Normandy Letters Full - Page Two

This is the second page of a collection which consists of 115 letters written by Ellsberg to his wife, Lucy, from May 3, 1944-September 24, 1944. ​

​Letter #55
July 29, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
Your letter #75 arrived today. I was very concerned to learn that you had had two accidents within a week, both serious. I hope it’s true there were no after effects and you are over them, but I was infuriated by your lack of sense in the second one – to be so damned concerned about bothering a doctor at 10 o’clock at night after having shears jabbed several inches into you, that you let it go till next day – that’s just too much! I thought you had learned a little about the possibility of wound infections – they are infinitely more serious than the average wound. Such a performance makes me gnash my teeth. There’s trouble enough nowadays without deliberately begging for more. I have an idea you once upbraided your mother about recklessness – it looks hereditary to me. In the earnest hope that you’ve learned a little from this, I’ll now drop the subject.
 
I trust Alice’s idea about getting gasoline enough to go to Southwest Harbor and back worked out all right. It would certainly be wonderful not to have to make numerous train changes, and to be able to take all your baggage (and Clara’s & Alice’s) with you. Considering how difficult train travel now is, I certainly think Clara is entitled to preference on rationing for medical reasons.
 
By the time you get this, that matter has been settled. Let us hope the Chevrolet is reposing in the foc’s’le and that you all had a pleasant and unhurried trip up in it, with a few gallons of gasoline still available for use on Mt. Desert.
 
I am not surprised to hear that Ned Benson is to go overseas again. It looks logical enough to me – he’s had field experience and he’s been home over six months. As regards the rest, while I don’t think promotion is a paramount issue, he’s far more likely to have a chance at promotion abroad now than at home, particularly if he has learned that reticence is a desirable military quality, especially in a junior officer.
 
With relation to casualties and the probabilities thereof, while I would not attempt to pass on the relative expendability of second lieutenants and generals, I should judge that in proportion to their numbers, more generals than second lieutenants have been killed in Normandy. I don’t believe any undue worry is in order there. As regards future wars, all I know about them is that we’ll not prevent them by losing this one or letting it end in a stalemate. For myself, when we’ve flattened out Hitler, that will be sufficient unto this day; if any more dictators have to be taken care of tomorrow, we’ll do that tomorrow. But a lot of the shine is going to be removed from the divinely appointed Fuehrers, Duces, and other would be Caesars after Hitler joins Mussolini as a synonym for contemptuous derision.
 
I am not concerned about a war with Russia in twenty-five years from now or ever. There won’t be any. Our danger from Russia lay (and lies) in our internal sapheads, of whom Professor Counts was once a good example, of whom the deluded disciples of Harold Laski still are. I think the danger is less than it was, and will be still less after this war is over (because enough people have seen too much of the government running everything to want voluntarily to extend bureaucracy).
 
It’s natural enough for Ned Benson to want more rank if he goes overseas again, and I think he’s certainly entitled to it on the basis of comparative experience; however, all he can do is go and get it. It will be best for him.
 
Let’s hope this matter is settled soon (as under present circumstances it may well be). If Ned has to go over, I hope Mary at least will get a chance to go to Southwest Harbor and stay there a while before you come home. And if Ned’s coming to this area let me know as soon as possible.
 
We had about half a dozen bombs in a salvo about midnight last night, with one glowing beautifully as I watched it on a straight line for my domicile, the exhaust looking like a comet. However, it started to dip before it arrived, so I watched it all the way down, glowing like a ball of fire till it exploded about half a mile short of here. No need to duck.
 
On the whole, not nearly as many come through as a couple of weeks ago. It will be interesting to see how the July casualty figures compare with the same period in June.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #56
July 30, 1944
 
Lucy dearest:
 
Matters have eased off here and we don’t work Sundays any more, though I go to the office in the morning briefly anyway to see if there is any mail, and to put my own letters (they can be mailed no where else). This morning there was no mail from you.
 
It has been a fair day here, so-so in Normandy. I hope the weather stays clear on the far shore a few days, for the British started moving today and for our own advance towards Granville and Avranches a few days in which the air support could keep on working would be a great help.
 
Except for the flying bombs, life in London is rather dull. Most of the theaters, which were doing a rushing business up to D-day, have closed up. The reasons – a lot of their military customers moved to the far shore, English civilians suddenly lost interest after D-day, and finally the flying bombs were the last straw to dwindling audiences. The Lunts, however, are still doing the provinces in "There Shall Be No Night," with the scene transposed from Finland to Greece (and I imagine the propaganda radio speech transferred from America to England).
 
We still usually get a salvo of about half a dozen flying bombs each night and something about the same around midday. Very few otherwise. It’s amazing how much surrounding glass gets smashed when one goes off. Poor St. George’s Hospital at Hyde Park Corner had all its windows taken out by a nearby bomb not long ago. They got all of them nicely covered with cellophane as a substitute, when a few days ago another bomb landing almost on the same spot as the first, took out all the cellophane. Now they are working on those windows for the third time.
 
If General Bradley’s army keeps up its advance, I don’t think it will be long before I may be moving over to the far shore again myself for a while.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #57
July 31, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
Dull day, no letters.
 
I just turned on my radio as I started to write this, tuned in Cologne to get the usual evening fairy tale, and got, of all things, "La Paloma!"
 
No bombs today at all, and none to speak of last night. However according to the Nazi evening statement, we have been subjected to a heavy and uninterrupted attack by V-1 all day. It looks as if Goebbels has developed the perfect secret weapon at last – so secret the victims don’t even know it’s in action.
 
We are still having so-so weather. I wore an overcoat both yesterday and today. On this subject, I enclose an editorial from today’s London Times.
 
By the way, lest you wouldn’t believe it, I enclose also the front page of today’s London Times to show you the screaming headlines with which that paper covers the war. (Ed: the front page is all personal ads) I suppose even on Resurrection Day the personal ads will still get the best space on the front page.
 
Things look fairly promising in Normandy, as well as in Italy, Russia, and in the air judging by all the emphasis being put by all of Goebbels’ commentators on the terrible new secret weapons shortly to win the war for the Fuehrer, I am inclined to believe Germany is in a bad way. It is really amusing to watch Germany spend ten years building up an arsenal of weapons before she dares to attack, and then imagining that when she’s failed, she can in the last ten minutes pull the proper weapons out of a hat.
 
I have an invitation to dinner Wednesday evening (Aug 2) with Sir Ernest and Lady Gowers.
 
