July 18, 1944
Dear Dad,
I
hope the robombs[i] aren't
keeping you awake at night. From what I have read in the papers, they seem to
be a serious problem. They have not only given a boost to German morale, but
they have caused quite a bit of damage.
Perhaps
the reason that you have not received any mail is that none of it has been V-mail
so far.[ii] I hope you receive this promptly.
My
typewriting is slow in improving (you've probably noticed), but this is because
I must compose from my mind instead of from copy.
Last
Thursday and Friday I took a battery of tests at the "U" Testing
Bureau on Social Sciences, and tomorrow I have an appointment with a counselor
to discuss the outcome of the tests.
Today
I wrote a letter to the Sixth Service Command,[iii]
asking information about their offer to accept seventeen-year-olds who will not
be over 17 years and 9 months at the opening of college in the Army Specialized
Training Reserve program, who did (not?)[iv]
take or pass the A-12 test on March 15. I was absent from school that one day
that week, and thus did not get to take the test. Since it offers more variety
than the V-12 program,[v] I am looking
into it. However, the news article in the STAR-JOURNAL said that it was offered
only in the Sixth Service Command, and that is why I wrote.
Every
Saturday I receive a pay-check for the week ending the Saturday before. Since I
receive 60¢ an hour and work 40 hours a week, I receive twenty-four dollars a
week,[vi]
minus withholding tax and Social Security. This is much more than I have ever
made before, and I realize that it would not be if it were not wartime. So far,
my gross earnings are $205.35. Walt (the head chemist), says that I may work 48
hours a week beginning the second week in August, when large quantities of flaxseed
will begin to come in. Then I will receive time-and-a-half for overtime , and I
will be able to save even more. So far I have not been able to save very much,
since I bought several pieces of clothing and I was put to some extra expense
because of graduation, but now I can save most of what I earn.
I
hope that the Russians have all the success in the world with their version of
the blitzkrieg[vii] and end
the war before it would otherwise be won. Their comeback since Stalingrad is
really remarkable, and their power must (be) reckoned with in the post-war
world.[viii]
The choice of our president thus looms as very important, and should be awaited
with anxiety.[ix]
Your
loving son,
Stewart
Addressed to:
Chap. (Capt.) Barney C. Crockett
A.F.C. // 4377 c/o Postmaster (4377 is crossed out and # 640 written
in)
New York, New York[x]
From:
Stewart C. Crockett
1082 13th Ave., S.E.
Minneapolis 14, Minn.[xi]
[i] This is an abbreviation for
"robot bombs" and refers
to unmanned missiles which
resembled a small aircraft but were loaded with explosives (very like today's
drones) called V-1 rockets used by
the Germans to bomb London. Below is
an article about them.
Our
dad was probably in London during the time of these bombings! We do not have a precise chronology of
his whereabouts during an approximately 10 day period in England between his
arrival and his assignment to 1314
Engineers on July 14th but in all likelihood he was in London at least briefly.
On July 15th or so, he was moved
to Cornwall, where his regiment
was based at that time, and that was not a targeted area. Dad never mentioned
these bombings in his letters home, or in the journal he kept at the time (his
earliest entry in this journal is July 17th), or in his memoirs written after
the war. But he must have been
aware of them.
 |
| A V-1 rocket |
"The 'V'
came from the German word Vergeltungswaffen,
meaning weapons of reprisal. The V-1 was
developed by German scientists at the Peenemünde research facility on the
Baltic Sea, under the direction of Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger.
