why Tojo should be ousted for having brought about this blessing by his consummate leadership, instead of being honored by His Imperial Majesty, I cannot comprehend. By the time you get this, Tojo’s successors will probably be blessed by the loss of Guam also. That, no doubt as I’ll hear from Berlin, will make the Japanese position in the Far East completely secure and a Japanese victory over the Anglo-Americans a foregone conclusion.
It appears that certain German generals also became dubious of the infallibility of Der Fuehrer and attempted to blow him up. I should not have believed, after my indoctrination at Herr Goebbels’ radio seances these last few weeks, that any one who had ever enjoyed the effulgence of Der Fuehrer’s personality, could ever have become dubious. Ah me, it simply goes to show how imperfect human nature is, even in Der Fuehrer’s paradise!
For myself, I am thankful the attempt was bungled. I want to see Der Fuehrer last through to Germany’s contemptible collapse, so no Nazi can ever say – "If only Der Fuehrer had lived, this could not have happened!" And besides, I want to see that verminous pervert die on the scaffold the ignominious death he deserves, not under conditions where his deluded disciples can consider him a martyr cut off before he completed his task.
Meanwhile, the damned weather isn’t giving us any help on the Normandy front. Monty took the only two decent days so far this summer to smack the Germans, but the weather blew up and stopped his air assault, at least. Well, we’ll get along here, but we could do infinitely better with a little continued summer weather to campaign in. The enclosed clipping will give you an idea. I wore my overcoat today and I needed it.
I hope you will find you can act on my suggestion to go to Southwest Harbor for all or most of August, and have Mary and Ned and some other friends there with you during your stay. But if that doesn’t work out, go up and stay at The Moorings yourself for a while.
I’m doing fine myself. I did the washing last evening and the ironing tonight. With two such laundry sessions a week, I keep up beautifully with that problem.
The missing letters are, as usual, #12, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45 and 46 (and my laundry). I trust my letters now are coming through regularly in about six days, which is now the time yours take from their postmarked date.
The U.S., by the way, has developed a little sense. None of your letters (since I’ve arrived here last May 2) have ever borne a censor’s stamp, nor been opened, read, or censored in any way. I hope mine have faired as well.
With love, Ned
Letter #49
July 23, 1944
Lucy darling:
Three letters lying on my desk greeted me when I got there this morning, #69, 70, and 71. For #71 that was remarkable, for it meant delivery here just 41/2 days after its postmark in New York of 6 PM, July 18.
After having suggested in several letters that you go to Southwest Harbor, I was glad to read in your #71 (written before any of my suggestions reached you) that you have decided to go there August 1. I do regret to hear that the basic cause of Clara's (Ed: Lucy Ellsberg’s aunt) acceptance is her need for an operation later. I’m sure it will turn out well, and at any rate I am happy to know that we are in a position to help a bit by your having Clara with you at Southwest so she can get a rest for recuperative purposes first. That Alice can come also, is fine and I hope her sense of duty doesn’t impel her to rush back to Springfield too hastily.
I suppose (and hope) that you can get Mrs. Rice or someone else to help you while you are there. Give both Clara and Alice my regards, tell them the master of The Anchorage (Ed: Ellsberg’s summer home) deeply regrets his inability to welcome them personally, but looks forward to that pleasure next summer, and that meanwhile he trusts that they find their stay blessed by pleasant weather and restful to their minds and their bodies.
This will make the second summer out of the last three that I have spent on waters other than those of Maine. Unlike my Massawa summer, I won't this time suffer from the lack of Maine coolness, for it’s colder here than Maine anyway (the air, not the water), but I’ll miss it just as much anyway. To add a little salt to the wounds, before and after D-day, I spent nearly a month in the waters around the Isle of Wight, which is probably the most famous yachting center in the world, without seeing so much as a single sail hoisted on anything. And there was always a fine sailing breeze in the Channel (too damned fine, usually) which rarely, if ever, died away as the sun went down, so that the cook never (well, hardly ever) had to delay the chops. When the war’s over and I’m really rich, I’m going to ship the Argo (Ed: Ellsberg’s Eastern Yacht Club 17’ [28’ over-all] A class gaff-rigged sloop) over here and sail her in the Cowes Regatta right over the spots where I struggled, sweated, and even swam in the Channel.
I hope you’ll be able to rent a car in Maine (it’s too much to hope you can get gasoline enough to take the station wagon to Maine and back).
It will be fine if Mary and Ned can get some leave to go up there also.
Meanwhile, turning attention from foreign matters to local ones, I see that what’s happened in Germany still seems a bit foggy, except that it’s reasonably certain Hitler has not yet been disposed in a decorative pattern over the wallpaper of his conference room. However, the end cannot be many months off now, whatever happens to Hitler. On every front the Germans are catching hell, and that is one thing the Germans don’t stand towards the end of a war. I’ll be willing to bet that before two months more are gone, if he’s still alive Hitler will be wishing that bomb of last week had ended his career while still at least his armies were putting up a fight.
Meanwhile Goebbels goes frantically on, pouring the poison of suspicion of its associates into the ear of each one of the United Nations in turn; bolstering up the faltering faith of the German soldiers in the field by utterly fantastic stories of what flying bombs are doing to Britain; and ending always on this keynote:
"Do you realize that all your sacrifices are being made for Jewish
power politics directed from Washington and Moscow?"
What I realize is that there never has been such a fiendish attack on freedom and human rights since the dawn of history. There can be no compromise with the fiends.
With love, Ned
P.S. All letters after this one will be addressed to Southwest Harbor until Aug. 23.
Letter #50
July 24, 1944
Lucy darling:
After the exceptionally rapid delivery of your #71 yesterday, I hardly expected any letters today and I didn’t get any.
This is the first letter I am directing to Southwest Harbor, since I judge in the normal course of delivery it could hardly get to Westfield before you departed, especially as you may go a day or so earlier than July 31 or Aug 1, for various reasons. If I hear nothing either from you or from Mary to the contrary, I shall continue to address Southwest Harbor until August 23, after which I’ll revert to Westfield.
I wrote to Mary today, urging her to get leave if she and Ned could, and go to Southwest Harbor, more particularly in early September so as to overlap Clara’s visit a little. I hope they can.
I see Roosevelt volunteered for a fourth term. I had no doubt of that as long ago as 1936. And he’ll still be there either as a volunteer or a draftee in 1948 and 1952 if he should live that long, so far as he is concerned. Whether the public will continue to fall for the indispensable man, remains yet to be seen. I note that some New Deal ideals, along with the New Deal idealist, were jettisoned to make the Roosevelt craft a little more seaworthy for the anticipated November gales. Somehow, long ago I got the impression that expediency was the Roosevelt compass; it looks as if it still is.
I had to go over this afternoon to see a Mr. Devlin who is in charge of the War Shipping Administration local office, and after he looked at me, he said,
"Didn’t you make a trip on the Exeter in 1936 with you wife and daughter,
and a port fell on Mrs. Ellsberg and injured her face?"
I asked him how he knew. He said he was port captain then for American Export Lines, was on that same trip, and remembered both you and Mary well. And he asked me when I wrote you, to send you his regards. He added, he supposed Mary was grown up now, and I had to admit she was, enough at least to be married. How time flies!
Regards to Clara and Alice.
With love, Ned
PS While I discussed some blueprints with Captain Devlin, a bomb came along and rattled the windows for us, but that was about the only one today. Only two last night.
Letter #51
July 25, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your #72 arrived this morning. The missing list is still unchanged.
I’m very glad you had a chance to have Mr. Loveland for lunch in Washington. He was very thoughtful in offering to take home that little gift for you.
I hope your trip to Southwest Harbor from Boston didn’t turn out to be too much of an odyssey. And also that you are able to get help in the cottage, and most of all that all the various gadgets were put in running order – God knows whether the plumbers and the electricians are still on the job. I trust also that the field mice didn’t have too much of a field day in the fo’c’s’le (Ed: their guest house).
Meanwhile remember me to the old Southwest Harbor residents – Mr. Smith, Mrs. Lawler, Wendell Gilley, Mr. Gott, Mr. Robinson, Miss Marcus, Mr. Cutler, and Mr. Norwood. I don’t particularly care whether you remember me to Andrew Parker or not, but if you see him, you may tell him I often think of him (and so I do) and please make a special effort to see that old clam digger (he’s a retired Englishman) who lives across the road at the head of our cove (please don’t let him know I couldn’t remember his name, but Lawrence Robinson can tell you) and particularly give him my regards. He’s a friendly old chap whom I’m looking forward to seeing next summer.
There have been very few flying bombs the last couple of days or nights, though my German friends on the radio keep assuring me that we are being heavily bombarded. Of course they wouldn’t lie about it.
I see Harold Laski has written another book, of which I enclose a review torn from the pony edition of Time. I mention it merely to discourage anybody who might be tempted to make me a gift of it (Ed: Clara and Alice ran the Hadley Book Shop in South Hadley, MA). My closer view of Harold Laski’s political maneuvers over here has not impressed me any more favorably. Laski’s Heaven on earth would be just as totalitarian as Joe Stalin’s or Adolph’s.
Not that I want to bother you in Maine with extraneous matters of no great importance – lean back in a steamer chair or against the firs and enjoy the view of the rocks, the sea, and the mountains for me – and for yourselves.
With love, Ned
Letter #52
July 26, 1944
Lucy dear:
No letter from you today. Not surprising however, since #72 came yesterday.
As I said yesterday, very few flying bombs are coming through now in the day time, and only a few at night. To a fair degree, I believe this is due to their being pretty well knocked down by ack-ack and fighters down in the Channel area before they get to London.
However, a few do get by. At 2 AM this morning, the roar of one going directly over head woke me and the explosion came very quickly afterwards and in fair intensity. Now this morning I discovered that that bomb landed almost exactly in the same spot as the one I described to you at some length a few weeks ago (also a night bomb) as having been the closest actual explosion to me of these bombs. While last night’s bomb was perhaps 100 feet closer, I didn’t feel the explosion as strongly (the other time I thought the building was coming down on my ears and this time I merely thought it shook a bit). This bomb didn’t actually hit the ground; it was exploded by hitting some treetops in the park a little west of this hotel, at a spot close to where the previous one had knocked down the brick wall around the park. This explosion knocked down the sheet iron fence put up to replace the missing brick wall, and in addition knocked down several hundred more feet of brick wall, as well as demolishing the tops only of half a dozen trees where it exploded. No one seems to have been hurt by this one, but I must say it caused plenty of damage in business buildings about a 100 yards away facing the park. The last time they lost all their glass windows. This time the makeshift cellophane window coverings were taken out plus considerable sections of plastered ceilings coming down from the shock, so they looked a mess as seen through the street windows. Inasmuch as that was at 2 AM, no one got hurt. My hotel, about 500 yards short of the explosion, didn’t even lose a window, and I lost only a few minutes sleep.
So far today (10 PM) there hasn’t been a single bomb since dawn.
With love, Ned
Letter #53
July 27, 1944
Lucy darling:
No mail today except a letter from Mary and a V-mail from Will’s wife.
The flying bomb situation continues fairly good – very few bombs are coming through day or night. One last night again at 2 AM woke me with its roar going over, but it must have continued a long way; I heard no explosion at all. Today I’ve heard none at all. The Germans say they are keeping up a heavy bombardment – maybe, but the goods aren’t being delivered. (Siren just starting to blow for first raid today – I guess a bomb finally got by the coastal defenses).
I got the package sent by Dodd, Mead which you mentioned in your #52 of July 1. There were two Armed Services Editions copies each of Hell on Ice and On the Bottom. I mentioned to you my being puzzled about the special edition of On the Bottom, for I thought it was Captain Paul which was chosen. However, On the Bottom certainly was, and now I wonder whether Captain Paul also will be included later or not.
Now please send along the regular edition nevertheless of Hell on Ice which I previously asked for, since I still want to give it to General Gale and the paper covered edition won’t do for that purpose.
The position of Germany on the eastern front looks bad. It appears Hitler was so obsessed with the importance of pushing us invaders into the sea that he stripped the eastern front of too much armor and some of his best troops, so that the Russians were able to kick a terrible hole in what was left. We may not be going so fast ourselves in Normandy at the moment, but we are certainly the reason Hitler is moving so fast in Poland. I’m not selfish – I don’t care who first rings down the curtain on Der Fuehrer and starts him on the road to Hell. (The All Clear – no explosions – I guess they knocked that one down finally before it got here).
Better weather today – some cloud, a little rain, but clearing in the afternoon. I hope it stays clear.
With love, Ned
Letter #54
July 28, 1944
Lucy darling:
Two letters from you today, #73 and 74. All the letters previously missing are still missing (plus my laundry).
I had tea this afternoon with Lady Gowers. She certainly is looking well, better I thought than when I last saw her in New York. She is very busy in the W.V.S. (Women’s Volunteer Service) here and went directly from tea (at her home) to give a talk somewhere on fire control methods. Sir Ernest is, of course, having a hectic time since the flying bombs started coming over; he wasn’t there but if it can be arranged, I’m to have dinner with both of them next week.
Lady Gowers was particularly pleased that fire has almost been completely absent from the flying bomb attacks; for she long ago learned (what I knew) {siren just sounded, followed almost immediately by the roar of a bomb engine. I looked out in the dusk, saw the bomb in level flight, rather high, about 3000 ft., perhaps a half mile on my left. While I watched, it turned steeply down, engine still running, and exploded about 5 seconds later. I am afraid that one landed somewhere near Piccadilly} that fire is the best weapon {another bomb, heard it but didn’t see it. About the same distance off} and the damage from fire far exceeds that of simple explosives. But the Germans are suffering under the naïve illusion that they are blowing London to bits, and fire, which was the worst enemy in the 1940-41 blitz, is being left out of this attack.
Lady Gowers said she thought Nina sounded rather embittered (that wasn’t the exact term; I can’t remember it) and asked if I knew why I could only suggest that it was because Nina had found nothing of a permanent nature in the way of employment. (Don’t tell Nina this). {All Clear just sounded}.
Lady Gowers asked how you were, and wished to be remembered to you.
{Something funny. My radio is tuned in on Cologne, and they are just playing in the best jazz style "Johnny Got A Zero Today." Music but no words. I wonder if they think the tune won’t bring any idea of what the words are about to their listeners, German, Japanese, and otherwise}.
The above brings to mind that from the German radio reports the listener who heard nothing else would get the idea all is going famously (if he had no sense).
Today for instance, they report a long string of tank and plane losses suffered by the Russians (huge figures); fantastic losses in tanks, planes, guns, and men suffered by the U.S. in two days around St. Lo; same for the British (only worse), in Normandy; about the same Allied losses for Italy; some pipe dreams about losses inflicted on us in Guam and Tinian by the Japanese; and finally as a casual afterthought, the statement,
"To shorten our lines and improve our defensive positions, we have
withdrawn from Lvov, Bialystock, Dvinsk, Hovno, and Brest-Litovsk."
Casually, mind you, as if they were announcing an improvement, but one of no great moment, they slur over the capture of five fortresses, each certainly as important in its area as Corregidor was to the Philippines. The loss to them of any one of those cities was a major disaster, but you should have heard the casual way in which Goebbels tossed off the loss of all five at once as being a voluntary German move to improve its defensive position!
I doubt if the average American knows yet what kind of a dream world Nazi Germany is still living in.
The Altman overseas package came today. I am not sure whether from your letter of July 7 you meant there was a separate package of cookies also (aside from the 1st class candy and fruit cake). It was 20 days on the way – not bad – except it wasn’t worth wasting transportation on. Practically everything in it can be matched by the Army field rations plentifully available to every one (and of which all hands are heartily sick, except when nothing else is obtainable). A can of sardines, a tiny bottle of preserves, and some hard candy (that the youngsters may be persuaded to accept) was about all that the Army field rations don’t match. I don’t mind wasting money to pay for the damned thing, but I do begrudge wasting even parcel post space across the ocean on such a combination, and Altman’s should have more sense. The only person who would appreciate such a package would be a castaway on a raft or in a lifeboat, and I fear that to such a person, delivery could not be guaranteed.
I was genuinely sorry to hear of Noel Robinson’s death (Ed: Robinson recruited Ellsberg from the Navy in 1926 to join Tidewater Oil). Of course his health had never been good, so I am not surprised at his passing, but I liked Noel, admired the way he stood up for what he considered correct, and (except perhaps for Frank Keebler and Dick Jones, of course) regarded him as more of a friend than anyone else in Tide Water. I do regret his poor judgment in his marital experiences. I am afraid if he had not been quite so sophisticated, he would have got along with his first wife (one of the Benson’s, who I think really was a fine person, but perhaps "small town") and avoided that acid female who snared him on his second trial. I’m sorry – Noel Robinson was the most intelligent and the most human person I met in my Tide Water episode, and the only one who knew that something of importance existed in the world outside the oil business (and God knows, I know how important oil is, especially now).
I doubt that it’s worth bothering to follow up through the Intelligence Officers how that man-hunter out in Los Angeles obtained my address. I’m too far away, and I don’t want to involve you in it, as it would appear that you had motives of a personal nature (that isn’t so, but the average person would certainly have that reaction). It’s just funny – forget it otherwise.
I’m pleased to hear that Sophie and Jimmy (Ed: Sophie Milroy was Ellsberg’s cousin) are back to civilization again, having escaped from the frontier. Give them my congratulations.
By the time you get this, you should be reasonably settled in The Anchorage. I trust you haven't run into a stretch of fog, nor any household difficulties, and that Clara is able to sun herself lazily on the rocks and relax. And may you all enjoy your fill of lobster and of clams – how I envy you!
Any racing this summer? By the way, the Argo insurance policy wants to be renewed on a cold storage basis only, not a cruising one, though you may want to get the tender down, provided you can get someone to rig the outhaul.
With love, Ned
P.S. I enclose a clipping on General Ned McNair. While I have no inside information, I’m afraid from the way this thing is worded, that a land mine was the cause.
P.P.S. The want ad (Ed: for a house rental in the Channel area, which was restricted) is a refutation that the British have no sense of humor.
P.P.P.S. The "German Surrender" letter is a refutation of the idea the British (some, at least) have no sense.
May 3, 1944
Sweetheart:
I arrived here quite uneventfully after a rapid passage. Weather good all the way, with the trip about as exciting as a subway ride. Came in yesterday afternoon and I am reporting this morning. So far as I can judge, there is little change around here from when we were last here. More later. I don't know my permanent address yet.
With love, Ned
Letter #2
May 3, 1944
Sweetheart:
It's been a beautiful spring day here and the place is just about as lovely as when we last saw it. Everything is much more advanced than at home. I spent most of the day doing some required reading, and in the late afternoon took a walk thru the park and around some of the spots which were once our old haunts. Contrary to my expectations, there has been very little change in the last seven years and the place looks far more normal than when it was all covered with scaffoldings and temporary stands for the celebration.
I doubt that I'll be here more than a few days, when I'll probably get a chance to go to the shore. Whether my address will be any different there, I don't know yet. Meanwhile, keep on using the one you have. If the address is different, they'll forward from here.
Incidentally, the navy post office clerk here told me the situation is the same as it was in the old days in the tropics - that no matter what kind of stamps or no stamps are put on the envelope here, it all goes out exactly the same way. He says the service is pretty good, though. You can judge for yourself.
By the way, I sent you a regular rate cable (none of this canned stuff) at noon today. They said it would be delivered in eight hours. What was the result? Practically everything I wanted to say in the cable was barred by the censorship rules, except
Much love, Ned
so that's what went.
P.S. I would have sent that cable yesterday if I'd known all the ropes in getting it cleared, which I didn't learn till today.
Letter #3
May 5, 1944
Lucy darling:
The enclosed clippings from this morning's paper, will interest you. This is the Mr. Myers who seven years ago thought it was quite all right for Germany to rearm as a shield against Bolshevism for the rest of Europe. Well, he seems to have survived all the bombings, but now I'll never be able to learn from him whether he still thought he was right. (Well, anyway he made the front page in his death).
I made an official call today on my old chief in the Mediterranean of a year ago. He has gone up in the world since then; however, he greeted me as cordially as ever, complimented me on the improvement in my appearance, and regretted that he seemed to have run out of drydocks for me to work on. I was glad to see the old gentleman (he's all of six years older that I) still looking so hale and hearty with all he must have on his mind. However, he did look a little thinner to me, but certainly cheery and full of punch (not literally).
While I was in that vicinity I also dropped in to see Commander Davy, who was British liason officer with me two years ago in Massawa. Our pleasure at seeing each other again was mutual; he was certainly a great help to me out there. Davy came back from Massawa here a year ago, but apparently the fare available at home hasn't put a single pound on him and he's still very thin. He lives some three miles out from his office, where he says, Mrs. Davy had a tough time on rations for two only in getting very much or any variety. I told him you were having the same difficulty at home. I've invited them both to have inner with me next Monday night at the American Senior Officers' Club, which seems to be doing better than average of any of the hotels here in providing a square meal.