I’ve been getting so Anglicized myself that I begin to yearn for tea (not at tea time) in the long summer evenings. So I bought myself a quarter of a pound of tea (on my ration books), wangled some sugar from the commissary (couldn’t buy that) and was all set except for the means of making the tea in my hotel room. There I was up against it, since I have no gas jet, could neither buy a Sterno nor an alcohol lamp, nor an electric grill. I finally solved it by turning my flatiron upside down and used that for an electric stove. It works, although somewhat slowly. As a result, I’m using up some of that Devonsheer toast from Altman’s along with my tea. The next war I go to, I’m going to take one of those immersion heaters along with me.
 
I suppose by the time you get this, you may know whether Ned Benson (Ed: Benson is the father of Ted Pollard) is going overseas and where. If you know, don’t be too secretive, be specific, in letting me know to what area and unit he is bound. Of course his exact sailing date is confidential, and I don’t care to know that, but I would like to know when Mary is likely to go to Southwest Harbor and how long you are likely to stay there. I’ll want to know that, together with the approximate delivery interval for letters from here, so I’ll know when to change the address back to Westfield. If Mrs. Hale (of Boston) should be in Mt. Desert, please give her my regards. I look back with pleasure at the memory of the visits we had with her and her husband.
 
I trust you can either get gasoline enough or find some other transportation to tea and popovers at Jordan Pond. You can tell the manageress there for me I’d gladly trade a couple of English beaches and throw in the Houses of Parliament to boot for their tea and popovers in place of the best tea yet I’ve seen in England.
 
Be a little careful and avoid useless accidents. And don’t forget that American statistics show that the home is far more dangerous than the battlefield. Give a little thought to what you’re doing before you do it.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #58
August 1, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
No letters today either. I guess this air delivery has its drawbacks – it’s fast once it’s started, but the starting is so uncertain.
 
Today I presume you are on your way to Maine, in the Chevrolet, I hope. Since your last letter was #75 of July 22, I have no very late statement of your intentions.
 
I’m still taking it easy here, waiting for the Army to acquire some more real estate with riparian rights on the far shore. It probably won’t be long now. And now that it is August, possibly we’ll get better weather. The sun shined this afternoon, so I took a walk about 7 PM (really 5 PM if you discount the double summer time) past Buckingham Palace where I got the most elaborate rifle salute from the sentry that I’ve ever seen. After that, round about the Victoria Memorial, which, far from being Victorian, each time I see it, I am more impressed by its beauty and its stateliness. (By the way, Buckingham Palace hasn’t got a window left in it – nothing but cellophane and celotex to replace the broken glass). And after that, I sat a while in St. James’ Park. Honestly, I could imagine I was back in Prospect Park of long ago, Mary’s “running and racing” park with the “big kitty” and all. There were the children romping all over the grass, playing leap-frog; the ducks and ducklings begging as usual for crumbs and children feeding them; elderly ladies and gentlemen (I suppose I qualified as one of the latter) seated on the benches basking in the sun (not so hot for a decent job of basking); and the lover and his lass (usually both in uniform) strolling down the paths or reclining quite sedately (for after all, this is London) on the grass. A more peaceful scene you never saw. {“From the Fuehrer’s Headquarters, the German High Command announces, “A heavy retaliatory fire from V-1 was uninterruptedly directed all day on London”}
 
With love, Ned
 
Letter #59
August 2, 1944
               
Lucy darling:
 
I mentioned previously that after receiving your #75 about four days ago, no more had come through. Today, by one of the mail freaks, I began to receive letters in reverse order. Lying on my desk when I arrived this morning were two letters, your #81 and 82 of July 27 and July 28 (both numbered 81, however). About noon, your #80 of July 26 was delivered, and about 3 PM, your #79 of July 25 was placed on my desk. However, 76, 77, and 78 have not yet arrived. I imagine there was a plane departure delay on your end of some days, and that the mail bags on the bottom of the heap, holding the earliest letters, didn’t get aboard when it finally took off. It is interesting to note that the last letter of that lot (#82) was delivered here 4½ days from its Westfield postmark of 3:30 PM July 28. All on a 3 cent stamp!
 
At the present moment there are missing only the letters previously mentioned in numerous letters before as being missing, #12, and about five or six others being 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45,& 46 (exactly), all of which went to France in late June or early July. No letters other than these are missing, whether their receipt has ever been specifically mentioned or not, all the way up to #82, except 76, 77, and 78 mentioned just above.
 
There also arrived today a package of cookies which you previously mentioned having sent from Altman’s. Showing the vagaries of the postal service, this package, which is postmarked identically as was the other Altman’s parcel post package, arrived nearly a week after it. The cookies arrived in good condition, and will serve nicely as tea biscuits. They are way ahead of the stuff in the Altman’s overseas package, only it isn’t worth bothering to send either one.
 
I’m sorry to hear you had another accident, the one to your left little toe. That seems a peculiar way to break a toe.  The whole works goes to show what I mentioned a letter or two back – that the home is infinitely more dangerous than any battlefield. I may add here that bathtubs are the most dangerous things in any home. I believe the old idea of taking a bath only once annually to be safest.
 
This inconvenience in getting about on your feet complicates the automobile situation for Southwest Harbor, in view of the statement that Clara couldn’t get any gas from Springfield up. I hope some way or another you were able to get gasoline for a round trip, but frankly I don’t see how, since it takes about 30 gallons each way. However, if you are able to do it, don’t bother to try to explain how.
 
You have probably noticed an increase in the speed of movement in Normandy. You mention in your #82 that the N.Y. Times carries a story (July 28) of a real breakthrough in Normandy. The Stars and Stripes by a coincidence, quotes a dispatch (clipping enclosed - Ed: “Patton Leading Drive?”), which couldn’t possibly have been the reason. I mentioned some weeks ago what would happen when a certain ungentlemanly character got to France and started to be rude to the Nazis. This is the man whom all the do-gooders in the U.S. who think that battles are won by perfect gentlemen who always treat everyone kindly, were trying to have cashiered because he slapped a few shell-shocked (?) privates. Wouldn’t it be startling if it should turn out that he was the one general who was able to tear the Nazi line to pieces in a hurry, and thus save the lives of thousands of privates who would otherwise be killed in a slow battle of attrition? Of course that wouldn’t make any difference to Drew Pearson or John Hersey, to whom muckraking means money in their pockets, but it may well earn the thanks of considerable numbers of parents, wives, and sweethearts who may consider the lives of their men of somewhat more importance than a few slaps, deserved or undeserved. Just observe what happens in the next few days from now.
 
