Transcribe
Translate
W. Earl Hall World War II stories, 1944
Letter #47
More information
digital collection
archival collection guide
transcription tips
slug-4 Vagrant -4 By W. EARL HALL Globe-Gazette Managing Editor Letter No. 47 London England--As I packed my grips tonight, preparatory to my flight back home, 3 or 4 experiences of my month and a half in the British Isles and France kept coming back to the front of my mind, in the form of vagrant memories. Appraised unto itself, none of these experiences seemed to have any great importance But lumped together and looked at as a whole, there was, I think, a significant pattern. I'll recount them and let you be the judge of that. One of these experiences had its setting in the operating room of a great army general hospital not far from Oxford. I stood by as Iowa's football coach, Dr. Eddie Anderson, assisted in an operation which involved the transfer of skin from the chest to the lower leg of a lad who had been unfortunate enough to get in the way of a German flame-thrower at St. Lo. Even before that I had decided that there is nothing glamorous about war for the frontline fighter. I had gone through the wards and seen what war does to the individual boy. One lad was smoking a cigarette through one of his nostrils--because he had no lower lip and little lower jaw. That was one of my recollections as I packed my grips. Another was of standing under the Arc de Triomph in Paris and looking down upon the perpetual flame at the head of the simple bronze tablet which bears this simple inscription: "Ici Repose un Soldat Francaise Mort Pour La Patrie, 1914-1918." Translated, that means: "Here lies the body of a French soldier who died for his country in World war No. 1." The next of these vagrant memories took me back to Westminster Abbey here in London. I had stood at the base of the tablet to Britain's unknown soldier and copied down these words: "Beneath this stone rests the body of a British warrior, unknown by name or rank, brought from France to be among the most illustrious of the land and buried here on Armistice day, Nov. 11, 1920, in the presence of His Majesty, King George V, his ministers of state, the chiefs of his forces and a vast concourse of the nation. "Thus are commemorated the many multitudes who during the great war of 1914-1918 gave the most that man can give--life itself--for God, for King, for Country, for loved ones, for home and empire, for the sacred cause of justice and the freedom of the world. "They buried him among the kings because he had done good toward God and toward his house. In Christ shall he be made alive." As my pencil moved over the page of my notebook, I could hear from a chapel nearby the voice of an archbishop of the Church of England. It was RAF Sunday. The prelate was telling his parishioners that Britain, indeed the world, are in the eternal debt of the lads whose courage--and whose lives--had saved all of us from a Hitler-dominated world. "Our brave lads," he intoned, "are winning the war. But they can't win the peace. That's our task--yours and mine. Shall we succeed? Or shall it be marked down in history as another war of futility?" The last of these fleeting memories that came to me as I rearranged my belongings to get within the 55-pound air travel baggage limit took me back to a lovely valley overlooking the sea, 2 miles to the west of Cherbourgh. Its beauty was marred by an ugly pile of masonry--3 steel walls and a partially completed roof, all of 16-foot, steel-reinforced concrete. Between the walls was a block-long sloping platform, also of cement. That structure, thank God, was never completed. The Americans arrived too soon. It was designed to send some type of rocket bomb into Bristol, England, 180 miles away across the English channel, with explosive force at least 10 times as great as the robot bombs which have been falling upon London. Here was a hint--more than that, a clear-cut herald--of the war of the future--if there's to be a war in the future. I doubt that it's necessary to point to the pattern and the moral of these vagrant memories this final night in London. -- 30 --
Saving...
prev
next
slug-4 Vagrant -4 By W. EARL HALL Globe-Gazette Managing Editor Letter No. 47 London England--As I packed my grips tonight, preparatory to my flight back home, 3 or 4 experiences of my month and a half in the British Isles and France kept coming back to the front of my mind, in the form of vagrant memories. Appraised unto itself, none of these experiences seemed to have any great importance But lumped together and looked at as a whole, there was, I think, a significant pattern. I'll recount them and let you be the judge of that. One of these experiences had its setting in the operating room of a great army general hospital not far from Oxford. I stood by as Iowa's football coach, Dr. Eddie Anderson, assisted in an operation which involved the transfer of skin from the chest to the lower leg of a lad who had been unfortunate enough to get in the way of a German flame-thrower at St. Lo. Even before that I had decided that there is nothing glamorous about war for the frontline fighter. I had gone through the wards and seen what war does to the individual boy. One lad was smoking a cigarette through one of his nostrils--because he had no lower lip and little lower jaw. That was one of my recollections as I packed my grips. Another was of standing under the Arc de Triomph in Paris and looking down upon the perpetual flame at the head of the simple bronze tablet which bears this simple inscription: "Ici Repose un Soldat Francaise Mort Pour La Patrie, 1914-1918." Translated, that means: "Here lies the body of a French soldier who died for his country in World war No. 1." The next of these vagrant memories took me back to Westminster Abbey here in London. I had stood at the base of the tablet to Britain's unknown soldier and copied down these words: "Beneath this stone rests the body of a British warrior, unknown by name or rank, brought from France to be among the most illustrious of the land and buried here on Armistice day, Nov. 11, 1920, in the presence of His Majesty, King George V, his ministers of state, the chiefs of his forces and a vast concourse of the nation. "Thus are commemorated the many multitudes who during the great war of 1914-1918 gave the most that man can give--life itself--for God, for King, for Country, for loved ones, for home and empire, for the sacred cause of justice and the freedom of the world. "They buried him among the kings because he had done good toward God and toward his house. In Christ shall he be made alive." As my pencil moved over the page of my notebook, I could hear from a chapel nearby the voice of an archbishop of the Church of England. It was RAF Sunday. The prelate was telling his parishioners that Britain, indeed the world, are in the eternal debt of the lads whose courage--and whose lives--had saved all of us from a Hitler-dominated world. "Our brave lads," he intoned, "are winning the war. But they can't win the peace. That's our task--yours and mine. Shall we succeed? Or shall it be marked down in history as another war of futility?" The last of these fleeting memories that came to me as I rearranged my belongings to get within the 55-pound air travel baggage limit took me back to a lovely valley overlooking the sea, 2 miles to the west of Cherbourgh. Its beauty was marred by an ugly pile of masonry--3 steel walls and a partially completed roof, all of 16-foot, steel-reinforced concrete. Between the walls was a block-long sloping platform, also of cement. That structure, thank God, was never completed. The Americans arrived too soon. It was designed to send some type of rocket bomb into Bristol, England, 180 miles away across the English channel, with explosive force at least 10 times as great as the robot bombs which have been falling upon London. Here was a hint--more than that, a clear-cut herald--of the war of the future--if there's to be a war in the future. I doubt that it's necessary to point to the pattern and the moral of these vagrant memories this final night in London. -- 30 --
World War II Diaries and Letters
sidebar