Chappie, The Story Continues

Hilter's Guest Glasses

 
My father recorded in his diary, Chappie World War II Diary of a Combat Chaplain, this entry dated 15 March 1945: 

Yesterday we reached Rodert, Germany, which we found to be surrounded by German supply depots. It was here that Hitler built bunkers to create for himself an elaborate operational headquarters in the Eifel Mountains south of Munstereifel. From this fortified shelter, he directed the invasion of Belguium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

Upon discovering that some of Hitler's hideaway had been taken intact, Group took it over for their temporary stay. We found the offices and general staff sleeping rooms beautifully furnished, and I was given a room with a spectacular view of the mountains.

While rummaging through the contents left behind, I unearthed a bolt of linen, tablecloth material and a box of Hitler's guest wineglasses, both still in their packing. Hitler won't need those glasses now; so I think I'll send the entire box home to Alice.

He did manage to ship that box to us in Mississippi, and you can image the shock my mother received upon opening the box - turned out to be sets of five, different size crystal, wine glasses with each piece adorned with a small, German swastika. Neeless to say, that was one souvenir that never made its way to our table. She did find a use, however, for the roll of formal, white table linen included with them. Upon his return, my father gave most of the glasses away to family and friends who wanted one. Years later he placed one on a shelf in his library that he filled with sand and small shells that I had brought back to him from Omaha Beach. To him, it was a fitting reminder of that bloody battle.

 

Staying In Tourch - WWII Style

     When a GI went off to combat in WWII, their family didn't know if they would ever see them again. There was only one "tour of duty" for a soldier shipping out to Europe - you went and you stayed until you either got killed, were so seriously wounded that you couldn't return to your unit or the war ended. Today, our soldiers have access to the Internet and can send email and pictures or even talk with their families back home. Not so in 1942. There were no cells phones, Internet, or emails. So, how did we stay in touch?

Good old fashion mail. You wrote letters, sent pictures, and mailed packages via an APO mailing address. It took weeks and weeks for letters to get there, and sometimes they never got there - ships were sunk or planes shot down that might be carrying the mail. You might go a month without getting a letter, and then get four or five in the same week.

My mother always shared his letters with us, and we all wrote to my dad. I don't remember much about what he said in his letters, but I do remember asking my mother where APO was on the map because all our letters to and from him had that on them. Except for the time he was in England, we never knew where he really was when he wrote us - always said "somewhere in...," and it was kind of a game for us to look at the map and try to figure out where he might be. Also, sometimes there were words blacked out in his letters. He couldn't tell us anything about the war, so we would listen to the radio every night and go to the local movie theater every Saturday, when they showed the weekly newsreel about the war. My mom told me years later that she always had a horror of seeing my dad in the midst of one of the battles they were showing.

Then the government came up with the V-mail (Victory Mail) - remember those? The idea was that since mail was so important to the morale of our troops, it was important that they received it. At first, we sent all our letters through the regular mail, but later we were able to get the V-mail forms. My mother would buy these special one-page sheets, write the letter, fold it. address it to my dad and drop it into the mail. She told us that the army would photograph it, put it on film, and fly it across the world to where it would be printed up for him. I thought that was so wonderful of them to want to get my letter to me in a hurry. Only as an adult did I learn the other reason we were encouraged to send V-mail. The Government needed the space on the ships for supplies, not all those bags of mail, and the weight of bags of mail made it difficult to fly much of it - both of these problems were solved with converting the written letters into rolls of film. With the V-mail, the originals were kept until it was known that the film copies reached their destination. [Left: Picture shows V-Mail letter compared to small envelope used to mail regular letters]

    But most of all, I remember those wonderful "boxes" my father sent via the army.  After my dad left to go "somewhere overseas," we moved to Mississippi to live in a small town with my grandmother. While we picked up our letters at the post office, the post master always made a special trip to our house to bring us a "box from your dad," as he called them. I can still see him standing there, waiting for us to unpack it so that he could what my father had sent us. My mom would say, "By tomorrow morning, everybody in town will know what we got."  And, she was right! The content of those boxes is a story in itself.

    We no longer have any of his letters. All his letters, both to and from us, along with his uniform were stored in a large cedar chest that was lost when my parents made the move from Alabama to Arizona in 1963. Thankfully, his diary was packed with his books and maps, and they did survive the move.