I was startled at your news that Mr. Beard had married! And to a woman never married before either! How old is the lady?
 
With love, Ned
 
Letter #60
August 3, 1944
 
Your #83 arrived this morning. #76, 77 and 78 are still missing in addition to all the other letters previously reported missing.
 
It is pleasing to note that the western flank in Normandy has been torn all to pieces and the army has moved into Brittany, where I believe movement will be even more rapid. Keep your eye on this area.
 
I am afraid we are approaching another period of very erratic mail deliveries both ways. Today I got notice to stand by for another trip to the far shore on short notice. How soon I’ll actually move I don’t know, and whether this one is to be only for a preliminary survey of conditions or a more permanent assignment to work on them, I don’t know either yet, and may not even know when I depart. So I’ll have to leave most of my belongings here as well as having all the mail kept right here also and not forwarded, until I know definitely whether I stay in one new spot, or come back here again in between.
 
Of course whether I move tomorrow or not for a week yet depends on what happens across the water. I shall continue to write from where I am or am going, but I know the deliveries from there for a while are going to be uncertain, highly erratic and irregular, and often considerably delayed. The one thing you can be certain of is that bad news travels fast; they have a really fine system of reporting casualties; so don’t get worried just because several days or even weeks may go by without any letters – all it means is that the mail service is snafu – in other words, back to its normal situation. The only interpretation you can put on any lack of news for a while (should that eventuate) is that I am still perfectly all right.
 
I had dinner last evening with Sir Ernest and Lady Gowers, quite a pleasant time and we sat around and talked afterwards till about 10:30 PM, which is terribly late for London nowadays. Among other things, I learned they have a grandson at Rugby, who at 14 is a red hot communist – the usual story, one of his instructors. They received my sympathy, and the hope that he would outgrow it. However, with all the Laskis who are allowed to run wild in our educational system, I am beginning to think that parents had better learn to keep their eyes open. Considering all the adult and supposedly intelligent people who fall for this bunk, I do not suppose unsophisticated children can be blamed for swallowing it at the hands of a respected instructor if their parents do nothing to counteract the poison.
 
There was some discussion also about Nina, and her problems, which concerned Lady Gowers considerably, but I could offer no constructive solution.
 
I invited them to have dinner with me at the Senior Officers’ Club this Friday evening, but they couldn’t since they were going for a weekend to the country, so I made it for next week, provided I was still here. After today’s information, my chances of being here for a dinner engagement next week do not look too good. I may be peering instead at a freshly decorated harbor.
 
I had a letter from Howard Lewis today, in which he mentions your query about Captain Paul vs. On the Bottom in the Armed Services Editions. He says he expects Captain Paul “is not yet definitely scheduled but will probably come along in the early fall.” This covers that matter fully. I’ve also answered his letter.
 
I am enclosing Churchill’s speech of yesterday as reported in full in the Times. (You may not get it fully in the U.S.). I enclose also a separate clipping referring to the “harbours,” on which I worked before and after D-day. (Ed: this was the first public disclosure of the Mulberry project). These were the unforeseen things that knocked all Rommel’s calculations into a cocked hat and spoiled his expectations of easily pushing our “ill-supplied” armies into the sea. To his dismay, because of these “harbours” from D-day on, our armies were always better supplied than his were.
 
With love, Ned
 
P.S. I first crossed the Channel aboard one of the sections of these breakwaters.
 
 
Letter #61
August 4, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
Your #84 arrived this morning. 76, 77 and 78 are still missing. I don’t know whether by mischance that group got put on a boat or what happened to them. In addition, all the letters previously missing are still missing. I would appreciate it if you would occasionally send me a list of my missing letters, or if none are missing, state so affirmatively.
 
I am glad to see that you are driving to Southwest Harbor. I hope you will have gasoline to get the car back to Westfield, but if it should happen that you haven't or not enough to get all the way back, in either casedon’t leave the car in Southwest Harbor. Drive it back as far as your gasoline will take you and then leave it in the nearest reliable city garage to await developments later, while you take the train the rest of the way. I rather imagine when I get home I’ll be able to get the car the remainder of the way to Westfield, but I wouldn’t want to have to go all the way to Southwest Harbor to pick it up.
 
I’m sorry to hear that Clara and Alice think they had better vote for a perpetual president because they doubt Dewey and Bricker are all they should like. For myself, I have no fears that democracy in the United States will ever collapse because we have (to go the limit that way) even a nincompoop in the White House, but it is no more immune than any other country in the world’s history from Caesarism, the cult of the indispensable man. God knows that over the rest of our lives the world and this country are both going to be confronted with major problems. Are we therefore to swallow Franklin Roosevelt every four years from henceforward on the grounds that no one else is so capable of handling America’s problems? I should hate to think that an America so flabby that it depends only on one man is the America I am fighting to preserve, for how then can it be saved unless that man lives forever to guide it? I enclose a clipping from today’s Stars and Stripes bearing on this issue.
 
I’m still around my old haunts. I took a walk this evening around Trafalgar Square and strolled by Norway House to look in the window through which we watched the coronation procession. After that up through Piccadilly Circus, down through Haymarket, and back to Whitehall to admire Big Ben’s tower. It is magnificent. However, there is not much pleasure in viewing these things all by myself, and I rarely go sightseeing.
 
You didn’t mention at all whether after you left Westfield you locked the house up and Mary and Ned were going to stay with the Bensons (Ed: Ned Benson’s parents lived directly across the street), or whether it was left open for them or what.
 
I note the last letter you say you received before leaving Westfield was #47. You have never acknowledged 40, 41, 42, 43, and 45, but of course you may have done so in your 76, 77, or 78 which I haven’t got (and may never get). That’s why I’d like to have a missing list occasionally.
 
My #50 is the first letter addressed directly to Southwest Harbor. I presume 48 and 49 will be forwarded from Westfield.
 
Matters seem rather wide open on the Brittany peninsula as no doubt you’ve read. I don’t believe the Germans will be able to hold on to anything in Brittany very long. And I think also that from now on the battle is going to be to a great extent a battle of movement. Not again is Rommel going to get enough men on the western front to man a heavily defended continuous front. His troubles are now about to start in earnest. If he isn’t dead, he’ll soon wish he were.
 
By the way, if the Man From Mars were to listen to the German broadcasts of the situation east, west and south, he would think this was 1940 or 1941, with the triumphant Germans sweeping all before them. The only sour notes are the names of the places where the Germans are hurling their enemies back with heavy losses – Warsaw, Rennes, Florence, but of course that would mean nothing to the Man From Mars. I wonder if those names mean anything to the average German.
 