I never did think much of English cooking, and now, if possible, it has even gone down hill. I haven't been near Simpson's yet, but judging from my luck at other first (?) class hotels so far, a well cooked pidgeon's leg might seem attractive.
Breakfast is still the biggest problem regardless of where I go for it. When oatmeal can be such a delicious dish, why the porridge should everywhere be served as an unpalatable mess I can't understand (and no other cereal seems to be served). No fruit, no eggs (I don't miss them), standard English toast, and (God help us) English coffee that you can't drink black, served with hot double skimmed milk. Quite a combination.
All this is going to be good for me. I just have a hunch I'm going to do some needed reducing without the necessity of hard work to bring it about.
It's very quiet around here at night. If you think Hanford Place is quiet, you should drink in the absolute silence of this spot. And yet I'm only a couple of blocks from Victoria Street, a main thoroughfare.
With love, Ned
P.S. Len Quackenbush will be interested in the news of Myers' death notices enclosed. You might let him know when convenient to you. Mr. Myers seems to have been quite a figure in London.
Encls: 2 obituaries, one dated May 7, 1944 (Ed: this may have been in with letter #4)
Letter #4
May 7, 1944
Lucy darling:
This was Sunday, and with nothing much else to do, I looked the town over, mostly on foot. My respect for the accuracy of newspaper reporters has sunk still lower. The general effect is about what you'd get from taking a look around Manhattan. I personally believe more vacant space exists in Manhattan where buildings have been torn down to make parking spaces and save taxes, than I note here.
When next you get here, we can once again visit the Cheshire Cheese in all its ancient glory, despite newspaper stories that it was washed up. I visited St. Paul's also (it being Sunday) and found it looking unchanged, except that it had been smacked twice with amazingly little damage (though the intentions were undoubtedly of the best) - as I remember it, Lincoln Cathedral had more scaffolding up to repair the ravages of time than were visible in St. Paul's.
Selfridge's is quite as it was, except they've given up the fiction they're so well known they don't need their name on any signs - now they have fixed and permanent name signs on every corner window.
One of the poor lions on Nelson's column has lost a right paw and his left one is badly maimed, but on the whole, I have an idea Herman Goring would feel quite sick at heart to survey his handiwork. The poor fellow tried so hard, too.
The weather is lovely so far as sunshine is concerned, but cold. All heating ceased (such as it may have been) on May 1, so I wear my windbreaker in my room, and regret that I packed my heavy underwear in my baggage to follow. Tomorrow I intend to wear my heavy overcoat.
I still feel that if anyone wants to know what's going on in the world, he'd better read the New York Times. Around here, the papers are just a shade ahead of those in Massawa and that only because they are all in English with no space given to the stories in Italian. Four pages make a standard newspaper.
Censorship restrictions are carefully applied here (as well they should be in this situation) and I'm told that as a consequence, the mails are not as fast as they used to be. This may apply only to the mail going out. Among other security regulations, I note that the keeping of diaries is strictly prohibited and those who had any have been required to destroy them. Inasmuch as I've never kept one in this war, that hasn't bothered me, but I'll bet there were some heartaches among those who had.
I see Vera Brittain is addressing a meeting next week on what to do with Germany - forgiveness, of course. Thomas Mann has an interesting article on the same theme in the May Atlantic. I have an idea he knows more about it.
I am enclosing a couple of clippings from the Times. This is the third day straight there has been one on Mr. Myers. Apparently he was quite a figure in London to get all the space he did, considering the scarcity of newspaper space.
The clipping "Let God Arise" by the Dean of St. Paul's impressed me, particularly since the revered gentleman had a couple of bombs through his own roof, one right on the altar. I feel he expresses the case well, and I earnestly hope the whole meaning of the battle cry Monty has revived will sink deeply into all our hearts.
With love, Ned
Encl: Clipping "Let God Arise!"
Letter #5
May 9, 1944
Lucy darling:
I had as dinner guests last night, Commander Davy who was the British liason officer a couple of years ago with me in Massawa, and his wife. He was away from home 21/2 years on that stretch - quite a trial for all hands. He finally got back here a few months after I got back myself. We had dinner at the American Senior Officers' Club (where they really serve a good meal) and after that went out to Regent's Park where they have a small flat - of all places, over a garage behind someone's house! This town is rather crowded.
I'm living in a hotel myself just now, but as it seems I'll stay around here a while, I thought I might preferably change my residence, so I took a walk over to look at Marsham Court. It was quite as usual when we stayed there last time, but no vacant apartments. I'll look around a bit tomorrow in the vicinity of our other former residence, Grosvenor House, which area may be more convenient to me.
By the way, I neglected to mention the matter before, but the per diem called for in my orders is paid officers here, so I should get along all right without any need to modify my allotments from what they've been during the last year.
I managed to acquire yesterday the necessary British fittings and a resistance to cut the voltage down to suit my electric razor and now I can use it again. That's lucky, for every day I've been here and had to use a Gillette, I shaved off parts of my epidermis and my face was getting both sore and bloody every morning. Now that at least is cured.
I suppose by now Mary and Ned (Ed: his daughter and her husband, my father) have probably gone back to Fort Benning. I wonder what all happened with them since I left. I hope the troubles looming up that departure morning cleared away, but did they? There were some basic questions that were far from settled.
No letters from home yet.
With love, Ned
Letter #6
May 12, 1944
Lucy darling:
Today I received the first mail from home - your letters #2, 3 and 4, one from Mary, and one you forwarded from Lt. Aldrich. Your #1 is missing.
It was wonderful to hear from you again and to see your beloved handwriting - even that is some part of you and makes you seem a little present, though only a little.
There is no reason I can learn here why you should not now let any of our friends know in general where I am, the country, that is. Reference to a specific station is forbidden. As regards the address, which may or may not be changed for a while, you can give it out to those you care to.
Your letters came through uncensored and unopened. Of course all mail from this end is more rigidly supervised and censored than ever and at present, is I understand, subject to considerable delay for security reasons.
I am glad to note Mary and Ned bought the car. I think the price was fair all around and the car is easily worth the price, though from your father's point of view, he could certainly never have got it in New England and even around New York the sale of such a large engined car was a difficult problem. Down south that car should be worth far more.
I'm glad to see Forrestal was made Secretary. I believe that was by far the best solution.
Tragic is the word for Jean Pilling's married life, all right. Fate has hit her with nearly everything, poor girl.
My passage here was quite uneventful and not record breaking. Just an ordinary trip, good weather all the way, no delays anywhere, no excitement.
I'm glad to know my cable was received the same day it was sent, which was the day after my arrival here.
Remarkable that Clara's (Ed: Lucy's aunt) book finally returned after a year and a half's wandering.
I am pleased to learn of young Jack's promotion to Captain. I'm sure he's earned it.
And meanwhile I'm fine.
With much love, Ned
Letter #7
May 16, 1944
Lucy darling:
I received your #5 a couple of days ago. Your first letter is still missing.
I've gone to the shore now where I guess I'll stay awhile. In a sense it annoys me, because I find that the sea shore hotels charge even more than the metropolitan ones, though I'd hardly call this the resort season, even in this area. It's damned cold around here - colder than it was in Scotland last winter one of the men here assures me. And meanwhile all my heavy underwear is still at sea, much to my regret. I still more regret it because when it comes, there will be a further delay before it can possibly be rerouted to me down here.
Unlike London, this spot reminds me more of Algiers. Last night (my first here) the sirens blew, the ack-ack guns performed and some bombs burst. Quite like old times.
Night before last they knocked down 15 German planes along this coast, according to the papers this morning. A couple were bounced into the drink by the guns and fighters close by where we're working. That seems to have been one of the worst nights the Luftwaffe has had for some time.
I'm glad Mary and Ned seem satisfied with their car purchase. I believe the price was mutually advantageous.
I'm much afraid mail transmission here may be slower both ways than before. Stick to the present address, however, for I doubt there will be any gain in changing it just now.
With much love, Ned
Letter #8
May 18, 1944
Lucy darling:
As I look forward to our anniversary, which this time we shall have to spend apart, I am doubly glad to remember that kind fortune at least gave us a chance to spend our twenty-fifth together. This, I'm sure, will be the last separation. Thank God I was home for the last one and for Mary's wedding.
There is a feeling of loneliness especially acute at being apart for that day. Every thing else here goes to accentuate it - quarters in a seashore hotel, unheated now in weather colder than last winter here, the chill breeze from the water, the desolation wrought by four years of intense bombing which have left a large part of the town in ruins. This place, and the towns like it all along the shore come fully up to the newspaper reports of the devastation of the blitz and since then.
Sunday and Monday night we were bombed again, but nowadays the ack-ack and the night fighters make the raids relatively ineffective and very costly - for one stick of five bombs which missed their target and damaged only a pub and a few houses, the Germans had 15 planes knocked down Sunday night and 6 more Monday. The last couple of nights the weather was bad and there were no attacks.
Five years ago today I think it was, I journeyed north to spend a week with John and Lucy, who were kind enough to take me in when the whole town was jammed with visitors. Somehow history seems to be repeating itself, for once again I'm in a town packed with unseasonable crowds but this time no good friends to stay with and I'm damned lucky to be able to get into this delightfully cool summer hotel.
I haven't been completely among strangers, for I've met various officers I knew in the Middle East several years ago, mostly of the Royal Navy. And oddly enough, on the beach yesterday where I went for a conference, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy came up to me and said,
"Wasn't your daughter married last December?"
"Why yes, I answered."
"Well" he said, "I was invited to the wedding but at the last minute, I went on duty and couldn't come. You wouldn't remember, but a Mrs. Davis called to ask whether she couldn't bring a British lieutenant as her guest and was told 'Why, of course.' I was the lieutenant - my names Houston."
Wasn't that odd to meet your unknown guest three thousand miles away literally on a foreign strand?
The curtain has gone up in Italy. Too bad Wagner is not available to write what would have been his grandest score - the Gotterdammerung of the new pagan gods. May I contribute a few notes.
Ned
Letter #9
May 21, 1944
Lucy darling:
I've really gone to the shore at last, away from any towns and it seems like old times (not quite) in our cottage at Southwest Harbor. Believe it or not (and in this chill weather it seems unbelievable) I'm living again in a summer cottage right on the beach with plenty of sea breezes to keep the place cool, and some nice cold water right off the front doorstep to go swimming in (if any one were such a fool). The water is nearly as cold (not quite) as that Labrador Current which laps our rocks at the Anchorage (Ed: in Southwest Harbor, ME), and the weather reminds me of Maine in October.
The cottage itself (unoccupied by its owners apparently since the war started) is of usual summer cottage construction, wood, but it is not badly fitted out - a real electric stove, running hot and cold water (an electric hot water tank), toilet, shower bath, real beds, and grass about a yard high in the area around the cottage. Also several steamer chairs and a beautiful view of the water across the barbed wire entanglements.
I had some luck today. I've just about been freezing to death ever since I got here, for all heating stopped on May 1. (Of course, they never really heated anything over here anyway). My stuff by sea hasn't come yet, and Heaven knows when I'll get it. So I managed to draw two suits of heavy woolen underwear from a Seabee outfit this morning, and I was inside one of them just as quickly as I could jeep back to my domicile. For the first time since I left New York I feel warm again.
The second thing I collected today was a tin hat, which is also very useful when the ack-ack shells come down out of the sky (frequent around here).
Which is the more useful, the underwear or the tin hat, is quite a question. Personally, I think pneumonia is a greater danger out here than the war.
I'm sorry to say that I haven't had a letter since I left London, which is the result of very poor communications this way. The mail service going out of here is, I hope, better. (The last letter I received is #5).
Everyone in our area is quite busy, as you can well imagine. We see flocks of planes every day bound both ways to make it hot for our friends abroad (altruistic, certainly, considering how cold we are here) and what the papers say about hundreds of planes on each attack is certainly so. On the contrary, the German attacks are very slight in numbers comparatively, which I notice is a repetition of the old Algiers experience.
I trust I stay here awhile till summer weather really comes, but I doubt that that ever happens. Why the English have summer cottages anyway, I can't see. I don't think it ever really gets hot here, and certainly the water really never gets warm, so why bother?
I suppose you've heard from Mary since she got back to Fort Benning. She is probably plenty hot down there now. How did the Buick run on their trip?
Well, the attack in Italy seems to be progressing favorably. That should give the Nazis a foretaste of what's in store for them elsewhere.
I've just about run through the magazines and reading matter I brought over. When I'm certain about the mails both ways, which I trust maybe settled in a few weeks, I'll send for some of my own books. Aside from rereading them myself, some of the people here I meet have read some of them and manifest an interest in some others.
With much love, Ned
Letter #10
May 23, 1944
Lucy darling:
We had another air raid last night around midnight which lasted about an hour. There was quite a display of ack-ack shells bursting high in the darkness, the roar of bombing engines you could hear but not see, searchlights fingering the heavens, chandelier flares dropped by the Nazis to illuminate the targets, and a perfectly dazzling effect of rocket batteries firing salvos. The lonely beach we are on wasn't the target, it was a town a few miles away, where however I was most of last week. (It got bombed a couple of times then, also). What the damages were, we don't know here - I heard a pub got smacked. Most of he churches there and a good part of that town are already flattened out, since a couple of years ago it was one of the most blitzed points in England, continuously receiving far more attention than London. But the Nazi raids aren't what they used to be then. And this morning an unusually heavy air force of our own went out over the coast in retaliation, so I have no doubt we finished ahead on balance.
It is amazing in point of time how close we are to the enemy. Planes taking off from the fields around us in ten minutes are over enemy territory; conversely, in about the same time, the enemy can reach us. It is a striking instance of our air superiority that not one enemy plane in daylight have I seen over our coast, while on contrary our planes by the hundreds pass overhead morning, noon, and afternoon (let alone night) to smack the enemy bases in northern France.
I hope somehow in the next few days I can manage to get to London & see what's holding up my mail.
With love, Ned
Letter #11
May 27, 1944
Lucy dearest:
The mail situation has been very confused lately. Since I left London for another spot, I received nothing at all. Then I was shifted again to the beach, and still nothing. So yesterday I went up to London to see about it. I was told there three letters had been forwarded a few days before to my first change via the British post but on my return here via that place, they hadn't yet come. At any rate, while I was still in the London office, a new mail arrived, and I received four letters from you - your #1, 7, 8, and 13, and one from Mary. They also told me in London a "telegram" (or cable?) had come some days before for me, which had been forwarded with the mail. I haven't that either, nor could the London Western Union office find it for me, since I couldn't even give them the exact date it was supposed to come, and they have thousands every day. If you sent it, please repeat its contents in a letter.
You will observe that airmail stamps do you no good. I am assured here, everything goes out the same way, regardless of stamps or no stamps. I am certain looking at the stamps, regular and otherwise, on your letters, that everything gets exactly the same treatment in the Fleet Post Office in New York regardless of stamps. Your letters arrive here uncensored and without even a censor's stamp on them, which is interesting.
I note from Mary's letter (of May 17) they've been transferred to Fort Meade.
The weather here has warmed a bit, and last night was gorgeous, with a lovely sea and a crescent moon. No bombs.
I listened last evening (in a nearby cottage with a British radio) to Radio Berlin, being the first time since leaving Africa I've heard it. There were two programs in English of special interest. The first was "Midge" broadcasting in excellent American to "her kids," "the Yanks" in England for whom there were tears in her voice over their being sent soon to slaughter. Her program consisted of an excellent jazz orchestra, playing nostalgic American love songs (not new) after each of which in a much concerned voice Midge would ask "her kids" didn't they wish they were back with their girls, and remind them girls get tired of waiting and run off with the boys at home (which the Massawa experience of my young army officers confirms). Then they played "Were you sincere?" and Midge asked was Roosevelt sincere when he sent us here, and were we sincere in being here at the direction "of Roosevelt, who never keeps his promises, and of the Jewish interests?" After which Midge enquired, "Am I right, or am I? Good night, kids!"
Quite a program. I shall take a deep personal interest when I get to Berlin in personally helping to wring Midge's neck if I can ever locate her.
Then William Joyce, "Lord Haw Haw" took over with the news as seen from Berlin. It appears that the Germans have withdrawn from the Italian coast to higher ground inland. To avoid the malarial season coming on, I suppose, since he didn't suggest the Americans had anything to do with it. About the "much advertised invasion, he would leave us to speculation and doubt, doubt and speculation." And then he turned to a long analysis of Churchill's recent speech in Parliament on foreign affairs, showing his listeners that Britain had lost her power in world affairs and was now but a tool of the Kremlin and the White House. So why should another Englishman sacrifice his life for such leaders?
William Joyce is another traitor I shall enjoy seeing hanged before too long.
It interests me to note that in these broadcasts Germany has reached the point where no longer is Nazi might going to dominate the world or decide the issue, but the Nazis are now clutching at such straws as American nostalgic sentiment and British fears of their allies to ease the blow on them.
Well, they are wrong. There isn't an American soldier here who isn't eager to get home, but they seem to realize the road lies through Berlin and they are chafing for D day to get started on it.
Meanwhile, all hangs upon the British and the American navies. I have no doubts about Eisenhower's army crashing through once they are on the far shore, but our navies must first put them there and the real battle is going to be fought out by ships, mostly small, of which the world will never hear, and which look very little like conventional ideas of warships. Our weird little ships of all kinds against German mines and beach obstructions - on these prosaic little Davids rests the result. Ranged about them are tremendous preparations, in no way exaggerated by the press reports. And overhead an overwhelming air umbrella, the worth of which no one depreciates. But it is on what is in and under the water that we must combat with our little ships that the problem lies. Germany thinks it has there an impregnable Atlantic Wall. The Nazis will soon learn it's about as good as the Maginot Line.
With much love, Ned
Letter #12
May 29, 1944
Lucy dearest:
No more letters since I wrote before. Those so far received are #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 13. At least 3 letters and a telegram (or cable) received in London about 10 days ago are still chasing me over England and seem lost for the present. If you sent me a cable, please repeat the contents in a letter since the cable company can't locate a copy of it.
Since I left London two weeks ago, the mail delivery has slumped. The forwarding from there is terrible, though they have my new address. However, I do not dare to change my number, since before you got it, it might be changed again and thus make matters even worse.
Air raid alarm just sounded. (A little after midnight).
I have just been rereading your letters, particularly the last four - 1, 7, 8, and 13 which I managed to collect myself a few days ago on a brief trip to London. So in answer to your questions:
There is no reason now why our friends cannot be told I'm in England.
As regards myself, I haven't a particularly strenuous task, right now at any rate. I'm supposed to be a technical advisor on one phase of our preparations, so I have only a thinking part right now, while I watch others do the actual work. I'm getting quite a rest at the shore. The only strain about it is inactivity.
(Twenty minutes later. All clear. Some distant firing heard for a few minutes. Nothing close by). (Yesterday all day the cottage shook every few minutes as from earthquakes. I have an idea the coast of France was getting quite a beating).
Yesterday (Sunday) I attended services (Episcopal) at an army chaplain's nearby here, it being Whit Sunday. Solemn enough. I thought the hymn with which the service closed, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," particularly appropriate.
I'm glad to know you met Mrs. Howe. I've never met her so far as I can remember, but Howe thought we had years ago. I trust you found her companionable.
I am pleased Walter will go to Officer's Candidate School. I'm sure he'll make a fine officer. Pass my congratulations along to him.
Remember me to Mr. Beard. I whole-heartedly appreciate his thoughts of me.
I can't shed any tears over Commander Carmine's having to come away from California. So far as I am concerned, he can keep on coming all the way over here to relieve me, and I'd be overjoyed to spare him the need of standing the New Jersey climate. I could stand it with great pleasure myself, plus what goes with it. I've had more than enough now of separation and I earnestly hope when this one is over it will be the last forever. The remembrance of your smiles is with me always, and looking at your picture seems in a slight way to bring your presence a little to me when I roll in at night.
(1 a.m. Another alert).
And I particularly appreciate your prayers. The card you sent May 16 (#13) "God keep you in His loving care, Every day and everywhere," I felt deeply. I feel moreover He does. I've had a couple of minor accidents that might have been serious, but weren't. About a week ago I dropped eight feet down a vertical ladder on a small Dutchman converted into something else for us, and came down in the hold squarely on my right heel, with nothing else touching. I got a stiff jolt so I couldn't bear any weight on that heel, so the surgeon carted me over to the main naval hospital where they took three Xrays of my right heel. There was no fracture anywhere, so I got a sponge rubber cushion and a cane, and in a few days was able to get around with nothing except the rubber pad. However, it didn't work out too well, for a few days ago later in jumping from another vessel to a boat alongside, my leg missed the rail and I went overboard into the Channel. I came up all right and swam to a fender hanging down the side, from which they fished me thoroughly soaked. My waterproof wristwatch got a good workout and emerged satisfactorily. I was interested to note that the water, which I had feared was cold enough to be numbing, didn't feel cold at all, but quite comfortable to swim in, at least fully clothed (with woolen underwear on also). I went back to the cottage to hang all my clothes, including my shoes, on the line to dry.