They were nicknamed "buzz bombs" by the British due to the distinct
buzzing sound made by the pulse-jet engines powering the bombs, which overall
resembled a small aircraft. Other British nicknames included "doodlebugs"
and "flying bombs." Each V-1 was launched from a short length
catapult then climbed to about 3,000 feet at speeds up to 350 miles per
hour. As the V-1 approached its
target, the buzzing noise could be heard by persons on the ground. At a preset
distance, the engine would suddenly cut out and there would be momentary
silence as the bomb plunged toward the ground, followed by an explosion of the
1,870 pound warhead. The first
V-1s were launched against London on June 13, 1944, a week after the D-Day
landings. During the first V-1 bombing campaign, up to 100 V-1s fell every hour
on London. Over an 80 day period, more than 6,000 persons were killed, with
over 17,000 injured and a million buildings wrecked or damaged. Unlike
conventional German aircraft bombing raids, V-1 attacks occurred around the
clock in all types of weather, striking indiscriminately, causing suspense and
terror among the population of London and parts of Kent and Sussex. Prime
Minister Winston Churchill recalled, "One landed near my home at Westerham,
killing, by cruel mischance, twenty-two homeless children and five grownups
collected in a refuge made for them in the woods." According to German
records, 8,564 were launched against England as well as the port of Antwerp,
with about 57 percent actually reaching their designated targets. The remainder
failed as a result of antiaircraft guns, barrage balloons, and interception by
fighter planes. Over 29,000 V-1
bombs were built, mainly through slave labor at a huge underground factory near
Nordhausen. Launch sites and production facilities were specially targeted by
Allied bombers during Operation Crossbow. In those raids, nearly 2,000 Allied
airmen were killed. Eventually, British and American planes knocked out the
majority of the launching sites. By September of 1944, however, the Nazis
introduced the V-2 rocket, a liquid-fueled rocket that traveled at supersonic
speeds as high as 50 miles, then hurtled down toward its target at a speed of
nearly 4,000 miles per hour, smashing its 2,000 pound high explosive warhead
into the ground without warning. Unlike the V-1, the V-2 rockets could not be
intercepted. Over a thousand were fired at London."
[iii] The U. S. Army was
re-organized in mid-1942, renaming the old corps areas into nine Service
Commands of the Army Service Forces (ASF). In very general terms, this was a
decentralization of at least some functions. The headquarters of the Sixth
Service Command were in Chicago.
[iv] The word "not"
does not occur in this sentence in the original, but it to make any sense, it
seems to be needed.
[v] The "V-12" program
was an older Navy program that was similar in some ways to the newly formed
ASTRP.
[vi] According to one website,
this would be about $346 a week in today's dollars, or a little over $8 an hour
- about minimum wage by our standards.
[vii] One site states that
"...Geographically, (the Russian 'blitzkrieg' termed Operation
Bagration) dwarfed the
campaign for Normandy. In four weeks, it inflicted greater losses on the German
army than the Wehrmacht had suffered
in five months at Stalingrad. With more than 2.3 million men, six times the
artillery and twice the number of tanks that launched the Battle of the Bulge,
it was the largest Allied operation of World War II. It demolished three Axis
armies and tore open the Eastern Front. Operation Bagration, the Red Army’s
spring 1944 blitzkrieg, was designed to support Allied operations in France,
liberate Russian territory and break the back of the Wehrmacht once and for all....All told, Operation Bagration cost Hitler 350,000 men (including 31
generals), plus hundreds of tanks and more than 1,300 guns. Of the men lost,
160,000 were taken prisoner, half of whom were murdered on the way to prison
camps or died in Soviet gulags." Despite these successes, Operation
Bagration did not become a household word in the West like
"D-Day" did, mainly, it is thought, because the place-names
associated with its victories were all unfamiliar.
[viii] Another astute observation.
[ix] A ticket of Roosevelt/Truman
defeated the Republican ticket of Thomas Dewey (Gov. of NY)/John Bricker (Gov.
of Ohio) by 432-99 in the Electoral College, sweeping Roosevelt to an historic
4th term. Roosevelt wanted Henry
Wallace as his VP, but he was replaced by Truman at the Democratic Convention -
a momentous change, because Roosevelt died just three months into his 4th term
and Truman became President. Wallace was far to the left of Truman in his
politics, and who knows what the
course of history (and our family) would have been had he become President.
E.g., he might not have decided to use the atomic bomb to end WW2. Which means,
e.g., Stewart could have been sent
into the war in the Pacific.
[x] I don't know
what A.F.C. stands for in this address, but the envelope makes clear that
someone received this letter in NYC who then looked up dad's actual location in
the army and forwarded the letter to him. That could take some time. It is
postmarked "August 2" by the Army postal service - two weeks after
Stewart mailed it. Don't know when dad got it.
[xi] This was our home at 1082
13th in Minneapolis -taken c. 1944 (me in front with my bike):
 |
| A more recent picture of 1082 13th |
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