With love, Ned
 
Letter #62
August 5, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
Your letter #85 and your card, #86, both of July 31, arrived this morning, with the enclosed “News of the Week” of July 30. On Saturday morning to read last Sunday’s Times and really get such a fresh review of the world’s doings, seems almost like getting the paper on the doorstep.
 
Things are moving on the Western front. Both the chairman of the Senate Military Committee, Senator May, and Field-Marshal Kluge, the German top commander, seem to be agreed that General Patton has been released in that area. What’s going on bears all the earmarks of Patton’s notoriously brutal and barbarous character; he’s tearing the enemy to pieces. Drew Pearson and John Hersey should immediately see to it that if Patton is by any chance actually back in command, that he is immediately withdrawn before some poor private gets his face slapped. Meanwhile, we should give Brittany back to the Germans and then retake it in a slower and more gentlemanly manner with the loss of thousands of extra lives of American soldiers, but with no faces slapped, no fictitious mules shot, nor any fictitious antique tables cut up by a barbarian general.
 
The battle against the flying bombs seems to be going well also. A few a day and night are all we get now – sometimes all day without a single bomb or alert. That means I think that more and more of them are being knocked down on their way, which may cause damage in southern England, but not so much here. However, things are enough better to allow the flying bomb to serve as an excuse for a resumption of summer weekends – this weekend is one of those Bank Holiday affairs which I’ll never understand – that is, Monday is a Bank Holiday. So the exodus (for civilians, that is) started yesterday, and damned little will be done in any British office until Tuesday. It’s lucky every country likely to attack Britain is already at war, or they’d surely take the opportunity to jump on her this weekend. (But since Pearl Harbor, far be it from us to think we’re any better). But except that it’s a change, why anyone should feel compelled to leave London, I can’t see. This morning I wore a topcoat; this afternoon I was comfortable in my heaviest blue uniform.
 
Meanwhile things are looking up for us. If Hitler only shoots enough generals, he may solve the problem of the elimination of the Prussianized General Staff and all we’ll have to do will be to liquidate Hitler and the remaining Nazis. And I use the word liquidate advisedly – they must be executed. If they manage to flee to a neutral state, such as Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland or Argentine, which refuses to give them up, then I see no out but war on that state to seize them by force. If these scoundrels don’t pay for their crimes, we’re simply inviting other embryo dictators to attempt to repeat. Sweden and Switzerland, I think will have more common sense than to give them asylum; Ireland and Argentine I’m very dubious of. George Bernard Shaw expects Hitler to finish his days in luxury in the Vice-Regal Lodge in Dublin. And I don’t think he thinks he’s being facetious about it, either.
 
I had a letter from Mary today, also written apparently from July 29 to 31. In it she refers to a letter she wrote me previously which I haven’t received. It must have been about the same time your 76, 77 and 78 didn’t get here. Refers to Ned’s going overseas.
 
I judge from the letter I did get (it may have been made clear in your missing letters) that Mary and Ned are staying in our house, as she mentions that the Benson’s are going to Westerly on the 30th. Now I don’t know where to write to Mary. She says nothing about where to write her, and it looks as if whether I write to Fort. Meade or 714 Hanford Place (Ed: the Ellsberg’s house in Westfield), allowing for 8 days in transmission, I have no assurance she’ll be in either place. I’ll take a chance on Fort Meade. I judge from your letters they go back there Aug. 6 and will be there till August 10 or after, which may mean anything up till Christmas if I know the military procedure. Mary’s letter carries no enlightenment as to where Ned’s going, his future address, or anything. Know yourself? If so, pass along the knowledge.
 
Midnight
 
Hooray! The midnight news radio broadcast carries the news that Patton’s men have carried through a remarkable blitzkreig in the Brittany area – they are in the outskirts of Brest, on the Loire at the south, near Mayenne in the east, and streaming all over the peninsula, with Brittany severed from the rest of France! The way they’ve spread from Rennes has been miraculous – a hundred miles from there to Brest in hardly over a day.
 
The best of all is that the Nazis probably don’t have a left flank to their armies any more and can never form a front that we can’t outflank and roll up from the west or the south.
 
The air raid siren. First time I’ve heard it today. Since it’s after midnight, I guess it’s time to turn in.
 
With love, Ned
 
P.S. About four bombs at 4 AM, none very near.
 
P.P.S. I’m putting an airmail stamp on this; not to assist it across the Atlantic (which it can’t) but in the hope that in the U.S. it may secure quicker service between New York and Mt. Desert.
 
You might try it out while you are up there.
 
 
Letter #63
August 6, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
Sunday, nothing much to do. I went to the office to see if any mail had come in, but there being nothing, I left to sit in Hyde Park and read the Sunday paper. Our daily quota of flying bombs came over while I was on the park bench, some five of them at varying distances. That ended that business for the day.
 
I think I have this letter properly numbered as #62. If it isn’t, then there won’t be any #61. (Ed: Ellsberg had the numbering system off for quite a while).
 
After lunch I came home to finish up the week’s laundry. I had quite a field day yesterday on shirts, underwear and collars. Today I finished up on handkerchiefs and socks.
 
I took a brief walk after that. London abounds in squares, tucked away every few blocks – about as if every quarter mile you had a Gramercy Park tucked away. Of them all now, however, Berkeley Square looks least attractive. Somehow I expected more of Berkeley Square though I never saw the play, picture or whatever it was, but it just doesn’t have the appeal of most of them.
 
I came back to finish a book (got it from the Red Cross library) called “Torpedo Junction” by Robert J. Casey. Must be a couple of years old. Got a little start when towards the end, I saw the following:
                “May 3 (1942) Sunday – At Sea. Hot. I was headachy when I got up
and I still am. In spite of that I spent the day finishing Woodward’s “New American History” and starting Ellsberg’s ‘Captain Paul’”
 
That’s all there, but a few days later:
                “May 7, Thursday – I finished ‘Captain Paul’ today and was greatly
reassured. The nation that let fuzz-witted incompetence, pettiness, pride,
jealousy, nepotism, vanity, political expediency and two-bit dishonesty
do their best to wreck the first American Navy has somehow survived.
With a few alterations it is still working in the same old way although
there are reports that this is a different war.”
 
I’m glad I had a hand in reassuring Mr. Casey at a particularly gloomy period when the Navy and the country in May 1942 were still facing a tough outlook. You might ask Lute where this chap (he represents the Chicago Daily News) is now.
 