My heel is about well now, so I don't need the rubber cushion, and I appreciate two solid legs more than ever.
(This time the planes passed directly overhead, with the guns banging away right alongside. However, the target was further to the westward - no bombs around here. The all clear has just sounded again. 2 a.m.).
I note in the English papers that air-raid precaution watches have been abandoned at home. I guess they don't need them there any more. And I hope now it won't be too long before the Nazis are shoved so far away from here that this coast also can dispense with sirens.
With much love, Ned
Letter #13
May 31, 1944
Lucy darling:
Tomorrow is our anniversary, our last apart I trust. I cherish memories of our twenty-fifth, which by the grace of God we were happily able to spend in each others arms. May the next one and all others yet to come be lightened for me by your glowing eyes and softened by your caresses!
This one will be lonely enough, in spite of the planes continually roaring overhead and the flotillas streaming to their anchors just offshore. God alone knows how many hundreds of thousands of men there may be strung out along this shore waiting with the planes and the ships for the signal for action which cannot now be much further off, but one can still be very lonely in a crowd when the single person who gives life any meaning is not of it.
So now on the eve of June, I wait with very different thoughts from those of twenty-six years ago, for June and the storm that will break with it this time. The preparations are tremendous, our forces immense but the obstacles at sea and on the beaches across the water are of great magnitude. Here Hitler stands or falls and his resistance will be desperate. Regardless of what happens, we have the power to crash through ultimately, but I hope that with good seamanship, good weather, and the help of God in this undertaking, we will crash through on the first assault and swiftly scuttle the last Nazi hopes of any stalemate.
With much love, my dear, Ned
Letter #14
June 3, 1944
Lucy darling:
Our anniversary came and went, marked mainly by a Dutch commander, a Royal Navy lieutenant, and a Royal Engineer's subaltern all wishing me happier ones in the future over the tea cups in the Dutchman's little cabin aboard an insignificant Dutch ship on which I had been working over the pumping equipment all the day. It was heartening to know they really felt their good wishes. My heart ached for the Dutch three-striper, though, for he was in the East Indies when Holland fell four years ago and he hasn't heard from his family yet. But now the day of reckoning draws near and no one puts his soul more wholeheartedly into the preparations than this exiled Hollander.
The weather is good and we all pray it remains so. It has turned warm the last few days, and nature at least is propitious. And overhead in swarms our bombers and our fighters stream out over the water to prepare the way. Last evening just at sunset (10:30 pm here) some fifty Flying Fortresses headed homeward passed inland right above us quite high up in a stately procession with the setting sun gilding the under sides of their wings almost as if they were aflame. But there was a sombre note to the occasion, as one of the planes twice fired a red flare - the signal that she had wounded aboard and for the ambulances on the field ahead to stand by her when she landed. To complete the picture, several miles behind the main formation, a solitary Fortress, unable to keep up with the others, straggled behind, with four fighters, Lightnings (sic), hovering protectively in her rear, apparently having shepherded her safely across the Channel.
The hours of daylight here are amazing. England, even the southern part of it, lies much farther north than usually we realize in the U.S. Then they have double summer time here, with the clocks advanced two hours over Greenwich time, and since we are practically on the Greenwich meridian, we get the full advantage of being the whole two hours (less only a few minutes) ahead of the sun. The result then of all this is that it is light outside till about 11 pm by our clocks, and the darkness lasts only till 5 am. Some long day!
About the allotment, I suspected that you might get two conflicting notices regarding the amount. If the actual check you received on June 1 was not for $560, I suggest that the quickest way to clarify the situation is to go to the Navy disbursing officer at 90 Church Street, 14th floor, officer's accounts, and ask them to clear it up. It was in that office that my allotment change requests were made, and they have the records. I think you'll get quicker action there in person, than by writing to the Allotment Office in Cleveland or Chicago or wherever it is.
I received four letters from you last night - #14, 15, 16, and 19. It appears they reach here in batches about once a week, but apparently with some gaps as the above numbers and past experience show. I still have not received three letters forwarded me from London nearly two weeks ago (including a telegram from Heaven knows who) which were sent down here via the British mails and have not since been seen. I think those missing letters probably comprised most of your 9, 10, 11 & 12, which haven't yet been delivered. Do you know anything of the telegram (or perhaps it was a cable)?
Up to now, I certainly haven't been overworked, having done mostly a thinking part, with plenty of time to rest. And I may say I have no intentions of doing any diving, aside from which there appears to be no need anyway.
So far as I know there is no reason why you can't tell our friends (or the Leader) (Ed: Westfield, NJ newspaper) that I've gone to England.
In this cottage, the breakfast problem is solved. I get my own - usually coffee or tea and oatmeal. No fruit or fruit juices are available, but toast and marmalade are. I wouldn't use the milk around here, and I don't care for the evaporated kind, so the coffee is always black (as for connoisseurs?).
I'm glad to hear your mother is with you and I trust she stays a while. I did not understand your reference "to what the doctor told her." Perhaps you elaborated on that in some of your missing letters. What did the doctor tell her?
I am sorry to learn Mr. Hastings is no better. I certainly shall write them in a day or two.
I'm afraid there isn't much in the way of alleviatory advice I can give Ned or Mary now. I'm just a little afraid this last transfer was a result of that gorgeous rejoinder Ned made to his unsatisfactory fitness report - it is about the normal manner a commanding officer would take to end an unsatisfactory situation without a rumpus. The only answer I know to the situation is to bury the past and even in an unpromising position to do the best possible.
As regards the new war bond drive, I believe it desirable to buy $1000 more. However, you'll have to judge that situation yourself. Certainly for the present I won't need any more money than I get here.
I see from your letter about Matt's telephone call that he is still exactly his old self.
How long I'll be here is uncertain; no great while, I judge. And where I'll go from here, I don't know yet, though I may learn soon. But from the way things are moving now in Italy, I have great hopes that when Montgomery gets another smack at Rommel, the old chase will be resumed with all its former vigor. I note that the German radios have a new song. That old one of 1940, "We Sail Against England" has been supplanted by "The Watch on the Channel." I'm afraid that watch is shortly going to be suffering from a busted mainspring.
It's midnight now. The roar of British bombers passing overhead for the last hour has finally ceased and they must all be over France now, dropping bombs into the works of that watch. So I'll turn in. Tomorrow is Sunday, and a very busy day here.
With love, Ned
Letter #15
June 5, 1944
Lucy darling:
The major feature here is watching the Forts fly over, very high. They aren't camouflaged any more, they are just a glistening aluminum, and the way they shine in the sunlight now is gorgeous. Yesterday in one formation nearly two hundred passed overhead, a stately and magnificent sight, though I doubt they looked so beautiful to the Germans a short while later. There must have been a thousand tons of high explosive cascaded down the necks of our Nazi friends from that formation alone.
Yesterday the weather wasn't good and today it isn't much better. It blew fairly hard and kicked up quite a sea. Inasmuch as I had to make a trip on a sub chaser with a number of British army brass hats and a few of their top civilians, it had at least an advantage in giving some of those gentlemen an idea of what effect sea conditions have on operations. We were out in the clear in the worst of it at noon, when dinner was served - a grand dinner, steak, mashed potatoes, peas, and a real fruit salad. Some of the army decided they weren't hungry and stayed on the topside, while half of the others after a few nibbles came to the same conclusion and fled to the deck. It was about the best dinner I've had since I landed here.
We had quite a trip and saw plenty, and it was plenty. Under the conditions, the puny efforts of the Germans to interfere by air remind me of the same situation in Algeria - I guess they just haven't got the stuff now any more than they had then.
We all got pretty well soaked from spray coming over as our little sub chaser took the seas over her forecastle, but I had taken the precaution to don my woolies before we started, and I wasn't cold. However, when we got in and I had dried off, I could literally wipe the salt off my face. Reminded me of sailing days on the Argo (Ed: his 27' "A" class gaff-rigged sloop in Southwest Harbor, ME), which by the way, would be useful here, for this is the world famous center of British yachting (except that the sailing yachts are all stowed for the duration, and I haven't seen a single sail while here).
I visited Chichester Cathedral a few days ago. It isn't as big as Lincoln or York, but I thought it was decidedly more graceful than York, and definitely less severe. It has the most graceful stone spire I've seen, hexagonal, beautifully proportioned, with lovely sculptured stonework at the one-third and the two-thirds points of its height (the lower tracery different in design from the upper). This cathedral is reminiscent of the Florentine ones in that it has a bell tower entirely separate from the cathedral building, standing about fifty feet from it, and apparently older than the cathedral itself.
The cathedral hasn't been bombed, nor has the town to any extent, though it isn't far from two of the most bombed parts in England. I understand, however, many of the parishioners would like to take their bishop out and drown him, for he is one of the leading lights in England who is opposed to bombing Germany; some think they see a connection between his expressed opinions and the immunity of his cathedral, but I doubt that. The town is a little out of the way, with far more attractive targets nearby, and I think that's the answer.
With much love, Ned
Letter #16
June 6, 1944
Lucy darling:
This has been D day. From everything I have seen or heard here, it has gone better than any expectation. I have said before that the preparations have been terrific. The vast number of ships that launched this expedition was beyond any belief as I saw them before sailing. Let alone any enemy hazards, the traffic problem across the channel was of itself immense.
All last night bombers roared overhead to plaster the enemy beachheads. In the distance, behind the mine sweepers, the bombarding warships steamed away and then a veritable avalanche of landing vessels and transports. Strange as it may seem, a real surprise appears to have been achieved in the point of attack and in the time.
Today more planes than ever were seen anywhere before streamed continuously across the channel. If any German plane showed itself over Normandy (few did) it couldn't have lasted but a moment in the face of the swarms of fighters we had there. And this afternoon we saw the second paratroop division stream outward - an interminable line of transport planes each towing a glider. One towing plane, flying low but trying to climb unsuccessfully, was obviously in difficulty and I headed out in my boat to stand by when suddenly it let go from the glider a shower of parachutes over the water. We started for the spot to rescue the men but it soon turned out they had dumped only their equipment, not the men. The plane, its load somewhat lightened, turned back toward land which it managed to reach and then cast loose its glider, while the plane itself gained enough altitude then to make a nearby field apparently.
Here on our beach we have been sending away special craft all day - so special and so odd you'd think them nightmares if you sighted them in ordinary times at sea.
Our last reports - this is after midnight of D day - are that the beachheads are firmly held. What a cause for thanksgiving that is, only those here can know, for all our advance air reconnaissance data showed tough beach obstacles, heaven alone knows how many mines, and what other surprises, one could only guess. Now we are over that, the end is sure.
What has already passed over to assault the beaches is nothing as compared with what is ready to follow. The attack in Italy, ending a couple of days ago in the capture of Rome, was a fitting enough overture. Now will come the crashing outburst of forces that will overwhelm the neo-pagan gods and that Wagner alone could set proper music to. Hitler is going to learn what force really is. As for Goering, if only he could have seen the skies today, he might have turned green with envy.
And so ends the first day.
With love, Ned
Letter #17
June 9, 1944
Lucy darling:
Just a note to say I'm busy but everything is going well.
Love, Ned
Letter #18
June 9, 1944
Same place
Lucy darling:
Your cable of the 29th arrived here June 3. Your "canned" cable of May 13 never has reached me, though I judge now it actually reached London about May 20 and was lost in transit between there and here.
Your letters #6, 10, 11, 20, 22, and 23 all reached here together last night, together with the one from Glen Galvin (ex-Massawa) which you forwarded to me.
You might as well quit worrying about erratic mails either way. I regret to tell you that the mail coming here from you arrives quite irrespective of air mail or ordinary stamps, to which no attention whatever is paid by the Fleet Post Office in New York. Apparently it all goes out by the line (air) on which I came, when, if, and as the planes sail, and no doubt to some degree haphazardly depending on which bags get on the first plane out and which don't.
As regards the mail from here to the US, I am assured that it all goes (or doesn't go) the identical way regardless of whether it is "Free," ordinary postage, or so plastered with airmail stamps you can't see the address. They don't care here; it all goes into the same bag, and when there is a plane going back, some bags go on that one, and the rest, if there isn't room, wait for another.
That the Army (and Jane's boy friend) may get better and more regular service is of no moment to the Navy and I can't do anything about it. All Navy mail must go through the Navy post office; it cannot be sent by regular civilian service regardless of my desires; and it cannot go with the Army mail or thru an Army post office. That is a Navy censorship rule which cannot be broken.
The Army service is undoubtedly better. The Army runs its own air transport service which carries its mail, and the number of flights each way are very great. The Navy has none such. It works only with the air line on which I came over, and I need hardly tell you what the delays on it are or can be.
On top of all else, I am in an out of the way spot, and there are delays between here and London both ways which amount to several days or more and are quite unpredictable.
So please quit worrying that delays mean that I'm sick or incapacitated. They don't mean anything more than that the mail service for the Navy varies from excellent to rotten. There was one further factor. I understand that from about mid-May to D-day, there were some intentional holdings of the mail for strategic or security reasons. If that was so, it may be over now.
At the present moment, your still missing letters are #9, 12, and 21. The last received is #23 of May 31, including the "News of the Week."(It had no air mail stamps on it, by the way).
Darling, I hope the above explains the mail question and ends it. I hate to waste letters to you on that subject; I'm not trying to save money on air mail stamps; and if I spent a dollar in stamps on each letter (which I'd gladly do if it helped delivery) it wouldn't get it to you any sooner.
Right now we're still busy here where I've been some weeks, dispatching quite odd craft (in which business salvage figures in a queer way) to the shore. I'll probably be here a few weeks yet.
I was exceedingly sorry to read in one of your delayed letters that your mother has cataracts in both eyes. I earnestly hope Dr. Childers' examination indicates a more promising outlook than the Willimantic diagnosis.
And I'm terribly shocked to hear about young Talbot Malcolm. You are quite right; the situation of that family makes the tragedy a continuing source of fear while this war lasts.
I was both interested and pleased to receive the letter from Glen Galvin which you forwarded (and read first, so you know what's in it). Glen was a college graduate, a Rose Bowl football player on Southern California's team, and quite an unusual person, who was coxswain in my personal launch at Massawa. He made a fine sailor, and never dreamed that a college degree put his task beneath him. It was good to hear that he thought I taught him something.
I was glad to hear from Mary directly and from you, that she likes her job, though it's out of her line. She mentions she's getting $146 a month which is fine and should be quite a help. However, it's finer that it interests her and keeps her busy.
As regards the allotment, I suppose that is straightened out by now. I can hardly do anything about it from here; it will be no use my writing. All the records on file at 90 Church show what's wanted. I quite expected you to get notices about stoppages, starts, and what not. However, the check you got June 1 is the answer. If it is not for $560 don't waste time writing anybody letters but go and see the allotment officer at 90 Church St.
About my old Navy overcoat, I'll never use it again, so I guess you had better donate it where it will do some good. As you say, the Navy buttons had better come off first, but I'm quite willing to pay for having a set of ordinary buttons put on before we pass it along.
The weather has been bad the last couple of days (worse today) and as we have to work at sea, it hasn't helped any. It's clearing tonight and I hope tomorrow will be passable.
Since it's now 1:30 am, I'll close.
With much love, Ned
P.S. I'll be interested to receive a list of missing letters (if any) at your end.
Letter #19
June 12, 1944
Lucy darling:
Yesterday was Sunday, but for us it was only D+5. We worked all day with our pumping equipment on more stuff for across the way. Quite a breeze here; it seems as if one fair day at a time is all that can be expected; otherwise it blows. It has rained every day but one since D day; for a month before that not a drop of rain. I'm still wearing my woolen underwear all the time and appreciating it. God knows if we'll ever have any summer weather this year. In a way, Massawa with all its faults, had at least one compensation - it was the land of eternal summer.
It will be a while yet before the armies on the far shore are built up to the size for offensive operations but the built up progresses well. We are now over the danger point, which was a successful first seizure of the beaches. That was an unknown in spite of all the preparations, the major uncertainty being the German mine fields in the channel. The little ships, the mine sweepers (into which the YMS that Mary christened, it was first a PC but was finished as a mine sweeper instead) had to go first all unprotected to sweep the channels through to the French shore so that the large warships could get in for their bombardment of the enemy shore batteries. Heaven only knows what that could have meant in losses and disaster had the Germans been a tenth as good as they bragged, but the mine sweepers did a magnificent job and our naval losses in getting up to the beaches (and in the following troop ships) was amazingly low. With that success, the rest was in the bag.
There was hard fighting on the beaches after the landings, especially on the middle American beaches. Don't let the newspaper reports that that was a walkover, impress you. The first wave had a tough time but they fought it through.
Now it's a race between Rommel's efforts to bring up his reserves by land and Montgomery's to get a build-up by sea. The advantage is on our side. No German plane by day has been here since a week before D day, nor in the Channel. On every good day here (and those not so good even) clouds of our planes go over to strafe Rommel's communications on a scale the world has never seen before. I wish Goering could be on hand to watch it.
I'm well and busy, and dream of you each night.
With love, Ned
P. S. Your canned cable of May 15 finally arrived yesterday together with your letter #9. They had chased me all over England, mainly due to the fact that they were misdirected to the Queens Hotel, Plymouth (which city I've not been in) instead of to the Queens Hotel, P----) where I was for a brief time three weeks ago.
Letter #20
June 12, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your #25 of June 3 arrived today. Your #9 and your "canned" cable of last May arrived day before yesterday. Your missing letters are now only #12 & 24. Apparently the mails from the U.S. have not been held up.
I am very sorry to hear from you that no mail has reached you since my #7 of May 16. I heard over here that about that time there would be a delay in delivery for security reasons, but I did not imagine it would be a complete stoppage. However, now that D day has passed, I imagine the hold up is over, but if the mails were held on this side all that while, the delays will be prolonged by the tremendous accumulations of letters now to be transported. Other officers report their families also have received nothing since letters sent in mid-May. Let me know when the mails come through again, and also a complete list by numbers of the letters you have received.
As regards the allotment, of which I note that the June check you received was only for $460. That shows atrocious management in the allotment office. Don't write any letters to anybody. Go yourself to the allotment office (13th or 14th floor at 90 Church Street) and ask them to check these facts: (take this letter with you)
1) About April 26 I asked them to reduce my allotment to you from $560 to $460. They made out in that office the necessary forms which I signed.
2) Next day (about April 27) I asked them to cancel the above reduction, and leave it at $560. They demurred on the ground of office records, but recommended making out a new change as of that date from $460 back to $560 for which they made out new forms, which again I signed. All the above records are in their office.
3) I was further told the second change would cancel the first, and as there was over a month till June, the June check would still be for $560 due to change #2.
4) As the June check was only for $460 the matter has been badly bungled either in their office or in Cleveland.
5) It's up to 90 Church to straighten up the confusion, and see the matter cleared in the future, with the shortage of $100 in the June payment made good to you.
6) But for Heaven's sake, don't write anybody any letters. Go to see them, and make them check their records.
When you get this, I can't guess. If the matter isn't cleared up by then, proceed as above.
To change the subject, please quit using the thin somewhat pinkish airmail paper you have been using. The paper is so thin the ink shows through on both sides and it makes reading very difficult. (The light here is very poor). As I've said in several letters before (none of which you have yet received) airmail either way is a complete illusion. You gain nothing by airmail stamps; neither do I. But if it still pleases you to use airmail stamps, at least use ordinary paper and throw that thin stuff into the fire (including the transparent envelopes).
Sorry to have to waste a whole letter on the mail situation, allotment bungling, and delusions about airmail. As it's now after midnight, I can't write any more.
I'm still well, busy, and acquiring a very salty complexion from constant contact with the spray in the Channel.
With love, Ned
Letter #21
June 18, 1944
Sunday
Lucy darling:
This is the first letter I've had a chance to write in four or five days, and inasmuch as I am at sea at present returning to my former base, I haven't my number list with me and I may be off on the proper sequence.
I went over early this week aboard some of our special equipment and I've put in the time since on our new beachhead helping to get it going. I just finished that today and I'm on my way back.