The war news goes from good to better. Somehow the Berlin announcers sounded a little less self-assured as they told the world today of the “huge losses” with which as usual they had repelled all attacks.
 
With love, Ned
 
P.S. 11 PM A flying bomb just went off with a hell of a bang not so far off.
 
 
Letter #64
August 7, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
This is August Bank Holiday, and most of London has gone somewhere else – the seashore apparently, for many of the beaches have been opened to visitors for the first time since 1940. It is also a pleasant summer day; in fact August has been more nearly an approach to mild weather than anything yet. That’s having an effect across the channel.
 
Negligible bombs today. I saw one pass overhead about 7:30 this morning (my eleventh) but that was the only one seen or heard today. I think between better weather and more experience, most of them are getting knocked down long before arrival. Goebbels had better hurry with V-2, or his new show will never have a chance to open. But even if it does, nothing that can be done in strafing London will have any effect any more either in the outcome of the war or its length.
 
However, Goebbels is still fighting valiantly and skillfully on the propaganda front. There is no doubt that the present troubles of the Polish Gov’t in Exile (London) with Stalin are due to Goebbels. A year or so back, he issued a story that the Germans had discovered at Katyn the mass grave of thousands of Poles massacred by the Russians some time in 1941. The Polish Exiled Gov’t (London) fell for it and demanded an investigation, implying they believed Russian guilt. That was the parting of the ways between them and Joe Stalin.
 
Having poured the poison in the right spot and caused the break, you should hear how Goebbels plays up Stalin’s recognition of a different committee as the government of Poland. He uses it to ruffle Polish feelings; to show how Stalin flouts Britain and the U.S.; and for plenty more.
 
Goebbels runs a regular radio feature – “The Have-It-Out Club.” This consists of a discussion (in England) between two English gentlemen and an English lady, all authentically English by their voices, of various questions. It’s marvelously done, to finish in each case with the conclusion that England is being done by America, by Russia, or by Churchill, and by the conclusion that Hitler and Germany really are the champions of right and that the English are being taken in. Don’t laugh – not since Iago used “trifles light as air” to lead Othello to his doom, has such a brilliant use been made of things which touch English life most deeply, to convince Englishmen that their allies are their enemies and to bring about the same result as in Othello’s case.
 
I tell you that if the British were as unsophisticated as the Poles proved in the face of Goebbel’s wiles, the United Nations would fall apart tonight. And I honestly think that in the desperate state in which the Nazis find themselves now, they are grasping at dissention among the Allies more than at secret weapons, as being their last hope.
 
No letter from you today. The last received were your #85 and 86 of July 31, the day before you left Springfield. Whether (as I suppose) you had no chance to write next day or got so far north as to run into the poor delivery zone, I don’t know yet.
 
You never have mentioned what arrangements (if any) you had been able to make for any help at The Anchorage. Something, I hope, which will give you some chance to rest yourself.
 
Missing letters to date are 12, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 76, 77, and 78.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #65
Aug. 8, 1944
Tuesday
 
Lucy darling:
 
Nothing from you today. I did receive a letter from Harry sent from Detroit June 26, which must have arrived here about the same time as your missing 38 to 46, that is, about July 2. After traveling redirected through two different navy numbers on the far shore, it was redirected back to Navy 100 and I got it today, after something over a month’s wandering. It may be that your 38 to 46 may therefore be expected shortly. I have started several traces after my missing laundry, which may seriously incommode me if I don’t get back my khaki uniforms.
 
The mail delivery between the U.S. and here is marvelous both ways. But once the mail has to start across to the far shore, it reminds me of the ox cart days on the Great Plains before the pony express got going. That’s amazing, because everything except the mail gets speedy dispatch almost every few minutes.
 
Life in London is getting very dull. There was not a single alert all day (or night) and I neither saw nor heard any bombs. Nevertheless Berlin assures me that a heavy attack is kept up continuously and further accuses the British ministry of outright falsehood in stating that effective counter measures are in service and that the Ministry is satisfied. They ask sarcastically if the people of London are as satisfied as the Ministry. If they are not, they should be. I enclose a clipping commenting on the next weapon (somewhat flippantly).
 
Another clipping from today’s paper is a picture of Major General Gale to whom long ago I promised a copy of Hell on Ice, which I’m beginning to think I’ll get for him when hell freezes over.
 
The third clipping makes me laugh. The Germans are stupider than I thought they were. Why, after we have a huge hole in their Channel defenses through which we could bring ten million men if we so wished, we should care about the remaining defenses, I can’t see. But if the Germans are wasting men, materials and guns piling up defenses along the Channel coast instead of before Paris, it certainly should be all right with us. I should have thought that if the poor dumb bells hadn’t learned from the Maginot Line the value of “unsurpassable barriers,” they would have learned on D-day, but apparently not. They are self hypnotized by their bellowing about “Festung Europa.” On top of all its other shortcomings as a fortress, it seems to have developed a lot of weak-kneed sisters among its defenders. I have a hunch that like the walls of Jericho, those of Festung Europa are shortly going to crash at the blast of a ram’s horn.
 
With love, Ned
 
PS 11 PM. The sirens are just starting to wail for the first alert today. Later. No bombs.
 
 
Letter #66
Aug. 9, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
Today your letters 77 and 78 showed up, but 76 didn’t. Nothing from you though since July 31 (#85 & 86) just before you left Springfield. I can imagine why not, however.
 
I received also a V-mail from Charles Kandel.
 
The weather has been better so far this month. While it’s cool every morning, by mid-afternoon it gets warm enough so that a heavy blue uniform is just a little on the not wholly comfortable side. No rain. All of which has been a great help to us since we broke through at St. Lo. Can you remember back to July 27?
 
It’s all quiet along the London front. Not a bomb, and only one alert now for two whole days in London. Berlin asserts this evening a heavy continuous V-1 attack on London. It adds that no effective defensive means has been found. That being the case, it is certainly remarkable how well the ineffective defensive means are doing.
 
I examined the group photograph you sent in #77 through a magnifying glass. I agree it is a good group – I thought both you and Mary looked lovely, and I particularly admired your hair. I also scanned you for battle-scars, but you hadn’t yet broken your toe and the other honorable wounds didn’t show. On first glance, it also looked as if you were wearing a decoration pendant from your neck between your breasts and I examined that more closely to see if it weren’t the Purple Heart, but it weren’t.
 