I must say our project was a grand success and the results are making Jerry rub his eyes as he sees the terrific amount of heavy tanks and artillery smacking him on the front lines, all of which is coming through without a regular port in our hands. I'll bet he never counted on that. I believe this project, which I can't describe now, but which will probably soon be released by the censors, is the most amazing thing which has been done anywhere in this war. The idea is British (you would never have given them credit for that much imagination) but the execution on the American beachheads was in our hands and has gone beautifully.
I went over on the queerest craft that ever floated, and am coming back on one of our empty LST's, which is carrying a heavy passenger list of some 250 of our wounded (I'm not one of them).
The main beachhead has probably been adequately described by now in the press, so I won't go into it. Taking it was a tough job, and as General Montgomery said, the first two days our troops clung to the beach only by their eyelids, under heavy machine gun and mortar fire. But now it's well in hand, the front line is over fifteen miles inland moving on St. Lo, and the Germans will shortly feel the effects of the huge tonnage moving over that beach.
We had a beautiful guard both ways over the Channel (which was crowded with ships) and no signs of enemy aircraft or surface ships. Mines are however, still a danger but a decreasing one.
When I get back (it's nearly midnight and we should be in in about an hour) I'll probably report back to London in a day or so for what's next. This job is over.
When I get a chance, I'll send you a little something I picked up in Bayeaux (with some difficulty in settling the price since my French is still exceedingly nebulous).
I found the French glad to see us, but when it comes to shopping, it appears that the French are still the French so far as Americans are concerned.
I have an idea the American soldier is very quickly going to acquire a first class hatred for the Nazis. This business of booby traps and mining the roadsides after they've cleared out doesn't go down well, and a few other things since D day make it easy to believe for our soldiers that the stories they read in the last war about German atrocities weren't wholly the propaganda that our friends of the goodwill fellowship would have us believe. It looks as if the Nazis haven't changed their stripes any.
Our naval losses in the first crossing and assault were amazingly low, due to excellent preparation, excellent guarding and minesweeping, and a first class air cover.
No German planes ever show up over the beachheads in the daytime, but each night there we got raided. However, the damage the Germans have managed to accomplish with their night raiders has been negligible.
I hope I find some new letters from you when I get in, and I trust the mail is now going through to you. And I could use some sleep tonight.
With much love, Ned
Letter #22
June 19, 1944
Lucy darling:
I returned to England this morning after a week across the Channel on our beachheads and inland. My task in connection with the actual invasion is now completed. This morning I packed up all my stuff from my seashore cottage, locked it up, and returned to headquarters where I originally reported to await my next assignment.
I bought you a small present in Bayeaux a few days ago. I had intended to mail it to you from here, but I found today that a Mr. Loveland (a civilian in the War Shipping Administration) who has been here a few weeks on a shipping problem, is returning late this week by air and he offered to take it with him and forward it to you when he gets to New York, which should be before you get this letter. I hope it reaches you soon, and not the way the one I sent you from Pernambuco. Think of me a little when you use it.
My greatest joy on setting foot on English soil again was to find six letters from you waiting for me - your numbers 24, 26, 27, 28, 29 & 30. There is missing now only #12.
Your letters are a joy and a breath of your own lovely presence. No man ever had a more lovely and a more loving wife and in a lonely and a dismal situation of war and desolation and destruction, they provide a beacon light to remind me of better hours in the past and happier ones to come.
London is under fire now (it's midnight) from the Nazi pilotless-plane bombs. So far since I reached here early this evening there have been about six siren alarms warning of them coming over, and one explosion (the only one I've heard at all) close enough to shake this hotel noticeably.
I understand the Nazi radio claims London is in a panic and is being evacuated. Actually London is paying about as much attention to them as New York does to Norman Thomas, and the military effect is nil.
Yesterday one did hit a church full of worshippers and the casualties there were considerable - an episode reminiscent of World War I when one of the shells of the German long range guns hit a church in Paris with similar results.
A number of these flying bombs have already been shot down on their way over, and I have no doubt but that an effective antidote will soon end them all.
My post office number is now actually Navy 100 again, and I can receive my mail here without its being reforwarded to me, which should save some days.
With mush love, Ned
Letter #23
June 20, 1944
Lucy darling:
I hope long before this that the holdup of mail for security reasons has ceased and the held up letters have been delivered. I have all your letters now (up to #30) with the exception of #12, which I’m afraid has gone permanently astray chasing me around the south coast before D-day.
As you will observe from my last two letters (#20 written at sea on my way back from the far shore, and #21 yesterday evening from here) I’m through with the first phase of my job which was wound up with the actual invasion, and I’m now back where I originally started here (and even in the same hotel) with a new assignment which is practically the one I came over for originally. There will be an interval right here working on plans before I can do anything with the actual work, for it appears that I shall have nothing to do with what is at this date Bradley’s main objective.
I still marvel at the results achieved D-day. Compared to the number of ships we had figured on losing to torpedoes, radio controlled glider bombs, air attack, and mines (and mostly mines) what few we actually lost seems unbelievable. A special large squadron of coast guard cutters had been sent over for the sole purpose of picking swimming soldiers by the thousands from lost transports. They had practically nothing to do on the main crossing. Not a single regular transport was touched. The air attack, the glider bombs, the torpedoes, never showed up. The only danger encountered was the mines, and the mine sweepers working ahead did such a fine job, only a few destroyers and an LST were lost on the way over, and only on the actual beaches where the small craft had to go with no mine sweeper protection, did mines among the beach obstructions give real trouble.
The one uncertainty I had about the operation was what the mines in the Channel might do to us. When you consider the thousands of ships that crossed during the night before D-day dawned, it was easily conceivable what defended mine fields could do to us. But the Germans weren’t up to it and the actual crossing cost us less in troopships than the North African invasion.
That one uncertainty has now long since gone by the board, and the answer is a foregone conclusion. On our main beach there were two hazardous days because it so happened by chance that on that one beach a German division was practicing invasion defense and was right on the spot when the real thing happened, so there the battle hung in the balance a couple of days. But now that the beachheads are no longer beachheads but well-secured in depth, the men and equipment pouring in can have only one result. Rommel and Rundstadt are going to get smacked an awful smack in the next month or so when Montgomery’s men and material put him in about the position he was in at El Alemain in late October, 1942. History is going to repeat itself on a grand scale.
It seems Goebbels is running wild on what the pilotless bombs are doing to London. The thing is a complete flop. Yesterday I heard only one explosion, today none at all. There aren’t any fires, and if anyone has evacuated this place, it could only have been because his creditors had caught up with him.
My estimate is that by now the British have pretty well mastered the technique of knocking them down in flight, so that today few, if any, are getting through to London.
I enclose some clippings on the subject. The first couple of days, a number of people were killed by the bombs which came over, but that hazard is now slight. I don’t believe on even those days, the Germans did even a fraction of the damage that a small sized bomber raid achieves.
I judge from the various allotment notices you have received stopping this, starting that, stopping the other, that the allotment office will have caught up with itself so that the July check will be correct anyway. It may take some time (maybe they’ll never do it) to rectify the June underpayment, but if they finally say they can’t, I’ll collect the unpaid $100 over here and send it to you. Let me know the outcome after you’ve been to 90 Church Street personally. (As I said before, writing will do you no good).
I learned today that my baggage arrived at a northern port on June 9, with an estimated three weeks or more to get it here from there. The supply officer here is going to make an effort to have it flown down. I don’t care so much just now for the clothes I had in it, since I’ve duplicated the heavy things and I’ll not need any whites this summer, but I do badly need the technical books.
I’m glad to hear you bought the $1,000 war bonds. If you find yourself short, I can help to the extent of a couple of hundreds, as my per diem covers all my expenses and possibly a little over, so that I still have the $150 intact that I brought over, plus the $70 for May due on my pay account above the $560 allotment.
My mail address is again (and yet) Navy 100, and I’ll get my mail here directly with no reforwarding, so I should get better delivery than I’ve had the last month.
With regard to that seashore cottage I had (but not any longer) two other officers and I had it together. But now it’s deserted again. The other two are still in France and I’m here with no likelihood of any more duty on English beaches. The cost was quite reasonable down there, only two guineas a week for the whole cottage. We did our own cooking and got along much better than the hotel meals in London. (I did also my own laundry, and my share of the cleaning).
With much love, Ned
P.S. Will you please cut out the financial pages of the Times (any day but Sundays) and send it to me. I’d like to get an idea of what the financial situation is.
Encls: Various newspaper articles
Letter #24
June 21, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your #32 arrived today. 12 and 31 not yet here.
Since my 8 & 9 have reached you, I judge they have resumed mail deliveries.
About the allotment, I checked with the paymaster here and his records show that he deducted $560 from my pay in May to cover the allotment to be paid you on June 1. So far as he is concerned, its $560 which he is checking my pay each month, and as he has already checked it against me, it is up to the allotment office to pay you the missing $100.
I wrote you yesterday (concluding about midnight) about the slight damage in London of the pilotless bombs, including the fact that I had heard none yesterday. Immediately after that letter, I turned in. A little later, I heard the air raid siren and went to sleep again. Shortly after that I waked to hear a hell of an explosion with the hotel shaking as if it were going to fall apart. After debating whether I should look out the window, I decided to roll over and I went to sleep again. This morning when I waked, I wasn’t certain whether I’d dreamed it all or whether there had been an explosion. But I found out shortly there had been one and it was real enough. Not far from the hotel, one of the plane bombs had landed on a paved road in a park and exploded. I examined the damage carefully. Since it was all open ground there and after midnight, no one was hurt and the visible damage was otherwise slight. A brick wall edging the park road (a wall about eight feet high) was knocked flat for a length of 180 feet. Every tree within a radius of 100 feet had lost all its leaves, together with some branches cut by shrapnel, but beyond that radius the leaves even were intact. The crater was amazingly small – hardly two feet deep and not over fifteen feet across, but then the pavement was evidently strong and the blast had expended itself upward. There was no evidence of fire.
To my knowledge, that was the only pilotless plane bomb that reached London in over 24 hours. A view of the results would have made Hitler sick. About 20 trees stripped of leaves, a section of old garden wall knocked flat, a small hole in the pavement, easily repairable in a day, and a lot of broken window glass in the nearby streets – only that as a result of his secret weapon for a whole day. I enclose a clipping on the subject. Between our fighters knocking them down and our bombers knocking out their launching platforms, I don’t think this secret weapon is going to be heard of much longer.
It was quite cold today, so my topcoat came in handy. Even the English say they can’t remember a June like this. All of which is no help, for the Channel weather has been unfavorable most of the time since D-day.
I came back from France on an LST carrying 250 wounded and I learned something. Ten of the "wounded" didn’t have a scratch; they would have been called shell-shocked in the last war. In this one they are suffering from neuroses. Of the lot, about half had been through plenty but oddly enough they (that half) had practically to be dragged aboard the LST as they wanted to go back to their units in spite of what the doctors thought. The other half were unquestionably half insane with fright – one in particular could not talk coherently and looked as wild-eyed as if a ghost were after him. The doctors thought their imaginations had run riot with them and doubted that any of the second half would ever be of any value in a combat job. I looked at them and tried to be charitable, but I like to see a person dressed like a man act as if he were one. I don’t blame anyone for being afraid of danger, but he ought at least make an effort to stand up to it. It is distressing to see a male carried off on a stretcher, gibbering with fear when he hasn’t even been touched.
Then there was another batch of ten cases all of whom (except one) had shot themselves "accidentally." The one exception admitted he had shot himself through the ankle deliberately. He looked like a plain rat. The others varied in personality, but it is highly improbable there was any accident in any of their cases.
So that accounted for 20 out of 250. Most of the others, wounded mainly by shrapnel, but some by machine gun or rifle fire, were quiet men who took their wounds uncomplainingly, discussed the actions they’d been in, and confessed that in spite of lots of training, they’d been at fault themselves in not keeping covered when they might have. But they said everybody was learning fast. Some of those men had been in England 19 months waiting for the invasion!
In my opinion, Rommel is not doing as well as was expected of him in his defense. I think he is going to be knocked out of France more quickly than was anticipated. He is having trouble enough now, but wait till that vicious brute Patton gets after him, in addition to Bradley and Montgomery.
With love, Ned
Letter #25
June 22, 1944
Lucy darling:
A quiet day, and quite undistinguished because it brought no letter from you. That makes it just another day.
We had several air alerts, but all I heard was one flying bomb about noon which I judge exploded about a mile away. Early this evening, a formation of about fifty Liberators flew over the city homeward bound (for planes to cross the city is quite rare) flying very high, their aluminum bodies and wings glistening beautifully in the rays of the setting sun, a gorgeous sight. One plane, however, lagged behind the formation, a trail of smoke streaming from one engine. He kept his altitude, however, and I earnestly hope he made his home field.
I’m having rather a quiet time just now, working on plans for Act II. I’ll probably not have anything very active to do for several weeks, so I’ll get plenty of rest after a salty month in the Channel.
A copy of the June Reader’s Digest landed in our office here, and I’ve been reading the abbreviated book on Justice Holmes, "Yankee From Olympus." I was particularly struck by the quotation which forms the concluding paragraph. I heartily agree with him and I have always felt that the only real satisfaction one gets from a task is the inner satisfaction of realizing that on it he has done his best, not the rewards that may or may not come from a capricious world.
I trust the change of scene is doing your mother much good, and I know her presence with you is doing you good. I trust she can stay quite a while both for her sake and yours.
With love, Ned
P.S. The last letter I received from you was #32 yesterday.
Also I asked yesterday to have the financial pages of any issue of a recent N.Y. Times (except Sunday) sent me. I’d like to check the general financial situation. And by the way, has Commonwealth and Southern ever come to any decision as to what they expect to do in the way of a stock redistribution
Letter #26
June 23, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your #33 arrived today, ten days in transit, which is fair. Missing are 12 and 31. 12 is lost, I think, chasing me around southern England. 31, I imagine was also sent there before I could get reforwarding stopped after my return, but it will probably be returned.
I’ve written Mary four letters, including one last night. I think the first three got caught in the holdup, but they should start to come through.
Dan Noce left England before I got here. He ought to be back home quite a while ago.
I doubt whether we have to worry any longer about counter attacks by Rommel. I think he has about everything he can get up to the line there now and he’s not making any progress. Monty is holding him off at one end of the line while Bradley finishes off Cherbourg at the other end, and the only worrying that anyone is called on to do is by Rommel who is no doubt worrying plenty as to where he’ll catch it next when Bradley’s army is released after the capture of Cherbourg. And meanwhile our forces are building up to greater strength all the time. Rommel is going to catch it worse this time than he did in Libya and Tunisia.
And I further think there is going to be an awful let down in German morale when the Nazis there come to (Ed: learn) that Goebbels has been feeding them the worst mess of lies yet about the effects of the flying bombs. I have an idea the Germans were clutching at the secret weapon as their last straw. They are practically delirious over what they think it’s done to England, and when they realize it hasn’t done any more than kill about as many people a day as are bumped off daily around New York in automobile accidents, their reaction is going to be very bad.
Last night they had their best night in a week with the bombs. So far as I could judge, about four got through. One woke me up at 2 a.m., the motor roaring very plainly. It’s an odd feeling, I’ll admit, when you hear one. As long as you hear the jet motor, everything is all right – the thing is still in flight, and if the noise fades gradually away, you know it’s not going to land in your vicinity. But when the motor noise suddenly stops – that’s something else. For then in a few seconds, it’s going to crash. And that’s something to make your heart skip a few beats.
The one last night suddenly went dead silent while the exhaust was easily in loud volume and therefore somewhere near, and in less than a couple of seconds later it exploded. Still I guess it landed over a mile away for the concussion wasn’t bad. Even at that, it more or less spoiled my night’s sleep, for once I wake up at night, I don’t get solidly to sleep again. As a result, I heard about three more before dawn, none so plainly, though.
Changing the subject, my financial position here is quite sound. I’ve got about $400 in cash, with which I’m going to open an account in the Berkeley Square branch of the Chase National Bank here. (This includes the $150 I brought with me.) In addition, I’ll have coming to me about $180 on the paymaster’s books on my pay account as of July 1, which I’ll leave there since I don’t need it. This satisfactory state of affairs is mainly due to the fact that living in an English seashore cottage in the off season proved to be dirt cheap, while my per diem stayed up. Now I’m back in the metropolis, I’ll just about come out even for a while, but meanwhile I have quite a reserve for a rainy day, even if I never save any more.
With love, Ned
10:30 p.m. and the air raid alert sirens are just starting to wail again. I guess another bomb got by the Tempests patrolling the South coast.
Later: nothing happened.
Letter #27
June 24, 1944
Lucy darling:
I have just received an urgent order to proceed for the far shore where I was before. I imagine I’ll be gone about a week, during which I won’t get any mail since I’m not having it forwarded for fear of loss. However, I should be able to write from there with usual results.
Love, Ned
Letter #28
June 27, 1944
Lucy darling:
I am being more permanently assigned now for my specialty on the far shore. As I told you in a brief note, #26 (Ed: #27), I was ordered here on very short notice June 24 to cover an emergency situation, but it will require attendance here for some time, and I guess I’ll be on this side for good from now on, though not necessarily on this station later.
This has been a lousy summer so far for weather, as everybody knows over here, including the Germans. The weather has set us back far worse than the enemy.
I’m going to have plenty to do for a while. If you’ll remember the episode which occurred the week after we bought The Anchorage (Ed: their summer cottage in Manset, ME) and the night we had dinner with Mrs. DeLong (Ed: Mrs. Emma DeLong, wife of the Arctic explorer) and Stefansson (Ed: the Arctic explorer), you’ll get a mild idea of the situation I’m to play with.
The days here are very long. The sun rises about 6 a.m. and doesn’t set till about 10 p.m. (due to double summer time) so I may squeeze in some time for reading to take my mind off work when the sun has set. As a complete change, I’d like to relax with Hell on Ice (Ed: his book about the DeLong expedition to the Arctic), which I think a rereading of would help in reminding me that other peoples troubles were worse than any here. I’m asking for that particularly, because when I’ve finished it, I’d like to pass it along to a Major General Gale of the British Army who mentioned it to me in Algiers, saying he intended to get a copy when he got home. I met him in London a couple of weeks ago and he reminded me of it, saying he’d tried to buy it in London but couldn’t find it, and I promised him then I’d get a copy from home for him. Don’t send the Armed Services edition but the regular one, since it’s to be a gift when I’m through with it.
With love, Ned
P.S. Cherbourg fell today. Thank God I’m to have nothing to do with it.
Letter #29
June 29, 1944
Lucy darling:
I am just shoving off for my fifth crossing, southbound this time. I have been detached from my original assignment under which I arrived, and assigned as (my specialty) on the staff of the newly designated flag officer for what we have and what we expect to acquire. I made a flying (not literally) trip to London to wind up my affairs there and get my clothes, and now after only a few hours there, I’m on my way back to the far shore.
My mail address remains the same. Mail will be forwarded (I hope). But I’m afraid a change will only result in worse confusion.
In a great measure, my London trip was a flop. First, some four or five letters from you they were holding in the London office were forwarded yesterday when I was detached in my absence. I hope I’ll find them awaiting me on the far shore. Second, my baggage which arrived in Scotland June 6, and for which about June 20 a truck was sent up (for a special pickup) couldn’t be located there, is not in London, and some day may be found. It’s probably under a mountain of other stuff, or just plain bogged down in transit. If ever I move again, I want to go on a ship with my stuff with me. Then practically all the laundry I couldn’t do for four weeks went to the laundry from my London hotel ten days ago, and is not ready yet. So I couldn’t get that either. I’m down to about one pair of sox and one khaki uniform that looks like hell already.
Since my assignment is technically one afloat, my per diem stops as of today. However, of course I’ll get quarters on one of my ships and I think be provided for in the general mess, so I shouldn’t have any expenses. My financial situation gives me quite a cushion. I have $300 in the Chase National Bank (Berkeley Square branch), $148 due me tomorrow on the paymaster’s books for pay, about $35 additional due on subsistence account, and $110 in cash with me. So my European assets total about $593, which should more than take care of any possible needs till I’m home again. Aside from the above, I will have coming about $70 a month more on my pay account, which alone will more than cover expenses in the future.
I enclose a clipping from the Stars and Stripes of June 27. This will indicate why my presence on that beach is desirable. If the enemy had done a tenth the damage to our ships that this clipping mentions, Goebbels would be screaming yet (and rightly) of a tremendous German victory. So I’ll be busy there a little while.
There is always lots of excitement on our beach, (which was the scene of the main American landing) where we suffered more casualties on D-Day than on any other beach, and also more than in the whole campaign since. It’s a good place to be careful, because German mines are still being exposed by shifting sands and every once in a while, one gets touched off.