Meanwhile the battle in France goes better than any expectations. Our secret weapon (a general whose name is a deep secret) is running wild in central France and Brittany, and along the Caen front the Germans can neither hold nor get away safely. Rommel will still regret that he was ever damned fool enough to stand and fight so close to our bases and so far from his. I suppose von Rundstadt is saying (but not out loud) “I told you so.” By the time von Kluge and Rommel get away from the Orne, they won’t have any more remnants of a mechanized army than Napoleon had of the Grand Army when he emerged from his Russian campaign.
 
And meanwhile Hitler is worried to death over where the next amphibious operation is going to smack him. The “war of nerves” has come home to roost with a vengeance.
 
With love, Ned
 
PS Your 87 & 88 just arrived this morning as I mail this. I haven’t read them yet.
 
 
Letter #67
August 10, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
It was a pleasure when I came into the office this morning to find there your first two letters since you left Springfield, #87 and 88. And also one from Mary of Aug. 5.
 
I am glad you had a leisurely and pleasing trip, even with a flat tire en route. After all, what’s a flat tire except a minor annoyance, when you don’t have to take the tire apart on the road and patch it? But it does pay now to travel only the main highways on long journeys, so that help is reasonably available. (And usually they are also the shortest and the smoothest, which saves gas). How much gas did you use from Westfield to Southwest?
 
About your question on a revised estimate of income tax, none has to be made on Sept. 15. It can go till Dec. 15. Actually, the fact that General Foods reduced its dividend won’t make much difference. And I included very little from Craftsweld in the estimate, though more I think than you’ll get.
 
You have made no mention of whether you were able to get Mrs. Rice, or anyone in her place, to lend you a hand with the housekeeping. I earnestly hope you were able to get help, so that your visit doesn’t turn into just housekeeping under more difficult conditions. What I should like is that you as well as your guests should all have a lazy time just looking at the sea, the mountains, the rocks, and the pines, with broiled lobsters, steamed clams, popovers and marmalade, and blueberry pies filling in the gaps between looks.
 
For myself, I dream about the time when again I can sit on our porch at breakfast and look over the harbor towards Cadillac (Ed: a mountain), or heave the dingy in with the outhaul, or go pounding closehauled into the wind outside Baker Island with all Mount Desert spread gorgeously out in front of me over the waves. Of course that isn’t everything I dream about, but it will give you an idea.
 
What shape did you find The Anchorage in? And how about Southwest Harbor as a whole? Were many cottages open? Who was there we know?
 
Mary’s letter did not give me any information that was new. Since it was written the day before their return to Meade, presumably she had none. Did they drive their own car up from Meade this time? If not, then whose car did they use on leave? And if Ned goes overseas, do you know whether they intend to keep that car or to sell it? I can’t remember whether the Benson’s have a two car garage, but I think not. While I can’t imagine Mary having any pressing need for a car if Ned goes away, still if there are no extra costs for a garage, it might pay them to keep the car at least the rest of this year while their license and insurance is paid. I have an idea that car will increase in value as soon as the war is over and gasoline rationing eases up, for there won’t be any new cars very soon and its principal drawback, gas consumption, won’t be so important.
 
As a matter of interest, your letter from Portland was postmarked Aug. 1, 11 PM. Your letter from Southwest, written Aug. 2, was postmarked Aug. 3, 5 PM. Both got here by 9 AM Aug. 10. Mary’s letter postmarked Westfield Aug. 5, 5:30 PM arrived the same time.
 
I judge it takes a Maine letter two days to come down to N.Y., presumably the same time to go up. I have put air mail stamps on the last five letters to see whether that helps any in the U.S. However, my #51 which was mailed here on the morning of July 27 was delivered on Aug. 2, six days later, which is fine.
 
I went this morning with a Captain Pickering here to see a preview of “The Story of Dr. Wassell.” This is such a mixture of fact and romance that it has me puzzled. Have you seen it? It happens to be the first movie I’ve seen in London.
 
Captain Pickering (if I haven’t mentioned this before) was j. g. and my turret officer on the Texas when I was junior officer as an ensign. He left the regular service in the early 1920’s and has had a factory of his own in Ansonia, Conn., since, though he’s been in the Reserve all the time too. He told me a week or so ago he had heard from his wife, to whom he had written about meeting me again here, that she had said we were friends of Rose Bristol Morgan, whom the Pickerings know very well. Pickering said he knew Bristol before he married Rose, who was then really quite slender and ravishing (can you believe it?) and that he felt the Bristol’s troubles were due to a lack of responsible balance in Bristol.
 
I found making tea on an upside down electric flat iron, too slow a process. Electric stoves are slow any way and flat irons are worse. I got myself a small bedside lamp (intended for blackouts) and with alcohol instead of oil in it, it is doing a fair job in boiling me water for a cup of tea.
 
Today again was free of both bombs and alerts, except for one alert this evening during dinner, and then there were no explosions within hearing, at any rate.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #68
Aug. 11, 1944
Friday
 
Lucy darling:
 
No letter today. The last received was #88. The missing list is 12, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46 and 76.
 
The weather continues good.
 
I discovered the other day that the English-Speaking Union has its headquarters practically right across the street (on Charles Street near Berkeley Square) from the Red Cross Club where I usually get my lunch. I dropped in to examine it. The Union has quite a building, “Dartmouth House,” with several fine reception rooms, a library and a sizeable dining room. The house is one of the very spacious London mansions which was apparently built for semi-formal political purposes to suit or further the ambitions of its owner. I understand that was the way British politics used to be run; perhaps still. The house the Senior Officers’ Club has, formerly the home of Sir Philip Sassoon, is such another. (We had our windows blown out there a couple of weeks ago after lunch. Nobody hurt).
 
They were very cordial in the Union headquarters and said they’d send me an honorary membership card and urged me to use their building. Very nice of them, but right now I have more clubrooms I can go to than I know what to do with.
 
As I told you yesterday, I saw a preview of the film “The Story of Dr. Wassell.” On further consideration, if I were Dr. Wassell, I would sue the American film company who made it. In what is supposedly fact, they have tossed in a red hot triangle romance with Dr. Wassell as one of the angles. I’ll bet he squirmed when he saw it. Then they’ve given it enough comic relief to sink a ship.
 
I have been devoting some time to considering the basis of British government controlled broadcasting as exemplified by the B.B.C. vs. the American system of private enterprise supported by advertising. There is certainly a lot of tripe in both systems, but I believe the American listener on the whole gets a considerably superior type of program, particularly if he is a trifle selective in what he listens to. In Britain, regardless of what stations you tune in, you get your choice of only two programs – that’s all the B.B.C. serves up. And if you think soap operas are low, you should hear some of the twaddle and the tenth rate imitation music hall stuff that clutters up the B.B.C. programs. Our radio programs are as much ahead of the nationalized British offerings as Amer. Tel & Tel’s privately operated telephone service is ahead of the British government’s telephone service.
 
With love, Ned
 
PS I note when you stopped in Portland, you did not stop at the Danish Village. Is it closed, or are you cured?
 
 
Letter #69
August 12, 1944
Saturday
 
Lucy darling:
 
This appears to be clean-up day. When I arrived at my office this morning, there was quite a stack of letters (literally several inches high). On inspection, there were the following: #12, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, and 46, plus a couple of odd letters from cits, of last May. So that cleaned up all the old missing letters, even #12 which I had never expected to see. They’d all been on the far shore together, though how #12 ever got with the others I’ll never know.
 
So that left only #76 missing. After I got back from lunch, there was #76 reposing on my desk, together with a letter from Mary of July 24, mailed in Washington.
 
Now the slate is absolutely clean – there are no missing letters at all. If that could happen, I guess anything can – my missing laundry may show up yet.
 
To have made it a nearly perfect day, there should also have arrived another letter from you in Southwest Harbor, but none did. Nothing that way now for two days. #88 was your last received.
 
In looking over the just received letters, I note in your #42 the following “Sally said Ted isn’t returning to Milton. By starting Pingry this month, he will be able to graduate in January and then enter MIT. That way he’ll have had six months of college before he is 18 in July 1, 1945.” I pondered that. Why is it of any moment that Ted should have six months of college before he is 18? It seems to be of some importance if his family yanks him out of a private school which meant a lot to them to put him in Pingry (which means nothing to them) especially in June! If this is some cute little draft evasion or deferment scheme, since I note he’s to go to MIT and not Harvard, which I think it is, then Sally goes down several pegs in my estimation. This business of people’s feeling that “It’s all right to have somebody else’s husband or sons fight a war for me but mine? Never!” gives me a sharp pain. If they have any consciences, I do not see how they can sleep at nights. On whose sacrifices and sufferings should their freedom rest?
 
Your #40 brings to mind the old adage that one should never jump to conclusions, especially critical ones, even when the evidence looks convincing. In #40, you gently chide me for having let six days go by between my #10 of May 23, and my #11 of May 29 which you had just that day (June 22) received. Two days later in your #42 of June 24, you acknowledge receipt of a second #10 dated May 27, but no apologies for your previous strictures, albeit gentle ones. Is that doing your best in giving your struggling husband credit for doing as well as possible in a bad situation? At that time as I remember it at Selsey Beach, I was getting in off the water anywheres from 1 AM to 3 AM. Well anyway, even four days is a lot, to be avoided if avoidable.
 
Radio Berlin has stepped up the assault of the flying bombs to a new pitch, and so improved the aiming by new methods that they can now hit military targets in London alternately with explosive and incendiary loaded bombs. I must be living in a dream world or else Goebbels is, for in the last four days there has not been a total of over four alerts for the whole period, and I doubt that I’ve heard over six bombs that entire time. In fact, bombs are getting so few and far between now that we are beginning to forget about them altogether. There hasn’t been one all day today.
 
So after having heard that bit of news poured out by Berlin, I am a trifle skeptical of the next item which relates our terrific losses on the western front and the hundreds (we never lose less than a hundred) of tanks knocked out the day before by powerful Nazi counterattacks.
 
This is Saturday. London has been very quiet and three-quarters locked up (all locked up this afternoon). Londoners are taking weekends now for the first time in five years, and especially going to the beaches from which they’ve been barred since 1940. Actually the authorities are trying to keep them off the actual beach sands yet, at all the channel beaches, for they were once mined and while they have now been cleared of mines, there is not too much assurance of how thoroughly the job has been done. But at most beaches the crowds break right through what’s left of the barbed wire, in spite of the prohibitions. I’m damned if I’d take such a chance, even on a swept beach, just to go swimming. I’m afraid some of these holiday swimmers or baskers are going to get blown sky high yet.
 
We still seem to be doing all right, blitzkrieging around Brittany and central France. Rommel is probably out of it, but von Kluge suits me fine – he hasn’t any more sense of generalship than Rommel had. When it’s over in Normandy, there’ll be about as much left of that army as there was of von Paulus’ before Stalingrad.
 
Of course it may not be von Kluge’s fault. It is possible that the Germans are fooling themselves about what their flying bombs are doing and what consequently they can expect of what they call V-2 – when they get it going. Consequently von Kluge may in spite of his own better judgment, have been ordered at all costs to hang on where he is to cover the flying bomb and rocket launching areas while they win the war. I trust this is so, for that means the finish of the western German army, and as for V-1, it already is proved worthless as a military weapon, and I doubt myself that the much ballyhooed V-2 can do any better in effecting the outcome.
 
My opinion is that the skies are going to fall on the German armies in France within a few weeks. How any army can expect to last long when a huge force breaks through its flank and then starts to circle freely in its rear is beyond me. And then, not to give away any secrets, there is de Gaulle’s army, which we have been training and equipping for nearly two years now which as he says, will soon be in action. The Nazis have good reason to worry about where, but a good guess is that the French won’t fight on the Russian front. If I were Hitler, I should begin to take an interest in the new fall catalogs of wall paper designs.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #70
Aug. 13, 1944
Sunday
 
Lucy darling:
 
Another blank day – no letter. Still this is Sunday, and we don’t always have any mail delivered Sundays. Your last letter was #88 which I got three days ago.
 
As I told you yesterday, every missing letter of yours from #12 right through to 76 was delivered yesterday. There are now no missing letters whatever.
 
A very pleasant day today. I took a walk this morning down The Strand and along Fleet Street. While it can truly be said that flying bombs are doing little military damage, it is also true that for some odd reason (maybe Hitler abhors barristers) they have done plenty of legal damage. I believe more bombs have fallen in and close around the Temple Bar and the Inns of Court than in any other district, and I’ll bet that cases that haven’t seen the light of day since Dickens wrote “Bleak House” are now being thoroughly aired. It’s too bad, for some of London’s oldest buildings are in that area. One bomb fell there this morning. I don’t imagine anyone was around when it exploded, but it made a horrible mess of several four-storied old brick buildings which are just a heap of plaster and rubble now. I’ve noticed that the old buildings flatten out much worse from blast than newer construction. Bush House caught one about a month ago right on the doorstep, so to speak, but came through beautifully with slight local damage (lots of broken glass, of course), while the same thing knocks an ancient brick building into a cocked hat.
 