I’m crossing on a small coast guard cutter, hence the letterhead. Five days ago I crossed on another of the same class, when its skipper a young Coast Guard ensign by the name of Peter Chase told me he had often raced against me at Northeast Harbor, he being on the A30 as crew. To top off, it appears that he is now the owner of "May Mischief" which he bought from Malcolm McDuffie. It’s a small world.
The capture of Cherbourg winds up the second phase of the invasion. I shan’t have anything to do with that port.
A few days ago I went through Isigny and Carentan. Unlike Bayeux, both had been severely pounded by naval guns firing at long range for troop support, and the centers of both towns were badly smashed, Carentan especially. I just have an idea the Normandy villages are not too enthusiastic about being liberated, for many of them it has meant having their homes shot to pieces, in an area where before in this war there has been no fighting whatever, and where from all appearances, food has always been plentiful for the population during the occupation. It is interesting to note that the Free French have hastened to explain that conditions in Normandy are not typical of the rest of France, for many an allied soldier has lifted his eyebrows in astonishment over a situation where the French shops overflowed with food in abundance, completely unrationed, and particularly steaks. There is a devil of a difference between here and Algeria, where the French workmen were always hungry and the country stripped of everything. In Normandy at least, I see few signs of the enthusiastic welcome we got in Algeria, and there are good reasons to believe that some of the stories of French snipers, especially women French snipers, are true. There is no opposition, but there is also no enthusiasm – not in Normandy. The French resistance movement must have its centers elsewhere.
In my last letter, I asked you to send me a copy of Hell on Ice. In case that letter miscarries, I repeat the request here. A copy of that (regular edition) will just about exactly fill the bill for reading here and for a gift afterwards to a Major General Gale of the British Army who manifested a keen interest in it in Algiers nearly two years ago, but who hasn’t been able to find a copy in England.
With love, Ned
Letter #30
July 2, 1944
Lucy darling:
I wrote you a few days ago crossing the Channel, and possibly misnumbered the letter as 27 when it should have been 28. I didn’t have my check list with me then.
Since returning here, I have been quite busy, but I expect things will ease off somewhat now.
Yesterday I made a quick trip from here to captured Cherbourg to look over the place as a matter of professional interest. I must say the Germans are slipping badly. So far as wreckage in the harbor is concerned, the damage is slight. Compared to the Mediterranean ports I have seen, it is nothing at all. As against Oran or Massawa for instance, it could well be considered practically unsabotaged. Ashore the Germans pretty well blew up most of the dockyard shops and damaged the drydock caissons (these are not floating docks) but from a military viewpoint, I should say the damage won’t hurt us much as we don’t much need what was damaged. There are, of course, an unknown but suspected considerable quantity of mines in the harbor which must be swept out before the harbor is usable. No doubt you’ve read all this in the papers. The town of Cherbourg is practically undamaged, either by battle or by the Germans, which is in great contrast to the towns leading to it, of which I found Valognes especially terribly smashed by artillery and bombs.
Cherbourg is naturally a fortress easily defended and protected on the land side by high cliffs crowned with forts. If the Germans couldn’t defend Cherbourg from capture, they can’t hope to defend anything. By all accounts, they fought hard, but they were mashed by the weight of our fire, our air attack, and, I may say, our generalship.
Rommel, I see, is making the same strategic mistake at Caen he made at El Alemain, letting a major battle take place with his opponent’s supply line practically at his back, while he (Rommel) fights a long way from his own. He’ll pay for it. It’s a damned sight easier for Montgomery to smash his enemy at Caen than it would be for him a couple of hundred miles inland and far from his own beachhead supply. When Rommel falls back from Caen, his army is going to be what is known as decimated. Day before yesterday a huge flight of Fortresses flew directly over our beachhead headed for Caen. There must have been at least 200 of them aside from fighters. Fifteen minutes later at most they flew over again, northward bound to cross the Channel. In that brief time they had been over the enemy, unloaded, and started home. If that flight had dropped bombs on us, it would have obliterated everything on our beachhead harbor. I can imagine what those bombs did to Rommel and all his supply lines. 45 minutes at most from their home fields puts our bombers over Rommel’s head, and I’ll bet he’s having a hell of a time. But it will be worse before long.
The weather is perhaps typical Normandy. It rains every day, sometimes very hard. Today was warm for a change, but still it rained.
As I told you in my last, some five letters from you were rerouted via a changed number a week ago and haven’t yet arrived. The Lord knows when they’ll get here. I’m afraid the dispatch to France is going to bungle the mail terribly. The last letter of yours I have is #33 received June 23. Nothing since.
As I mentioned before, I shall have nothing to do with Cherbourg and don’t expect to get there again.
I noted the natives on the Cherbourg peninsula seemed much gladder to see the Americans than the Normandy peasants back of our beachheads. Those on the Cherbourg peninsula reminded me more of the French in Oran.
I hope from now on I’ll have somewhat more time to write. And the situation by and large looks quite hopeful, better than I had any sound reason to expect before D-Day.
With much love, Ned
Letter #31
July 4, 1944
Lucy darling:
I haven’t yet had anything from you since your #33. My own mail has been trying to catch up with me for nearly two weeks with no success yet. I’ve changed back and forth across the Channel so that it’s missed me on both sides. Now I’m back at Navy 100, have instructed the mail clerk to deliver here and not forward anymore, so I hope to get a letter soon.
I was just transferred back yesterday and after my sixth crossing (which was very rough for a small craft), I arrived here today to find that yesterday a dispatch had come from Bu. of Personnel to the following general tenor:
"Newspaper story states Captain Edward Ellsberg 8713 USNR
narrowly escaped death in jeep accident. Report if injured
and extent of injuries."
The office here answered today to the general effect that I wasn’t injured and I sent you a cable today as follows:
"Perfectly well. Never injured. Love."
What happened was the following: About D+5 or 6, I was going up a French road about a quarter of a mile inland from our main beach, in a jeep with another officer. The road was a rather narrow paved road with stone walls each side, with two or three feet of grass each side between the paving and the stone walls. A white tape marker was run on top of the stone walls both sides, showing that the road shoulders had been searched for mines each side out to the tapes, the search having been made by the army engineers with detectors.
We met a six-wheeled army truck coming towards us. As there was not room where we were for the truck to pass, we stopped, and as search or no search, I had no desire to veer off onto the grass, we backed up about a hundred feet to where the road pavement widened a little and stopped there for the truck to pass. As the truck approached, it swung out to its right to pass us. The front wheels and the driver’s cab passed all right, but as the forward rear axle (both rear axles have double tires and are consequently wider than the front axle) came abreast us, there was a roaring explosion and the truck came to a sudden stop.
Both of us in the jeep were plastered with sand and mud and my eardrums were ringing badly but when I found I was still in one piece, I hopped out to see what had happened to the truck driver. As he was farther from the explosion than I was, he was uninjured also but standing dazed in the road. I then examined the truck. Both tires on the right forward rear axle were torn to bits, the steel wheels were ripped to bits, and the stone wall alongside those wheels had completely vanished for a length of about eight feet. In addition there was a fair hole in the ground where the mine had been.
As I figure it, the single front wheel had passed safely, but the double rear tires, protruding sideways further, had touched off the mine. Fortunately for all of us, the truck was very heavy and as the wheels were right over the mine when it exploded, the blast went both ways sideways without coming up, ripping out the stone wall on one side and passing under our jeep on the other.
A more careful look showed the after rear axle of the truck still reasonably intact, so as the road was blocked, I told the army driver to try to drive his truck clear on that, but he’d had enough and refused to get back in the truck so we drove the truck out for him. It went fairly well to an open spot near the beach where we all left it. It was somewhat damaged underneath in addition to the sagging axle.
Now I told that episode to various other officers to warn them that even searched roads were still dangerous and to keep them off the road shoulders. I never expected it would receive any publicity, and can’t see why it did. What the "newspaper story" that Bupers. referred to said I don’t know yet. The above are the facts. I wasn’t hurt in that accident; neither was anyone else. The only casualty was the truck. Even the jeep, which was only eight feet from the explosion, ran all right afterwards.
I wrote Mary briefly of this occurrence, but I didn’t mention it to you because I expected to tell you of it at greater length when I got home. I’m sorry the damned thing got in the papers in any form at all for it might (from what I know of newspaper inaccuracy) have sounded very alarming.
I’ve seen plenty of the effects of German mines on and off the beaches and they’ve caused us plenty of trouble. I hope every Nazi has to sit on exploding mines in hell throughout eternity.
With love, Ned
P.S. As I’ve left the other side and may be busier over here, I’ll have less time for reading, so you needn’t bother to send the book I asked for unless you’ve already sent it.
Letter #32
July 5, 1944
Lucy darling:
Today I received the first letter from you in two weeks since I received your #33. #43, a V-mail letter, arrived today. For your information, I am sure it took longer than your airmail #42, which you mention as going in the same mail or the regular mail letter to go also at the same time. The only reason I got your #43 V-mail and not the others is that the others probably beat it here several days at least and were forwarded to France, while the V-mail 43 arrived after I returned and stopped the forwarding yesterday.
The letters missing are #12 and 31 from some time back, and letters from 34 to 42, both inclusive. The lot from 34 to 42 were forwarded to the far shore in a very roundabout manner and may take weeks to get returned to me (if they ever do). If there was any special information or requests in any of them, you’d better repeat it in your next letter.
I have unfortunately for mail purposes not been in any one place either long or predictably. The last time I went over, I expected to stay at least a month, and instead stayed only four days. That created a tough situation for me in another way, for all my laundry for a month (including most of my khaki uniforms) wasn’t ready when I went south, so I left orders to have it forwarded. It was, last Saturday, too late to reach me on the far shore before I returned here, so now it’s there and I’m here, and I’m down to my last two white shirts and two pairs of socks. Heaven knows whether in the turmoil on the far shore it will be sent back here as I asked. To top off all, my baggage sent by the Navy Yard, which arrived in Scotland June 9, can’t be found anywhere nor even any shred of a record concerning it, except the fact it arrived on a certain ship on June 9. They’ve been trying to trace it since June 20, with no luck so far. I livened up the search when I got back yesterday, but it doesn’t look hopeful.
I have firmly resolved in the future to do all my own laundry so it doesn’t get out of my hands, and to travel only by ship so I can carry all my baggage with me. But when it comes to the mail, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave that in the hands of God.
There are a few compensations. I have had two periods now of a week each when I have come back to London with little to do there, so I could rest. That has broken up the periods of activity.
So far I have made six crossings of the Channel, three of them in small tubs only about 70 feet long. The little ones are bad actors in Channel weather, but even they haven’t made me seasick, and they have one great advantage – they are of such shallow draft that they could hardly hit a mine, and that’s a lot, for mines are our major danger. Practically all our losses afloat have been from mines, though even there, the losses have been far below our expectations. But when you see a sizable ship hit a mine and vanish before your eyes in a few minutes, it makes you thoroughly sick.
I note from the last line of your V-mail #43 "But I wait with an anxious heart to know whether you were injured last Sunday" that it is a probable reference to the newspaper story which formed the basis of the Bu. Personnel enquiry cable.
When I learned of that yesterday on arrival here, I cabled you directly, as I wrote you yesterday in #30 (Ed: #31). I repeat here in case that letter goes astray, I repeat here I was not injured except my ears rang all the rest of the day.
You may have referred to that episode in the missing letters. If you have a spare copy of the newspaper story, you might send me a clipping, since I haven’t yet seen what got published (and I never gave out anything for publication).
The weather is and has been abominable all through June. It has particularly helped Hitler with those damned flying bombs, for in clear weather, day or night, the fighters can see them and knock most of them down, but in rain and low clouds, they have a better chance of getting through. I have heard five explosions this afternoon and evening, two of them not far off. And I saw my first flying bomb this afternoon, going by about a quarter of a mile away at perhaps 1000 feet elevation. It looked like just what I’d heard, a small, fast plane, flying low with engine roaring. It went out of sight over some nearby buildings, when the engine cut out shortly thereafter and in about five seconds more it exploded, perhaps about a mile away judging by the concussion.
This is a good evening for the bombs, with low clouds and some rain.
I have a radio set at last. I tried unsuccessfully for nearly two months to buy one in England, but they just aren’t available. I finally acquired a portable radio set as part of the spoils of war from the Cherbourg naval arsenal, along with a German tin hat nicely decorated with a swastika. The radio set is a French one, which the Nazis probably confiscated from some poor Frenchman. It’s a fair set (long wave only) but it works on both 110 and 220 volts, which is a great advantage, as I used it both in France when I got it, and now in England on the higher voltage. I can now listen to Lord Haw-haw and other lovely English and American voices, male and female, broadcasting from Germany to the invasion forces in dulcet tones, singing nostalgic songs and ending each broadcast with the set line,
"Don’t you realize all your sacrifices are only to advance Jewish
power politics directed from Washington and Moscow?"
It is an interesting development of the Rhein-madchen theme to hear these modern sirens out of Germany endeavoring to seduce their listeners once again with their songs in the best Wagnerian manner.
Poor Hitler, that shining knight of the pure heart and the high purpose, beset by the evil minions, on the Normandy beaches, of the sinister Jewish power politicians in Moscow and Washington! How my heart bleeds for him!
In between the broadcasts to the invasion troops they spill insidious poison in other programs following Hitler’s old policy of dividing his enemies by playing on their mutual suspicions. Last night there was a program to England on how the Yankee capitalists were digging themselves in in South Africa and North Africa. And another on how both the U.S. and Britain were being made catspaws of Stalin’s communists. It’s an interesting thing to listen to Goebbel’s agents suavely going about their business of dividing to conquer. So far as the troops are concerned, they are wasting their time. But on the civilians? The Lord only knows. People are such fools! Have they convicted those 30 American Nazis in Washington yet? Or has American justice got itself so tangled in solicitude for the accused that it cannot protect itself against its avowed destroyers?
With love, Ned
Letter #33
July 6, 1944
Lucy darling:
I received your #48 (June 28) and #50 (June 29) this morning. Being here has some advantages as the mail gets prompt delivery. Your #50 was postmarked at Westfield June 30, 12:30 p.m. I note both letters had only regular mail stamps. As I learned before, letters get the fastest dispatch, regardless of stamps on them. V-mail takes about four or five days longer.
As regards Cherbourg, as the clippings you sent me indicate, there is relatively little to do there. As the clippings also noted, Sullivan is in Cherbourg, and except for a professional interest inspection I made there, I have nothing to do with it. I worked the main beachhead, both in the early days and right after the freak storm, which as the papers noted, did us far more damage than the Germans have in the whole campaign. However, we have our beachheads working more than full blast again, at a capacity which Cherbourg never approached in its palmiest peace time days, and which I doubt it can ever approach. But for the present, I’m through with the beaches and back in my original station where I’m getting a rest this week (maybe longer).
At long last my baggage has finally been actually located at a Scotch port. I’m promised once again it will receive special attention in transport here. We’ll see. I earnestly hope it gets here before I shove off again. Now if I can only retrieve the laundry that is chasing me over the French beachheads, I’ll be all together (materially only; spiritually, I’m in two pieces).
I’m glad to hear that Mr. Loveland succeeded in delivering that bottle of perfume. He’s a nice chap, and if you manage to see him on your visit to Washington, I’m sure you’ll enjoy talking with him. He did a fine job over here with the tugs.
Missing letters to date are 12, 31, and all the letters after 33 except 43, 48, and 50.
Under separate cover (numbered #32) (Ed: #34) I am sending you a copy of today’s Evening Standard which contains in full Churchill’s speech on the flying bombs. The whole paper should interest you, as the other news items and editorials cast a light on life now in England. To save weight, I have cut out of it one page which does not contain any part of Churchill’s statement.
Churchill’s statement is true and accurate. In spite of absurd German statements (there have been plenty more today on the radio) there have been no fires in London as a result of these bombs, there are no signs of panic around here, and it is a fact that no target of military importance has been touched. People are getting killed (about 100 a day) but they are practically all civilians in their homes, churches, or hospitals. So far as they can be aimed at all, the bombs seem to be directed against the residential section.
When the weather is good, very few bombs get through. Today (which has been very fine since morning) I haven’t heard a single bomb. Yesterday (when the weather was bad) I heard perhaps two dozen in twenty-four hours, with five explosions within ten minutes.
It doesn’t directly effect the war, but when 100 civilians a day get killed around here, it can hardly be said the place isn’t dangerous. My admiration for the Londoners goes up, however, as I observe them. It takes more than danger to chase them off their jobs.
But it hurts. People I know (in a way) around here are getting killed. A couple of weeks ago, an elderly lady in this hotel who always came down to breakfast with a blue feather boa round her neck, was killed on a Sunday morning in a nearby chapel where she went to services that morning (together with 116 others in the chapel. The rector, protected from (Ed: the) blast by the pulpit perhaps, was about the only person who came out of the chapel alive). That happened three blocks from here. And day before yesterday, when I got back from France, I noted the head waiter (who always served me) was missing. I wondered casually a bit about it, but without attaching any significance. Later I learned that the afternoon before he had (as usual) gone to his own house for a rest after lunch (he lives a few squares away). A flying bomb crashed the house, killing him and his two daughters, and putting his wife in the hospital. A son, working out, escaped any injury. That poor head waiter, a fine Englishman, had fought through World War I, but was too old to bear arms in this one. But he died on the front lines, all the same.
England will not forget nor forgive so easily this time. Neither will the Americans here in London with them. And I like to listen to the master race on the radio squirming and squealing (no longer arrogant) trying to seduce American soldiers with their poisonous lies, and I like to be reminded every evening hour by a voice in cultured English,
"Do you realize all your sacrifices are at the direction of Jewish
power politics in Washington and Moscow?"
It keeps me in a proper frame of mind.
I also hear by the radio tonight that Rundstadt has been bounced as C. in C. on the western front by der Fuehrer (sic). Bring on the next victim for Monty’s steam roller. (See attached clipping). It appears as if some of God’s enemies are getting scattered already. (Notice Monty’s shield in the center of the floral arrangement).
I’m glad your mother could stay with you so long. I trust she goes back to Willimantic much rested.
And I’m also glad you’re going down to visit Dora, except it’ll be hot down there. I presume you’ll have a chance to see Mary and Ned in their own post. Give ‘em both my love.
It is pleasing to hear that the allotment trouble was finally corrected satisfactorily. When you get a chance, I’d like to hear what your financial position looks like. I suppose you bought the $1,000 bonds you mentioned in the 5th War Loan.
I had myself weighed today. I weigh about 160 lbs. (stripped) now, which is about 10 lbs. less than when I went. I seem to have lost most of it around my stomach and in my face (especially under my chin). I could stand somewhat more, if necessary, but this isn’t bad. I’ve got a tan like an Indian from a month and a half in the Channel.
I took the afternoon off to call on the Mitchells at 9 Hammersmith Terrace, but it was wasted. They don’t live there any more. A neighbor told me that Ayla took the children and went to Ireland during the blitz four years ago. She’s been back only once on a brief visit a year ago. Her husband (he was an architect) went into the army but was invalided out several years ago as a nerve case (shell-shock, I suppose). He is supposed to be in London now working with perhaps the same firm, but the neighbor didn’t know it’s name. I’ll try to find him if I can.
To repeat, in case previous letters and my cable weren’t delivered yet, I wasn’t injured in that explosion on the Normandy beachhead.
With much love, Ned
Letter #34
Postmarked July 7, 1944
Newspaper clippings only.
Letter #35
July 7, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your #49, a V mail, came today. This leaves 12, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46 and 47 missing. I imagine these have all gone, except the first two, to the beachhead and may ultimately be returned here.
I mentioned yesterday that Rundstadt had been bounced. The belief here is that there was a difference of opinion between Rundstadt, who wanted to fall back inland for defense, and – (I just saw my second flying bomb pass nearly overhead. This one passed fairly close and low, but kept on going. I didn’t hear any explosion. It must have landed some miles beyond.) Rommel, who wanted the main defense on the beaches. Rundstadt is out, but I think he was right. Rommel is making the same mistake he made at El Alemain – fighting a long way from his own base while his enemy enjoys short supply lines. It’s easier to mash the German army close to English bases than across some hundreds of miles of French territory, as Rommel will learn before too long. Particularly he is a damned fool to fight within range of battleship guns, as he does at Caen, for if he starts an offensive he’ll be smashed, and if he stays on the defensive, that will suit Montgomery fine as it keeps Rommel off while Bradley breaks through in the west. (Another flying bomb went off just then about a mile off. That makes the third one this evening. There haven’t been many today.)
The German radio is lying like hell about our losses. They say we’ve lost 1000 tanks, 900 of them on D-Day. Goebbels is working his imagination overtime. We didn’t lose a dozen to the enemy on D-Day, and not such a lot because of bad weather. And every day now we lose half a dozen destroyers and cruisers to the German Navy. That’s a good laugh. I’ve crossed the Channel six times now without seeing a sign of the German Navy or Luftwaffe; neither has anybody else. No vessel of the Nazi navy has ever got farther than the outer edges of our screens before they’ve had to turn and flee. We have had some mine losses, but compared to the traffic and what we expected, they’ve been trifling. But the Germans are broadcasting the most outrageous lies in their efforts to impress the neutrals, intimidate their shaky satellites, bolster up their home morale, and possibly scare Americans back home over the (supposed) terrible losses in the invasion.
The invasion losses have been slight compared to what was honestly anticipated. The Union Army lost far more in the one battle of Gettysburg than we’ve lost so far in a month’s battling in Normandy.
Things are looking up a bit with me. Today I actually received my trunk and suitcase from Scotland. On unpacking them, I found that missing box of cigars in the trunk. I’m especially glad to get my technical books. The woolen army trousers, I find, I can now get on again; I've shrunk enough around the waist and hips for that. Just now I don't need them, though, nor the woolen underwear either. A blue uniform (standard in this town for summer) is just comfortable. The white shirts came in the nick of time. The white uniforms will not, I believe, get worn at all.
I concluded it’s safest to do my own laundry, even in a hotel, so today I bought myself an electric flat iron for the absolutely necessary ironing of the cuffs and bosoms of white shirts. I got, I think, the only electric iron in town. Selfridge’s clerk, after looking me over when I enquired, dragged the solitary one they had out of concealment (a la bootleg days) and decided to let me have it – sixteen shillings. This evening I ironed the shirt I washed last night – strictly a wartime ironing job, cuffs and front only. Lucy Giles (Ed: their housekeeper; actual spelling is Jiles) would laugh. Now if my laundry (for which I’ve already paid one pound) would only come back from France, I’d be on easy street.
I visited the dentist this morning for a long overdue scraping of my teeth. (Another bomb just went off – about two miles away, I judge).
That bit in your letter of June 29 about saving the perfume to put a drop behind each ear when I got home so you could feel I was close enough to you to enjoy it with you, won’t do. I’ll have to get closer than that, perfume or no perfume. I have to have your heart beating against mine before I feel you are half way close enough. We are only close enough when lips and bodies and eyes and souls are all melted together in one inseparable ecstasy – may that be soon! How I long to be bathed in your smiles, caressed by your breasts, revel in your kisses, and once again to be swallowed up in your burning embrace, enveloped in your loving arms, and make you one with me!
Ned
Letter #36
July 8, 1944
Lucy darling:
I came to my desk this morning to find my incoming basket loaded with letters – 16 of them to be exact – of which 9 were from you, 2 from Mary, and 5 from miscellaneous persons, of which last group I enclose one for your perusal when you have finished this letter. Don’t look at it yet.
Your letters received today were #31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 44, 47, 51, and 52. That leaves as missing now #12 (which I am afraid is definitely lost), 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45 and 46. I imagine all except 12 will shortly be returned from France, as part of the lot received this morning already have been.
Of course I just reveled in that flood of your letters.
I see you’ve heard from Mary already I wasn’t hurt in Normandy, though you must know it now from other sources, including my cable. I didn’t mention it to you before, since as I wasn’t hurt, I thought I’d save the story till I got home. If I had been hurt, I would have let you know immediately, but to ease your mind against wondering whether anything is happening you are unaware of, in the future I’ll let you know whatever happens (if anything does).
If you are still with Dora and Lute when you get this, give them both my regards and tell them I also hope before too long to see their new home.
I received the N.Y. Times financial page. I’d appreciate having it sent about once a month. And by the way, when it’s convenient, please check the records and see whether we have 100 or 150 shares of General Motors. You’ll find the totals listed for each of us separately on some sheets in the "Investments" folder in the tin box in my study (or else the lists are in the safe deposit box).
It’s a pleasure to know the La Salle is shining again. I hope you get gasoline enough to use it occasionally.
They had a 5th War Loan drive over here, but I didn’t buy any, as I understand you have bought $1200 for both of us, and I think that’s a lot. Is that correct?
Sorry I missed Dow Mills at the Netley Hospital where I went nearly two months ago to have my heel x-rayed. I suppose he’s there yet, as it is the main American naval hospital for England. There’s nothing broken about my heel, but even today it is still tender when I have to do much walking. I was darned lucky. Another lieutenant who was with me then on that English beach, went over to Normandy with me later and there he made the bad error of jumping from a ship to a barge deck, a somewhat lesser distance than I dropped, with the result that he broke both his ankles and injured his spine also, so he went back to England a casualty in great agony. I suppose Dow has him as a patient in Netley now. So far as I’m concerned, I’ve been dunked in the Channel, dropped down the hold of a ship, and had a mine explode in my face in Normandy, and all I’ve got out of it is a tender heel. But I’m a very careful boy now. I believe in all the signs (except when they say a road has been cleared of mines to the hedges), wear my tin hat in the battle areas, and put on a life preserver when I’m afloat. (I enclose a clipping on the mine situation).
As I mentioned yesterday, my trunk and suitcase were finally delivered. "A Bell for Adano" came in the suitcase. I’ll read it shortly (I hope). I don’t care for any candy, cakes, or magazines. I don’t want any hard candy, and I’m afraid the package delivery situation is such that chocolates and cake would spoil long before delivery. The magazine delivery here is terrible – about two months seems to be average; I prefer to buy fresher British magazines. I’m glad you’re getting at least the 1944 Naval Institutes; I’ll look them over when I get home.
I appreciate getting the Times News of the Week. You get a far better picture of the war from the Times than any of us here on the spot can possibly get. The Times is a marvelous paper, which I appreciate more and more (when I see it).
I’m afraid I’m not likely to get near the Nevada in the near future. I saw her several times a few miles off some weeks ago while she was engaged in hammering inland targets, but I didn’t get aboard, so I think my chances of seeing young Tilden are not good.
I have been working independently of Sullivan. I did the main beachhead; he is handling Cherbourg as you’ve seen in the papers. What’s next I don’t know. Just now I’m having a rest.
That your mother was with you so long is a blessing. I don’t like to have you stay alone for any long periods if it can be avoided, so I’d suggest if you have any more visiting to do, you get it in this summer while I’m gone. I hope to be back in the fall, so you won’t have to spend the winter alone.
It is pleasing to hear that the stranded boats have vanished from the yard next door. I trust we get some interesting neighbors.
It intrigues me to hear of Will Stevens’ mother at 102+. It intrigues me a lot because I trust that we’ll so strangle Germany this time, that even if I live to 102, I’ll not have to live through any more wars on her account. How would you like to listen to radio Berlin broadcasting to the "Yanks," "Let me call you sweetheart" and following it up with a dulcet voiced damsel saying, "Now those of you who survive may see your sweethearts again," after which comes the cultured suavity of "Do you realize that all your sacrifices are made for Jewish power politics directed from Washington and Moscow?"
What I realize is that any softness towards Germany this time is purest idiocy. About Germans fighting to the last bullet, that makes me laugh. (See Goebbels clipping). When I went into Cherbourg, I heard there was still some sniping going on, and as I had come unarmed, I thought I’d better remedy the deficiency. The remedy was simple. Alongside the road where I was were dozens of abandoned German rifles and heaps of cartridges in leather belts. So I just helped myself to a German rifle, picked up a few dozen clips of German ammunition, loaded the rifle and went merrily along in my jeep with the cocked rifle over my knees, ready for the snipers. The last bullet, forsooth! You could have loaded trucks there with all the German bullets our valiant Nazis left scattered around when they suddenly came to the fact that such a word as "capitulation" existed. Cherbourg was a disgrace to the German army. The place is naturally as defensible as Gibraltar, and a determined army could have held it for months more easily than the Russians held Sevastopol. That Bradley knocked it over in less than a week is a great credit to him and his men; I don’t see yet how they did it, but it’s about on a par with the French surrender at Sedan in 1870 as an epic in military history – the Nazis should hang their heads in shame over Cherbourg. 40,000 men captured at Cherbourg doesn’t look like fighting to the last drop of blood to me; they may have fought till the cognac gave out, but that’s about all.
And now for the letter in the envelope enclosed. At this point, please read it.
Well, now you’ve read it, you see what competition you are up against. A widow with blonde hair who can pass for 40! But I don’t quite get the remark about spreading Liberty. Where she got my address, I can’t imagine, considering the date of the letter. At that time, very few people could have known I’d gone to London. The letter itself looks to me like a form letter (my name isn’t in the letter itself) and I shouldn’t wonder she sent out a couple of dozen copies to as many men as she could get addresses of. I always knew Los Angeles was full of crackpots, but I’ve never seen it better illustrated.
And that’s all for now. There haven’t been many flying bombs today. I think our bombers smacked their launching bases last night and today and the weather has been better for knocking them down – maybe both things produced the result.
With much love, Ned
11 PM
P.S. Just as I started to fold this, one of the bombs came roaring along to pass nearly overhead. As it is dark out now, it passed clearly lighted up like a meteor by its flaming exhaust. This makes the third one I’ve seen, but the first one at night.
The bomb kept on roaring along without cutting off till the exhaust noise faded away. Apparently that one ran quite a distance beyond here.
The enclosed letter: Addressed to Captain Ellsberg, London, England, marked personal, %Admiral Harold M. Stark, Commander Naval Forces in Europe. Los Angeles, Calif, May 15.
Dear Friend:
I read about your fine luck. I would like to hear from you. I was born in Ohio. It is a very beautiful state. Been out in California a long time. It is very beautiful, too. Am a widow. Have blonde hair. 5 feet 1 tall & pass for 40 yrs old. You know Liberty is the one thing you can’t have unless you give it to others. I weigh 124 lbs. 5 feet 1 tall & blue eyes. Please write & may God bless you this day & every day here after.
From: Mrs. Hester Owens, 424 S. Broadway, Los Angeles 13, California, Box 268, R 706.
Letter #37
July 9, 1944
Lucy dearest:
Your #55 of July 3 arrived this morning, less than six days on the way. I note it was a regular mail letter. So long as I am around here, I imagine we’ll get rapid transmission both ways, since no delays in forwarding are now involved. They are what tie things in hard knots both going and coming. I’ve met men on ships on the far shore who haven’t had a letter delivered to their ships in weeks.
Both yesterday and today the daylight hours were free of flying bombs. About four came over just at 11 P.M. last night. None yet tonight.
I hear by the radio today that Monty took Caen and Bradley took La Haye du Puits. It shouldn’t be long now before they get Rommel moving, though both have difficult terrain to fight over for a ways yet. We needn’t worry about any German counter thrusts any more. It is evident that Rundstedt threw everything he had in from the beginning, including armored divisions drawn from Russia, which is one reason the Russians have been able to run wild on the Eastern Front.
All I can say is that if there is anything in having the weight of guns and good generalship on our side, the Nazis are going to catch hell from now on. Rommel is going to learn what a real blitzkreig is like.
I took a walk this evening, which was lovely in spite of the coolness, around the Victoria Memorial and through St. James Park, where the flower beds were gorgeous. My hotel is quite close to Buckingham Palace. It’s the Hotel Goring (no relation to Herman) on Ebury Street. I’ve stayed there all the time I’ve been in London, and each time I’ve left, I’ve been lucky enough to get back in on my return.
It was finally announced on the B.B.C. radio today that the Guards Chapel had been hit. It was that chapel (I couldn’t name it before) which I mentioned in several letters earlier as having been hit with practically the whole congregation killed, only the rector escaping. It was there on that Sunday morning that the elderly lady from this hotel (whom I referred to a few days ago) was killed. I examined the chapel this evening; it was practically torn to pieces by the bomb coming through the roof – only the walls back of the pulpit still stand.
I enclose some editorial comments from the London Times, which gives a fair picture of the situation here.
With love, Ned
Letter #38
July 10, 1944
Lucy sweetheart:
Your #54 arrived today, a day after your #55, but I think that was merely the way the mail was sorted and delivered locally here.
It warmed my heart to read your letter and to read of your thoughts. Your love and your loveliness glow in every line of your words. The longer I live the more I want you and you only – nothing else matters except as it may tend to insure my chance and my hope of living yet long years to come in peace and in love with you.
From the moment when I first laid eyes on you, your glowing eyes and lovely smile have lighted my life and made me happier than I can express – never since that day have I wanted anyone but you. The years between have taught me only to know better the depths of your love and that has in some degree at least made me also a little less selfish and a little more understanding and less self-centered person than I was. My greatest blessing on this earth is that I have been fortunate enough to have you, to be one with you as man and wife on the numberless occasions when you have taken me to your heart and in whole-souled adoration I have worshipped you.
Vivid and clear and as cherished in my memory as has been every blessed day and night in your presence, yet I know the best is yet to come and with eager longing I look forward to it. As time mellows the wood of a Stradivarius so that with each passing year it gives forth sweeter music and a harmony of overtones of which it was incapable when it was new, so has it been with us. I pluck new harmonies of love each time my fingers caress you now; I have an appreciation today of much to which I was stone deaf years ago; and the sweetness of spirit, the sympathetic kindliness of your every word, and the love in your eyes with which you envelope me leave me wanting nothing on this earth to make me completely happy – except once again and swiftly to be in your arms.
Longingly, Ned
Letter #39
July 11, 1944
Lucy darling:
I received three letters from you today, #53, 56, and 67. In addition I received several other letters from others that you forwarded. The missing list is now #12, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46. Except #12, I presume they are all chasing me over the Normandy beachhead and should be delivered after a while back here (as I also hope regarding my laundry which was unfortunately forwarded there just a day before I was ordered back here).
I received also a letter from Mary in which she mentioned that she and Ned might get leave in August and go with you to Southwest Harbor. I think that would be a swell idea, and if it is at all possible for you and them to arrange it, I enthusiastically endorse the suggestion. I don’t suppose you could finesse taking a car up there (though it may be possible for you or Mary to manage it) but if you can’t, you might be able to hire one there. And it would certainly be a relief from the heat for all of you.
Over here there isn’t any heat. The average daytime temperature appears to be about 65 degrees F; I wear a blue uniform all the time with my light (not so light) topcoat; half of all the Londoners wear topcoats daily and the rest look as it they’d like to. The weather both sides of the Channel continues lousy. There has been no summer weather at all, but continued rains and low cloud ceilings plus rough weather most days in the Channel, all of which have been obstacles to land, sea, and air activities on our part. This is the worst summer since God knows when around here; its only counterpart is that damned winter of 1942-1943 in the North African invasion. We had to lick the weather then as well as Rommel and we shall again, but it is a hellish nuisance.
I have been kited back and forth across the Channel for various jobs on the Normandy beachhead, about which I can’t give any details; the last time I went I expected to stay quite a while but I only got the job started when I was ordered back here. I think I’m now through with the Normandy part of it. The above is the reason for what appeared to you (and was) contrary and confusing information about letters. That’s over now. I’m at Navy 100 and will apparently so remain for a while. I got your letters in about six days; I suppose mine take about the same time for delivery – all without the benefit of air mail stamps, of which I trust I’ll never hear any more.
Living conditions on the beachhead were punk. I shared a stateroom on an LCI (4) with another captain, but I had already had a tent assigned on the beach and was preparing to move into it when I left. Between the mud and the rain, the tent would have been no improvement. The meals, however, were the worst. Half the time the cook on the LCI (4) served field rations right out of the packages; the rest of the time he simply spoiled good food, serving about three times what anybody could eat, and so poorly cooked one didn’t want to eat any of it. My idea of the proper way to run a war is to train a lot of cooks first – maybe that cook’s and baker’s school Ned Benson went to was more important than he thought. I suppose the Navy has so many landing craft it couldn’t get men enough for cooks who had ever seen a kitchen before. Well, that’s over now for me. Right now I get a punk breakfast in my hotel (once again a cook who can’t even make oatmeal – there isn’t any other cereal – right); go to the American Red Cross cafeteria for lunch, which is good; and get dinner at the Senior Officers’ Club (ex-residence of Sir Philip Sassoon) where they serve the best dinner in London. And I have a good room with a private bath (convenient for doing my own laundry; I just scrubbed a khaki uniform) at the Hotel Goring. It has a good southeast exposure over a lovely garden, which gives an excellent view of the flying bombs coming up from Calais. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve seen three flying by from my own window.
Whatever the reasons, the flying bombs have been considerably curtailed the last couple of days, during which time I’ve heard only a couple of explosions altogether. Quite a change from last week when on one occasion I heard six blasts within ten minutes. I just imagine some of our late bombing attacks have badly plastered both the launching platforms and the subterranean flying bomb storage in the caves north of Paris.
I’m glad to see that Commonwealth and Southern is continuing to pay on a $5 per annum basis, which is the best they’ve done for nine years. If they keep that up, I don’t care how long they defer their stock redistribution. If they send you any papers asking for assents or proxies for a reorganization, don’t sign anything however, without sending it to me first. It is better in most such cases to stand mute, so to speak, rather than to assent unless you are sure the terms are advantageous.
As regards the two shares + of Celanese common which you received lately, that was for payment of a dividend in stock instead of in cash as previously. It had nothing to do with calling their stock, which effected (sic) only the class of preferred stock Mary had, not any of the classes of stock we owned ourselves. Normally I don’t care much for stock instead of cash dividends, but right now since we can’t need the cash urgently, a stock dividend has some advantage as no income tax is payable on it. Within limits, we needn’t complain.
I asked the other day for a word on what our financial position is now, which you can answer when you get home, that is, what’s our bank balance approximately and what’s in the savings bank. I understand you bought $1200 in War Bonds in June, which may not leave much in cash, particularly after your June 15 tax payment and the money put aside for my taxes.
I enclose a few clippings which may interest you. If we leave Germany any chance to refight this war 10, 20, or 50 years hence, we will be certainly entitled to what we’ll get. This time, without any maudlin sentimentality we’ve got to finish Germany off forever as a power in Europe.
Meanwhile, Goebbel’s capacity for poisonous falsification astounds me. Tonight I listened to the following broadcast from Berlin to British soldiers:
"Aryan British school children are being evacuated from London to cities like Manchester, etc., but Jewish children were already two weeks ago evacuated by special buses to country districts which will never be attacked by V-1 bombs, while cities like Manchester may be next on the list for attack. British soldiers, how do you like that for your children? The Jewish power politicians in London are taking care that neither they nor their children are exposed to the hazards of war, while your children are being sent to cities where they may be killed next. Is this what you are fighting for?"
That all this is made out of the whole cloth goes without saying. But the bold mendacity these scoundrelly liars exhibit is without parallel in history.
Ned
Letter #40
July 12, 1944
Lucy darling:
No letter from you today, which makes it just another gray day to match the weather.
I enclose a clipping of part of the proceedings in the House of Commons yesterday. The remark of Sir Wavell Wakefield (Conservative of Swindon) makes me think that the British are not so totally devoid of a sense of humor as may have been thought. I like his phraseology, and I believe his suggestion is the most appropriate I have yet heard (the sirens are wailing again and the roar of a flying bomb passing by sounded quite distinctly) for what to do with Hitler and his satellites. I saw two more of the bombs flying overhead today (as well as hearing four others) and it would give me great pleasure (another just roared by, somewhat further off – that makes seven) to see Hitler soaring overhead at 400 miles an hour to disintegrate thoroughly, assisted by a ton of TNT, upon landing.
Maybe the Nazis don’t know it, but the one thing they are certainly accomplishing by their flying bombs is to so harden the resolution of all Englishmen that this time the wails of the muddled headed Vera Brittains will receive a scant audience now or for years to come.
I enclose also a clipping from a London paper today on Patton. I hope he’ll be in action again soon. It’s a pity the same American muddle-headedness has kept him on the bench for nearly a year now. Talking of Patton, I started to read "A Bell for Adano" again this evening, but by the time I got half way through it, I tossed it on the bed in disgust. Of course Goebbels never hired John Hersey to write it, but Hersey has certainly earned Goebbels’ thanks for his performance. Of course it’s all fiction, of course, but I think it’s a damned underhanded trick, so slickly done Patton can’t even open his mouth to say that the incidents are false. Hersey has learned his lesson on Time’s staff well – it is all beautifully done in Time’s best blackguardly and smearing style.
Ned
Letter #41
July 14, 1944
Lucy darling:
I received your #58 yesterday and #59 today, each six days after they were postmarked in Westfield (Ed: NJ), which is very good. I hope my letters get to Westfield as rapidly, though I have an idea that the mail going west flies a more roundabout route than the eastbound mail.
I agree with you that the snapshots you sent weren’t any too clear, but the one of you nevertheless shows a lovely smile which I’m glad to have.
I’m sorry I haven’t any pictures of myself. My camera never arrived till I got back here the last time, since which I haven’t had any opportunity to unlimber it.
It was very nice of Monty to give a dinner party at the Beekman Tower for eight, including you and your mother, but for Heaven’s sake, how can he afford to do it? I was under the impression that he had next to no practice any more.
I read about that circus tragedy here. The London papers gave quite a full report on it. At the time I wondered about John’s children, and I was relieved to learn from your letter they had not attended.
I note your statement about the last Craftsweld check. I doubt that we are likely to receive anything substantial in the future again from that source for I believe all the probable orders of any quantity have all been placed, and future business is more apt to be only for single commercial purposes (Ed: Craftsweld manufactured Ellsberg’s underwater cutting torch and paid him a royalty).
However, tell the Kandels I think of them often, and I certainly appreciate deeply their personal interest and past aid to all of us. I hope that launching in which Edith Kandel had an interest went off all right, as it was on her sole request that I had the particular sponsor designated.
The things you ordered from Altman’s haven’t arrived yet. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the first class parcels; I haven’t any hope at all for the cookies and the overseas box, and I do not believe it worth while to send anything further of that nature which must go parcel post.
I had a letter from Howard Lewis (Ed: from Dodd Mead, his publisher) today, saying (as you mentioned) that he was sending me a couple of copies each of the Armed Services Editions of On the Bottom and Hell on Ice. This puzzles me. While Hell on Ice is already out in that edition, it was my impression that the added book in that Armed Services Edition was to be Captain Paul, which I thought was being so printed when I left New York. Is On the Bottom as well as Captain Paul being printed in that edition, or has On the Bottom been substituted for Captain Paul?
Tonight I listened as usual to the Nazi Arabian Nights Tales, which are just as far from fact as Scherezade'’. How Goebbels gives a propaganda twist of falsehood to a statement which has a basis in fact was well illustrated tonight. A day or so ago, Ass't Sec. of War Patterson made the statement that our losses in the 30 months of this war had now equalled our losses in World War I, and the exact figures (some 250,000 men, I think) were given. As solemnly reported tonight, Goebbels gave out that Patterson had stated that our losses in "the four weeks since D-day had now equalled our losses in all the fighting in 1917-18," thus illustrating the terrific losses we had suffered in a short time on the Normandy beachheads, losses so terrible that Mr. Patterson, in spite of their adverse effects on Mr. Roosevelt’s reelection campaign, could not conceal them from the American public.
Just to top off, the Berlin broadcast added that heavy V-1 attacks continued on London with serious results. As a fact, London was completely free from flying bomb attack last night, and today while we had one alert, I did not hear a single explosion and I doubt that any bombs got through. Frankly, the evacuation of London of which much is made on the German radio (and perhaps elsewhere) consisted mainly of children, accompanied by their mothers in some cases, whose school period has just ended, and who are seizing with avidity the government offer to take a vacation in the country with free transportation furnished. I’ll bet a hat that the evacuation of New York by school children and others going on vacation from the heat of the city exceeds in numbers anything that London can show in the last few weeks. I live only a block from Victoria Station, one of the major stations here, which I pass twice daily, and I can assure you Grand Central can show a much heavier evacuation crowd on any summer day than Victoria Station (or any other here) has seen or will see. Then as the final touch, the Berlin broadcast added that the bombardment and the evacuation had caused such dislocation in transport and supply in the London area that rationing had broken down and only black market supplies, all controlled by Jewish interests, were available to the population at fantastic prices. Phooey. The one statement on the broadcast which was wholly true (though the language seems peculiar) was: "On the Eastern front, German troops are disengaging in a westerly direction." Somehow I gather from that that the Germans are retreating, but I suppose the word "retreat" has a vulgar sound which might annoy the sensibilities of British and American listeners.
I wrote Mary today, urging her to arrange, if possible, a vacation with you at Southwest Harbor. It would do you all good to get away from the heat for a few weeks and for as long as you can possibly arrange it. Perhaps either before or after Mary goes up, Nina and/or Monty might also come up so that your stay there might be lengthened somewhat to everybody’s benefit.
I took a walk around late this afternoon and early this evening, strolling through Trafalgar Square and then sitting a while gazing at the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey, none of which show any visible signs of damage. These are all noble monuments to the past and objects of veneration for the future and it did my heart good to gaze upon them as symbols of the continuity of the English tradition of freedom. But I should have enjoyed it far more had you been at my side, and I look forward hopefully to the day soon when we can revisit England as well as France and other loved spots as they should be viewed – hand in hand in mutual appreciation.
With love, Ned
One other site we must not pass up will be those interesting ruins of Berlin.
Letter #42
July 15, 1944
Lucy darling:
No letter from you today. To reiterate, the missing list to date is just what I last reported, #12, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45 and 46. Except #12, these are still circulating in my wake in Normandy, illustrating the delay which always happens when mail has to be forwarded. Incidentally, the laundry which was forwarded the same way to me two weeks ago hasn’t got back here either. I’ll be out of luck if it doesn’t come back as it has two of my khaki uniforms in the bundle. To add a little insult to the injury, I had of course to fork over the cost of the laundry, over $6, for something I haven’t got and may never get.
London was quiet today. No bombs at all last night and only two today. I think the Allies have won round one of the flying bomb battle and made it so ineffective the Germans are giving up their present attack. The Berlin radio announced today they had learned so much about the new weapon there would be a lull while they shifted their launching bases to better sites and would come back with new surprises and longer range bombs. I think what that means is that they have lost practically all their present sites to our bombing attacks and are trying to set up new ones farther back in Belgium and perhaps Holland. Personally I’ll back our air forces against anything Germany can produce. The farther back they set their bases, the more chance there will be for radar to spot the bombs coming and warn the fighters and the AA guns to stand by for them. And for an air force free to go anywhere to attack, as ours is, no bases the Germans can set up will be any safer from attack than were those first used in the Calais area.
Meanwhile, the weather continues cold, rainy, and wholly unsummery, all of which is no advantage to our general campaign. The Russians, however, are practically running wild on their front, due I have no doubt to the fact that a large proportion of the Nazi armored divisions have been transferred to France. However, Germany can no longer move anything from any one of the three fronts to another without risking disaster on the weakened front. So all that’s necessary now is to keep the squeeze on till some one of the three fronts cracks and falls completely apart.
That the Nazis realize this better than anyone else is demonstrated by their desperate propaganda efforts now on the radio to split America, Russia, and England wide apart by making each one of the three feel that the other two are its real enemies, both now and in the post war period. This particularly is their effort in their broadcasts beamed on England, to arouse suspicion and resentment regarding both America and Russia. I can assure you that a listener with no previous knowledge of Nazi aggression would get no impression but that Germany is battling to save European civilization, and Britain is only a tool of American imperialism and Russian communism, both directed by the Jews who are of course the common enemies and the villains who have caused all this bloodshed in an otherwise brotherly Europe. The skill, the finesse, the cultured and unimpassioned English in which all this is set out, are beyond belief. Perhaps it is due to long practice in this field, but compared to the speaker and the technique Goebbels employs for his task, the English and American broadcasters talking to Europe and to Britain appear like rank amateurs. Of course, having to stick to the facts and the truth may cramp the style of our men, but still I think they are doing a much inferior job. For our side, Robert Sherwood should be ashamed of himself. But I suppose it doesn’t mean as much to us as it does to Goebbels, who must literally now be staking his neck on this last gamble for his life.
I’m enclosing a couple of clippings which may interest you. I cut out the longer one for its story of the present flying bomb position, but then I noticed on the back an editorial on the murder of Georges Mandel, which I thought particularly apropos, so I pasted back the top and bottom of the column to restore the editorial to completeness.
With love, Ned
Letter #43
July 16, 1944
Lucy darling:
No letters today (or yesterday either). I suppose it’s the way the planes fly.
Although it was Sunday, when our office doesn’t do much nowadays, I went there anyway, mainly to see if any mail had come in. It hadn’t, so I was about to depart when there was an explosion (fairly loud) and the window curtains shook violently but that was all. As I had nothing else to do, I went seeking the site and found it about 700 yards away. A flying bomb had landed on the roof of a small building a couple of doors up the street from the place where you bought Mary that kilted dress. While all the glass was smashed within a range of perhaps a hundred yards radius, (and that was a lot of glass) the damage otherwise was remarkably small. It took off the two top floors of the narrow building it hit, but that was about all the structural damage. It being Sunday morning in a business area, there were only a few people about, and I understand only two persons were seriously injured. However, a lot of shops, including the kilt shop, are going to have to do without windows for a while. Come another war, I’m going to pass up all the stocks of the merchants of death, and put my whole capital into the stock of companies making window glass. Their business must be terrific, and it will take a long time after the war ends to catch up on the demand.
Aside from that, there were no bombs last night, and possibly only two or three others during the day.
Having little else to do, I wandered down through St. James’ Park to my hotel where I curled up in a bathrobe and slippers for relaxation. I ironed a couple of shirts, half a dozen handkerchiefs, and some collars, which, together with a lot of underwear, I washed yesterday. I’m getting pretty good with a flat iron. Then I decided to finish "A Bell for Adano," having nothing else to read. I finished it. Have you read it? As I said before, it disgusted me. I can stand listening to British traitors like Lord Haw Haw and American ones like Fred J. Kaltenbach making us out on the radio as villains and morons, but why an American author must play the same game, I can’t understand. If you have read the book, you will have observed that with the exception of Hersey’s hero, Joppolo, there is not a single American soldier (or sailor) who is not delineated either as a sadistic brute, an incompetent, a cad or snob, a barbarian, a drunk, a lecher, a syncophantic coward, a sissy, or some combination of the above. Assuming that Hersey wanted to glorify Amgot and its work, he still had no need to villify the fighting part of the Army and the Navy. God knows our fighting men are not perfect in their jobs (we have never given them a chance to become so) but still if they were what Hersey attempts to make them out to be, they couldn’t have licked even the Italians, let alone the Germans and the Japanese. I am, however, inclined to think the American public is nearly as moronic as Goebbels makes them out to be, if they take such a book to their hearts. (And from the sales of this book, that’s what they’ve done.) Where in Heaven’s name, has America’s common sense gone? Does nothing but slander, dirt, and filth appeal to it? There’s plenty of all that in "A Bell for Adano." I suppose all that passes for "realism."
Today has been the best day we’ve had this summer – sunny, no rain, clear, and comfortably warm. I imagine it got up as far as 75 degrees or perhaps even 80 degrees F this afternoon. If only it were to stay this way a few weeks.
With love, Ned
Letter #44
July 17, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your letters #60 and 62 (with their newspaper enclosures) arrived today.
I suppose today you returned home from your visit to Washington, which I hope did not tire you too much. I’m awfully sorry you weren’t feeling so well after your mother went home; it’s entirely possible the extra work and the mental anxiety over her condition, added to your other problems, were a little too much.
I suggested a few letters back that it would be a good thing for you to go to Southwest Harbor if Mary and Ned could go also, and that would certainly get you away from the heat. But unless you could get help (Mrs. Rice or someone better) perhaps you’d find that rather strenuous. As an alternative (if you can’t get help or if Mary can’t go) why don’t you pack up and go there anyway, staying at The Moorings, which I think you said was to open this summer. That would really give you a rest from housekeeping, and you could still see enough people you know there not to feel among strangers. I should say at least a month there would do you lots of good. Let me know what you think of all of this.
I’m sorry the mail has been so irregular in delivery to you. In the last month (since June 18) I’ve written 23 letters in 30 days. That there have been some long intervals in your not receiving any has been due mainly to the fact that mail dispatch from the far shore has apparently been highly erratic, not that the letters weren’t written. As an indication, of seven letters forwarded to me on the far shore before July 4 (when I got back here and stopped it) not one has yet been returned to me here, though that will be two weeks ago tomorrow. Those letters are #38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45 and 46. And this is not peculiar to me. I’ve found every one afloat, on the far shore, and on the near shore (once they are away from London) suffers the same trouble. C’est le guerre! And there is no curing the trouble by poulticing the letters with stamps of any description at either end.
Your two 1st class parcels from Altman’s arrived today, both the candy and the fruitcake. Remarkable direct delivery, certainly as good as letter receive. But while I appreciate the spirit of love in which they were sent, don’t bother to repeat the experiment. I don’t care for hard candy – I never have. I understand of course that the vendors are probably told not to ship any other kind, but I can assure you nobody ever eats them – they give them to the Arabs in Africa and to the street children in the invaded countries, which I’ll proceed to do here if I can find any English children who want them. As for the fruit cake, sixpence in any teashop here will buy its equal. So not to waste precious letter space on the planes bringing the mail from the U.S., I wouldn’t advise a repetition.
Yesterday (Sunday) and today were two beautifully clear days, real summer so the English think, as you’ll notice from the enclosed clipping. 72 degrees in the shade! I felt almost comfortable when I went out to lunch today without my topcoat, though I found it better to put it on on my way home. But the clarity of the atmosphere really meant something. A couple of weeks like this will be invaluable to our air forces, not to mention lifting our infantry and tanks out of the French mud.
I’m still holding my own financially. Since I came back here, my subsistence allowance has been reinstated, and it covers my expenses with a little margin over for incidentals. I have about $600 between my bank account and my undrawn pay here.
I had a letter from Mary today in which she mentioned that Ned’s fitness report for July 1 was excellent. I’m certainly happy to hear that.
With love, Ned
Letter #45
July 18, 1944
Lucy dearest:
Your letters #61, 63 (V-mail) and 64 arrived today, to my considerable delight.
The missing letters are #12, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45 and 46. Any my laundry.
You know by now that my orders to the staff on the far shore were marked "Duty completed" July 3, and I returned to my original station here July 4, where I’ve since been. So any implications that that might mean a prolonged stay have no foundation. I expect the war to be over before November.
I wish the military critics who are starting to grumble because there are no startling advances would drink a few barrels of their own printer’s ink and die. All they are doing is to furnish material for Goebbels to quote to bolster up Nazi morale and to cause doubt at home. If they really had any military sense they would know that the aim is to liquidate the enemy army and not just to gain some provinces in France. We are a damned sight better off chewing up German strength in men and materials close to our own sources of supply and distant from Rommel’s than we would be if we were facing the same armies 300 miles from the coast. Rommel, like a damned fool, is repeating the mistakes of Stalingrad and El Alemain. His army in large measure is going to perish where it is. Of course, to some degree, even Rommel may now realize this but know that now he has lost his chance of free retreat and willy-nilly must fight where he is, for in a retreat now he is bound to be badly cut to pieces.
But at any rate to see our mutton-headed military newspaper "experts" grumbling over progress and counseling "bold strokes." etc., gives me a sharp pain and provides Goebbels’ propaganda artists with heaven sent material. Montgomery knows his business and he doesn’t need any advice from newspaper generals. And neither Montgomery nor Bradley have any intention of getting their men slaughtered en masse to make newspaper headlines. They’ve got a sure thing in their hands and they don’t have to gamble away lives to win a little sooner. For all of which I admire them. It is their business to win, not to try to be Napoleonic in the process. They took the only gamble they had to in the initial crossing and assault (that had my heart in my mouth when I contemplated on the eve of D day what could happen if the Germans were half as good as they claimed to be in preparation) and now that that is over, you’ll find no more gambling.
Give the Hale’s (Ed: EE’s classmate at USNA) my regards. I’m glad to hear John misses me – I always got along fine with him and when I come back, nothing would suit me better than to go back to the same job till the war's over east and west.
For about a week we had no bombs at night and only a few in the day time. The last couple of nights, however, this has been reversed (perhaps because of clear daylight weather) and I’ve been wakened by a half a dozen, more or less, at intervals during the night. The Germans have never come near repeating the number they landed in the first few weeks, but from their radio statements, you’d think they had London tied in a knot. They are certainly accomplished liars. However, I can begin to see how Germans who have heard nothing but all this for eleven years are living in a world very far from any reality.
In case my last few letters are delayed, I’ll repeat here my suggestion that you go to Southwest Harbor for the rest of the summer – if you can get any help there, with Mary and Ned as your guests; and if they can’t go or you can’t get any help, that you go yourself to The Moorings which may give you an even better rest.
With love, Ned
Letter #46
July 19, 1944
Lucy dearest:
I received two of your letters today, #66 and 67, both from Silver Spring. I notice also that the delivery of my letters from here takes apparently the same time, about six days. (#65 hasn’t come yet, nor the previously missing letters).
I trust you managed to meet Mr. Loveland Monday before you had to return to Westfield. He is a very pleasant person.
As regards Nina, I’m afraid she’s merely chasing another will-o’-the-wisp, so far as her present activities are likely to lead to a livelihood. That kind of thing may be all right for a woman with an independent income or a husband with a job to support her, but for a woman who has to look out for herself, it’s just folly. However, there’s apparently no use giving Nina any advice. It makes an exciting life for her, but damned nerve-wracking financially.
I’m back on my original staff assignment since my return here, pending certain further developments on the far shore, or should I say, the farther shore? I don’t have much to do now, just a nominal office job while I wait, which has given me quite a rest from some strenuous weeks before and after D-day.
Now I suppose it can be told that till D-day I was at a stretch of English beach called Selsey, a little to the eastward of a spot called Selsey Bill which you’ll find in our atlas, along the English Channel. Selsey has now relapsed into a stretch of beach the like of which you can duplicate anywhere along the New Jersey coast outside of the coastal resorts. But then (this is no secret, for the German reconnaissance planes often photographed us) it was the center of concentration of a vast mass of equipment due to move across on D-day. The reason you’ll easily spot, since Selsey is due north of the center of the beachhead area we were due to attack, and from Selsey to the beachheads in Normandy was the shortest possible route for movement.
I shall always feel that the German High Command were absolute numskulls for not figuring out just where Eisenhower meant to strike, from their observations of us at Selsey, but the damned fools were too smart and guessed wrong.
That the Germans knew we were there was not only certain, but they even bragged about their knowledge. A couple of weeks before D-day, Lord Haw Haw put on a broadcast especially addressed to us at Selsey (naming the place) wherein he told us they had an eye on us and all our stuff and were only waiting for us to bring it over when they’d sink it all for us. And, just friendly like, he further informed us to tell our wives and sweethearts, they had a special set of white crosses all waiting for us on the other side.
Well, the Germans aren’t as intelligent as they’d have the world believe. They completely miscued on where we were going, when we were going there, and failed miserably in any effective opposition to our movement when we went. We delivered the goods practically without loss due to enemy action; out of the thousands involved in our project, we lost only 4 killed and 10 men wounded. And all that in a trans-Channel movement of odd and cumbersome equipment that could make only four knots and should have been slaughtered on the way over had the Germans been worth two cents in the air, on the surface, or under the sea.
No story on what this was has yet been released, so I can’t tell you now, but I can say that it was the reason that Montgomery has been able to build up and supply a huge army on the far shore and outmatch in equipment and ammunition everything Rommel could bring up ever since D-day. That’s what lies behind the fact that the expected counter-attack with which Rommel intended to shove us back into the sea never materialized – there never was a day since D-day when Rommel could bring as many men and as much equipment to the fighting line as Montgomery already (without any regular ports) had there. So naturally there was no effective counter-attack. The German High Command hasn’t got over the shock yet, for while I do not believe they ever honestly expected to prevent us from getting ashore, they did confidently expect to heave our ill-supported (so they figured) divisions back into the ocean in an operation which for speed and losses to the invader, was going to make the repulse of the ill-fated Gallipoli landing in World War I look amateurish. But our forces on the far shore were never ill-supplied.
I made some mention yesterday of ill-advised criticism of Montgomery’s slowness. Long ago I observed that Montgomery is in the habit of moving when he is prepared – not before. Since my letter yesterday I observe that Montgomery got conditions to suit him – clear skies, mainly – and that he gave Rommel a kick in the stomach that will seriously incommode that gentleman (and will, I hope, but not too hopefully, cause the newspaper critics to quit being such smart alecks).
Meanwhile I see that Alexander in Italy, Montgomery in France, and various Russians on the Eastern Front all had a field day yesterday. Hitler will shortly learn (as Wilhelm II and Napoleon learned before him) that there is only so much stuffing a dummy can stand having kicked out of him before he collapses into a heap of rags. His best friend, Mussolini, is also now in a position to whisper that truth into his ear (that is, if he can still even whisper).
With love, Ned
Letter #47
July 20, 1944
Lucy darling:
For a while back I had been cogitating on what to get you for Mary’s birthday; I reached a conclusion a few weeks ago and I’ve spent my odd hours since looking around London shops without any luck until yesterday afternoon when with the assistance of the American Red Cross staff here (including Mrs. Biddle, the director) who gave me some leads and assisted in the decision, I got what I wanted.
What I’d been looking for was a silver hot water kettle that would go with your tea set. I’ve seen all kinds but there weren’t any of them suitable till finally at Carrington’s on Regent Street I was put on to a British sterling silver reproduction (it’s 40 years old itself) of an Adam kettle which looked just right and I bought it for you. It follows the Roman lamp motif and is quite plain, with no engraved decorations, consisting of the hot water kettle itself, a separable stand and tray on which the kettle tilts for pouring, and an alcohol lamp which is part of the tray. It has a lovely line, I think, (so did my Red Cross advisors) and it should go very well in harmony with your tea set. It was rather expensive (more so than most of the kettles I saw) but I fell in love with it and I think you will too.
So that will be my gift to you as a remembrance of the joy you brought me on Mary’s birthday twenty-three years ago.
I am, however, left with a problem regarding delivery. The Red Cross people kindly enough offered to have it packed for shipment overseas, but after some consideration of what happened to the gifts I sent you once from Pernambuco, I concluded that the safest way was to pack it (disassembled) in my trunk (or suitcase) and bring it home personally in my own baggage (regardless of what else gets left behind) when I come home. So that’s what I’m going to do.
As a result, you won’t actually get your present on August 29, but it shouldn’t be too long delayed after that, and at least you’ll be surer of actually getting it delivered.
With much love, my dear, from Ned
Letter #48
July 21, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your V-mail letter #65 arrived today together with #68 written three days later. That’s about the usual lag for V-mail. Why use it?
The Germans changed their flying bomb tactics a few days ago and now most of them come over at night, with few in the daytime. I rather guessed they would have to do something, for it was getting so that very few of those launched in daylight got here at all. I think they probably shifted their launching areas further east (into Belgium or Holland) and are now using what bombs they have in night attacks mainly. I suppose that when our bombers get these new bases spotted, the number launched will be considerably curtailed. Meanwhile the last few nights the intermittent explosions have been somewhat of an annoyance in disturbing my sleep, since I’m not accustomed to being waked at night, and once I’m waked, I don’t get to sleep again easily. You would probably be less inconvenienced by it.
It has caused my heart to bleed to hear from Tojo that His Imperial Majesty has been perturbed; when His Imperial Majesty is hanged for his many crimes, I just won’t be able to stand it. Meanwhile, I see that in great trepidation, Tojo has been thrown out on his ear for having caused His Imperial Majesty anxiety. Since I think I can recall when Tojo was discussing how he would dictate the peace terms in the White House, he apparently has some grounds for his trepidation. He and Mussolini probably have a lot they might discuss with mutual understanding now.
The Oriental mind is wholly beyond understanding, because on the German radio (as relaying the Tokio viewpoint) the loss of Saipan is really a blessing as the Japanese will now prosecute the war in earnest. Why Tojo should be ousted for having brought about this blessing by his consummate leadership, instead of being honored by His Imperial Majesty, I cannot comprehend. By the time you get this, Tojo’s successors will probably be blessed by the loss of Guam also. That, no doubt as I’ll hear from Berlin, will make the Japanese position in the Far East completely secure and a Japanese victory over the Anglo-Americans a foregone conclusion.
It appears that certain German generals also became dubious of the infallibility of Der Fuehrer and attempted to blow him up. I should not have believed, after my indoctrination at Herr Goebbels’ radio seances these last few weeks, that any one who had ever enjoyed the effulgence of Der Fuehrer’s personality, could ever have become dubious. Ah me, it simply goes to show how imperfect human nature is, even in Der Fuehrer’s paradise!
For myself, I am thankful the attempt was bungled. I want to see Der Fuehrer last through to Germany’s contemptible collapse, so no Nazi can ever say – "If only Der Fuehrer had lived, this could not have happened!" And besides, I want to see that verminous pervert die on the scaffold the ignominious death he deserves, not under conditions where his deluded disciples can consider him a martyr cut off before he completed his task.
Meanwhile, the damned weather isn’t giving us any help on the Normandy front. Monty took the only two decent days so far this summer to smack the Germans, but the weather blew up and stopped his air assault, at least. Well, we’ll get along here, but we could do infinitely better with a little continued summer weather to campaign in. The enclosed clipping will give you an idea. I wore my overcoat today and I needed it.
I hope you will find you can act on my suggestion to go to Southwest Harbor for all or most of August, and have Mary and Ned and some other friends there with you during your stay. But if that doesn’t work out, go up and stay at The Moorings yourself for a while.
I’m doing fine myself. I did the washing last evening and the ironing tonight. With two such laundry sessions a week, I keep up beautifully with that problem.
The missing letters are, as usual, #12, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45 and 46 (and my laundry). I trust my letters now are coming through regularly in about six days, which is now the time yours take from their postmarked date.
The U.S., by the way, has developed a little sense. None of your letters (since I’ve arrived here last May 2) have ever borne a censor’s stamp, nor been opened, read, or censored in any way. I hope mine have faired as well.
With love, Ned
Letter #49
July 23, 1944
Lucy darling:
Three letters lying on my desk greeted me when I got there this morning, #69, 70, and 71. For #71 that was remarkable, for it meant delivery here just 41/2 days after its postmark in New York of 6 PM, July 18.
After having suggested in several letters that you go to Southwest Harbor, I was glad to read in your #71 (written before any of my suggestions reached you) that you have decided to go there August 1. I do regret to hear that the basic cause of Clara's (Ed: Lucy Ellsberg’s aunt) acceptance is her need for an operation later. I’m sure it will turn out well, and at any rate I am happy to know that we are in a position to help a bit by your having Clara with you at Southwest so she can get a rest for recuperative purposes first. That Alice can come also, is fine and I hope her sense of duty doesn’t impel her to rush back to Springfield too hastily.
I suppose (and hope) that you can get Mrs. Rice or someone else to help you while you are there. Give both Clara and Alice my regards, tell them the master of The Anchorage (Ed: Ellsberg’s summer home) deeply regrets his inability to welcome them personally, but looks forward to that pleasure next summer, and that meanwhile he trusts that they find their stay blessed by pleasant weather and restful to their minds and their bodies.
This will make the second summer out of the last three that I have spent on waters other than those of Maine. Unlike my Massawa summer, I won't this time suffer from the lack of Maine coolness, for it’s colder here than Maine anyway (the air, not the water), but I’ll miss it just as much anyway. To add a little salt to the wounds, before and after D-day, I spent nearly a month in the waters around the Isle of Wight, which is probably the most famous yachting center in the world, without seeing so much as a single sail hoisted on anything. And there was always a fine sailing breeze in the Channel (too damned fine, usually) which rarely, if ever, died away as the sun went down, so that the cook never (well, hardly ever) had to delay the chops. When the war’s over and I’m really rich, I’m going to ship the Argo (Ed: Ellsberg’s Eastern Yacht Club 17’ [28’ over-all] A class gaff-rigged sloop) over here and sail her in the Cowes Regatta right over the spots where I struggled, sweated, and even swam in the Channel.
I hope you’ll be able to rent a car in Maine (it’s too much to hope you can get gasoline enough to take the station wagon to Maine and back).
It will be fine if Mary and Ned can get some leave to go up there also.
Meanwhile, turning attention from foreign matters to local ones, I see that what’s happened in Germany still seems a bit foggy, except that it’s reasonably certain Hitler has not yet been disposed in a decorative pattern over the wallpaper of his conference room. However, the end cannot be many months off now, whatever happens to Hitler. On every front the Germans are catching hell, and that is one thing the Germans don’t stand towards the end of a war. I’ll be willing to bet that before two months more are gone, if he’s still alive Hitler will be wishing that bomb of last week had ended his career while still at least his armies were putting up a fight.
Meanwhile Goebbels goes frantically on, pouring the poison of suspicion of its associates into the ear of each one of the United Nations in turn; bolstering up the faltering faith of the German soldiers in the field by utterly fantastic stories of what flying bombs are doing to Britain; and ending always on this keynote:
"Do you realize that all your sacrifices are being made for Jewish
power politics directed from Washington and Moscow?"
What I realize is that there never has been such a fiendish attack on freedom and human rights since the dawn of history. There can be no compromise with the fiends.
With love, Ned
P.S. All letters after this one will be addressed to Southwest Harbor until Aug. 23.
Letter #50
July 24, 1944
Lucy darling:
After the exceptionally rapid delivery of your #71 yesterday, I hardly expected any letters today and I didn’t get any.
This is the first letter I am directing to Southwest Harbor, since I judge in the normal course of delivery it could hardly get to Westfield before you departed, especially as you may go a day or so earlier than July 31 or Aug 1, for various reasons. If I hear nothing either from you or from Mary to the contrary, I shall continue to address Southwest Harbor until August 23, after which I’ll revert to Westfield.
I wrote to Mary today, urging her to get leave if she and Ned could, and go to Southwest Harbor, more particularly in early September so as to overlap Clara’s visit a little. I hope they can.
I see Roosevelt volunteered for a fourth term. I had no doubt of that as long ago as 1936. And he’ll still be there either as a volunteer or a draftee in 1948 and 1952 if he should live that long, so far as he is concerned. Whether the public will continue to fall for the indispensable man, remains yet to be seen. I note that some New Deal ideals, along with the New Deal idealist, were jettisoned to make the Roosevelt craft a little more seaworthy for the anticipated November gales. Somehow, long ago I got the impression that expediency was the Roosevelt compass; it looks as if it still is.
I had to go over this afternoon to see a Mr. Devlin who is in charge of the War Shipping Administration local office, and after he looked at me, he said,
"Didn’t you make a trip on the Exeter in 1936 with you wife and daughter,
and a port fell on Mrs. Ellsberg and injured her face?"
I asked him how he knew. He said he was port captain then for American Export Lines, was on that same trip, and remembered both you and Mary well. And he asked me when I wrote you, to send you his regards. He added, he supposed Mary was grown up now, and I had to admit she was, enough at least to be married. How time flies!
Regards to Clara and Alice.
With love, Ned
PS While I discussed some blueprints with Captain Devlin, a bomb came along and rattled the windows for us, but that was about the only one today. Only two last night.
Letter #51
July 25, 1944
Lucy darling:
Your #72 arrived this morning. The missing list is still unchanged.
I’m very glad you had a chance to have Mr. Loveland for lunch in Washington. He was very thoughtful in offering to take home that little gift for you.
I hope your trip to Southwest Harbor from Boston didn’t turn out to be too much of an odyssey. And also that you are able to get help in the cottage, and most of all that all the various gadgets were put in running order – God knows whether the plumbers and the electricians are still on the job. I trust also that the field mice didn’t have too much of a field day in the fo’c’s’le (Ed: their guest house).
Meanwhile remember me to the old Southwest Harbor residents – Mr. Smith, Mrs. Lawler, Wendell Gilley, Mr. Gott, Mr. Robinson, Miss Marcus, Mr. Cutler, and Mr. Norwood. I don’t particularly care whether you remember me to Andrew Parker or not, but if you see him, you may tell him I often think of him (and so I do) and please make a special effort to see that old clam digger (he’s a retired Englishman) who lives across the road at the head of our cove (please don’t let him know I couldn’t remember his name, but Lawrence Robinson can tell you) and particularly give him my regards. He’s a friendly old chap whom I’m looking forward to seeing next summer.
There have been very few flying bombs the last couple of days or nights, though my German friends on the radio keep assuring me that we are being heavily bombarded. Of course they wouldn’t lie about it.
I see Harold Laski has written another book, of which I enclose a review torn from the pony edition of Time. I mention it merely to discourage anybody who might be tempted to make me a gift of it (Ed: Clara and Alice ran the Hadley Book Shop in South Hadley, MA). My closer view of Harold Laski’s political maneuvers over here has not impressed me any more favorably. Laski’s Heaven on earth would be just as totalitarian as Joe Stalin’s or Adolph’s.
Not that I want to bother you in Maine with extraneous matters of no great importance – lean back in a steamer chair or against the firs and enjoy the view of the rocks, the sea, and the mountains for me – and for yourselves.
With love, Ned
Letter #52
July 26, 1944
Lucy dear:
No letter from you today. Not surprising however, since #72 came yesterday.
As I said yesterday, very few flying bombs are coming through now in the day time, and only a few at night. To a fair degree, I believe this is due to their being pretty well knocked down by ack-ack and fighters down in the Channel area before they get to London.
However, a few do get by. At 2 AM this morning, the roar of one going directly over head woke me and the explosion came very quickly afterwards and in fair intensity. Now this morning I discovered that that bomb landed almost exactly in the same spot as the one I described to you at some length a few weeks ago (also a night bomb) as having been the closest actual explosion to me of these bombs. While last night’s bomb was perhaps 100 feet closer, I didn’t feel the explosion as strongly (the other time I thought the building was coming down on my ears and this time I merely thought it shook a bit). This bomb didn’t actually hit the ground; it was exploded by hitting some treetops in the park a little west of this hotel, at a spot close to where the previous one had knocked down the brick wall around the park. This explosion knocked down the sheet iron fence put up to replace the missing brick wall, and in addition knocked down several hundred more feet of brick wall, as well as demolishing the tops only of half a dozen trees where it exploded. No one seems to have been hurt by this one, but I must say it caused plenty of damage in business buildings about a 100 yards away facing the park. The last time they lost all their glass windows. This time the makeshift cellophane window coverings were taken out plus considerable sections of plastered ceilings coming down from the shock, so they looked a mess as seen through the street windows. Inasmuch as that was at 2 AM, no one got hurt. My hotel, about 500 yards short of the explosion, didn’t even lose a window, and I lost only a few minutes sleep.
So far today (10 PM) there hasn’t been a single bomb since dawn.
With love, Ned
Letter #53
July 27, 1944
Lucy darling:
No mail today except a letter from Mary and a V-mail from Will’s wife.
The flying bomb situation continues fairly good – very few bombs are coming through day or night. One last night again at 2 AM woke me with its roar going over, but it must have continued a long way; I heard no explosion at all. Today I’ve heard none at all. The Germans say they are keeping up a heavy bombardment – maybe, but the goods aren’t being delivered. (Siren just starting to blow for first raid today – I guess a bomb finally got by the coastal defenses).
I got the package sent by Dodd, Mead which you mentioned in your #52 of July 1. There were two Armed Services Editions copies each of Hell on Ice and On the Bottom. I mentioned to you my being puzzled about the special edition of On the Bottom, for I thought it was Captain Paul which was chosen. However, On the Bottom certainly was, and now I wonder whether Captain Paul also will be included later or not.
Now please send along the regular edition nevertheless of Hell on Ice which I previously asked for, since I still want to give it to General Gale and the paper covered edition won’t do for that purpose.
The position of Germany on the eastern front looks bad. It appears Hitler was so obsessed with the importance of pushing us invaders into the sea that he stripped the eastern front of too much armor and some of his best troops, so that the Russians were able to kick a terrible hole in what was left. We may not be going so fast ourselves in Normandy at the moment, but we are certainly the reason Hitler is moving so fast in Poland. I’m not selfish – I don’t care who first rings down the curtain on Der Fuehrer and starts him on the road to Hell. (The All Clear – no explosions – I guess they knocked that one down finally before it got here).
Better weather today – some cloud, a little rain, but clearing in the afternoon. I hope it stays clear.
With love, Ned
Letter #54
July 28, 1944
Lucy darling:
Two letters from you today, #73 and 74. All the letters previously missing are still missing (plus my laundry).
I had tea this afternoon with Lady Gowers. She certainly is looking well, better I thought than when I last saw her in New York. She is very busy in the W.V.S. (Women’s Volunteer Service) here and went directly from tea (at her home) to give a talk somewhere on fire control methods. Sir Ernest is, of course, having a hectic time since the flying bombs started coming over; he wasn’t there but if it can be arranged, I’m to have dinner with both of them next week.
Lady Gowers was particularly pleased that fire has almost been completely absent from the flying bomb attacks; for she long ago learned (what I knew) {siren just sounded, followed almost immediately by the roar of a bomb engine. I looked out in the dusk, saw the bomb in level flight, rather high, about 3000 ft., perhaps a half mile on my left. While I watched, it turned steeply down, engine still running, and exploded about 5 seconds later. I am afraid that one landed somewhere near Piccadilly} that fire is the best weapon {another bomb, heard it but didn’t see it. About the same distance off} and the damage from fire far exceeds that of simple explosives. But the Germans are suffering under the naïve illusion that they are blowing London to bits, and fire, which was the worst enemy in the 1940-41 blitz, is being left out of this attack.
Lady Gowers said she thought Nina sounded rather embittered (that wasn’t the exact term; I can’t remember it) and asked if I knew why I could only suggest that it was because Nina had found nothing of a permanent nature in the way of employment. (Don’t tell Nina this). {All Clear just sounded}.
Lady Gowers asked how you were, and wished to be remembered to you.
{Something funny. My radio is tuned in on Cologne, and they are just playing in the best jazz style "Johnny Got A Zero Today." Music but no words. I wonder if they think the tune won’t bring any idea of what the words are about to their listeners, German, Japanese, and otherwise}.
The above brings to mind that from the German radio reports the listener who heard nothing else would get the idea all is going famously (if he had no sense).
Today for instance, they report a long string of tank and plane losses suffered by the Russians (huge figures); fantastic losses in tanks, planes, guns, and men suffered by the U.S. in two days around St. Lo; same for the British (only worse), in Normandy; about the same Allied losses for Italy; some pipe dreams about losses inflicted on us in Guam and Tinian by the Japanese; and finally as a casual afterthought, the statement,
"To shorten our lines and improve our defensive positions, we have
withdrawn from Lvov, Bialystock, Dvinsk, Hovno, and Brest-Litovsk."
Casually, mind you, as if they were announcing an improvement, but one of no great moment, they slur over the capture of five fortresses, each certainly as important in its area as Corregidor was to the Philippines. The loss to them of any one of those cities was a major disaster, but you should have heard the casual way in which Goebbels tossed off the loss of all five at once as being a voluntary German move to improve its defensive position!
I doubt if the average American knows yet what kind of a dream world Nazi Germany is still living in.
The Altman overseas package came today. I am not sure whether from your letter of July 7 you meant there was a separate package of cookies also (aside from the 1st class candy and fruit cake). It was 20 days on the way – not bad – except it wasn’t worth wasting transportation on. Practically everything in it can be matched by the Army field rations plentifully available to every one (and of which all hands are heartily sick, except when nothing else is obtainable). A can of sardines, a tiny bottle of preserves, and some hard candy (that the youngsters may be persuaded to accept) was about all that the Army field rations don’t match. I don’t mind wasting money to pay for the damned thing, but I do begrudge wasting even parcel post space across the ocean on such a combination, and Altman’s should have more sense. The only person who would appreciate such a package would be a castaway on a raft or in a lifeboat, and I fear that to such a person, delivery could not be guaranteed.
I was genuinely sorry to hear of Noel Robinson’s death (Ed: Robinson recruited Ellsberg from the Navy in 1926 to join Tidewater Oil). Of course his health had never been good, so I am not surprised at his passing, but I liked Noel, admired the way he stood up for what he considered correct, and (except perhaps for Frank Keebler and Dick Jones, of course) regarded him as more of a friend than anyone else in Tide Water. I do regret his poor judgment in his marital experiences. I am afraid if he had not been quite so sophisticated, he would have got along with his first wife (one of the Benson’s, who I think really was a fine person, but perhaps "small town") and avoided that acid female who snared him on his second trial. I’m sorry – Noel Robinson was the most intelligent and the most human person I met in my Tide Water episode, and the only one who knew that something of importance existed in the world outside the oil business (and God knows, I know how important oil is, especially now).
I doubt that it’s worth bothering to follow up through the Intelligence Officers how that man-hunter out in Los Angeles obtained my address. I’m too far away, and I don’t want to involve you in it, as it would appear that you had motives of a personal nature (that isn’t so, but the average person would certainly have that reaction). It’s just funny – forget it otherwise.
I’m pleased to hear that Sophie and Jimmy (Ed: Sophie Milroy was Ellsberg’s cousin) are back to civilization again, having escaped from the frontier. Give them my congratulations.
By the time you get this, you should be reasonably settled in The Anchorage. I trust you haven't run into a stretch of fog, nor any household difficulties, and that Clara is able to sun herself lazily on the rocks and relax. And may you all enjoy your fill of lobster and of clams – how I envy you!
Any racing this summer? By the way, the Argo insurance policy wants to be renewed on a cold storage basis only, not a cruising one, though you may want to get the tender down, provided you can get someone to rig the outhaul.
With love, Ned
P.S. I enclose a clipping on General Ned McNair. While I have no inside information, I’m afraid from the way this thing is worded, that a land mine was the cause.
P.P.S. The want ad (Ed: for a house rental in the Channel area, which was restricted) is a refutation that the British have no sense of humor.
P.P.P.S. The "German Surrender" letter is a refutation of the idea the British (some, at least) have no sense.