That ended my walk since the sight of destruction annoys me (I suppose I could stand it in Germany) and I came back, went to the Senior Officers’ Club for lunch, and then to my hotel. I put in the afternoon doing the washing and the ironing (remarkable how fast things dry here). Shirts, collars, pajamas, and underwear today (the underwear doesn’t get ironed). One of the inducements the recruiting officers always hold out in the Navy is that one can learn a useful trade for after life. They are right. When the war’s over, I can run a hand laundry.
 
I told you a week or so ago I was ordered to stand by to move on to the far shore again on about an hour’s notice. That lasted all of two hours, when it was cancelled. Then I was told simply to stand by and I’d go after a while. So I’m waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up. You can probably imagine what.
 
Since the mails are sometimes unduly delayed, and you will probably have to make a decision about September 1st as to what you’ll do at Southwest Harbor, I can only suggest that in the light of what I know right now, the only safe thing for you to do when you leave The Anchorage is to have it closed up for the winter. That is, if you have to leave and decide about September 1st. On the other hand, if Mary comes up and you decide to stay much later anyway, then the decision can be deferred and I may know something more in a few weeks. The probabilities are however, that it will be advisable for you to shut the place up for the winter when you leave, and bring the Chevrolet back with you. As I said once before, don’t leave it there. If you don’t have gas enough to get it all the way back to Westfield, drive it as far back as you reasonably can and then leave it in some reliable garage till we can get it the rest of the way later.
 
I notice in Mary’s letter of July 25 which lately arrived with your #76, that Mary states that after Ned leaves Meade, she will drive their car to Westfield, stay there till she’s sure he’s left the country, and then go to Maine (if it’s not too late). She adds that she’ll try to sell the car in Westfield. While I agree that I think they might as well sell the car, I should think they’d have a better market at Meade than in Westfield, but it’s too late for me to tell them that now. Aside from that, I don’t believe there should be any hurry in their selling the car (at least not till it’s license has run out) unless they can get a price which will repay all their outlay (tires, repairs, etc.). It is probable that car will also have a better market when gasoline rationing eases up on the east coast, as it should as soon as Hitler folds up. There is not going to be any immediate supply of new cars when the European war ends, and I do think there will be an increased demand for used cars, so if Mary can garage her car for some time yet, she shouldn’t let it go except at a satisfactory price. (And if they don’t need the money now, it might pay them to hold on to the car anyway for some time yet, if they have a place to store it). Too bad it isn’t over here – I think I could get a thousand dollars for it on this side, maybe more.
 
11 PM. Air raid alert. The first since 7:30 this morning when a few bombs came over. A little later. One distant explosion.
 
Tomorrow the BBC will announce “Last evening flying bombs came over southern England, including the London area. Some damage & casualties resulted.” And Radio Berlin will state “London was subjected to a heavy attack by V-1. The population is evacuating in a panic, and the dislocation of food supplies is such that black market operators, all Jews, have cornered all available food supplies and are selling them at fantastic prices. The Government is unable to cope with the situation.”
           
Since I guess that’s all to that raid, while the “All Clear” hasn’t sounded yet, I’ll turn in.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #71
Aug. 14, 1944
Monday
 
Lucy dearest:
 
The mail delivery spruced up today and I received four letters - #89 and 90 this morning, and #93 and 94 this afternoon. I trust 91 and 92 don’t delay arrival for a week or so.
 
I see my letters to Southwest Harbor are getting fairly rapid delivery. Yours coming this way seem to take longer; the delay I imagine is in getting to New York.
 
Thanks for sending the financial sheet and the News of the Week. About once a month on the financial news is satisfactory.
 
At the present moment, it appears that von Kluge is going to have to retreat fast or suffer disaster, and it’s certain he’ll take a terrible lacing in his retreat no matter how fast he pulls out of the Vire-Mortain salient. Now is when the Nazis are going to learn what it means to retire with the skies full of enemy planes and superior enemy artillery pounding them day and night. Maybe blitzkriegs, which they thought the acme of manly occupations in May and June of 1940, somehow look less appealing to them in the summer of 1944.
 
Thus is faith rewarded. I was sure Britain wouldn’t surrender or be beaten in 1940, and that Russia would neither crack nor be overwhelmed in 1941.
 
I am saddened to learn that Clarence has deserted his post. Possibly if we get there early enough next summer we can entice him back on the job.
 
By the way, if you don’t use the foc’l’se this summer, you can ask for and get a substantial reduction in your water bill. I did last summer.
 
I judge from your letters so far that you weren’t able to arrange in advance for Mrs. Rice, and her assistance is doubtful. I hope you have been able to get in touch with her since, or with someone else. Scrambling round to get provisions with no car or only limited use of one, then cooking, then dishwashing, can be pretty much of an all day occupation – good exercise, perhaps even highly interesting, but hardly restful.
 
Give Walter Hayward my regards and my best wishes for a commission. It is regrettable that his illness has set things back some months. If I’d known he was going to be in Southwest Harbor and also felt sure that Mary was going to be, I’d have ordered the Argo put in commission and they all might have had some fun in her. Now that will have to wait another summer. By the way, are there many races going on now?
 
You mention he thinks he’ll now get married in November. And you want me to answer whether I’ll be there to escort you to the wedding. I wouldn’t make any bets as to whether Walter Hayward gets married in November or not, if it depends on his getting a commission, for I have a hunch that by November the need for oodles more naval officers may not seem so pressing. (Of course there will still be something going on in the Pacific). As regards myself, I still hope to be home by Thanksgiving Day. And I’ll bear in mind what you promise about outmatching the guard at Buckingham Palace. I shouldn’t mind.
 
I enclose an editorial from the Evening Standard that I think is very appropriate.
 
With love, Ned
 
PS You haven’t mentioned how Clara is. Is she managing to get a proper rest?
 
 
Letter #72
Aug. 15, 1944
D-day the Second
 
Lucy darling:
 
Today the operation in support which we have had on the cards for a long time, was launched near Nice. Here there was no tide to complicate matters and the Germans had pretty well thinned out their southern troops to support the Normandy forces. The landings were relatively unopposed in the face of our assaulting fire (the Nazis have had all delusions of impregnable coast walls slugged out of them) and things went beautifully for our Riviera tourists. They are off to a good start, and as soon as they get their tanks  and guns well ashore, they are going to go through the Nazis in southern France at a good clip. The Nazis have relatively little armor in the south to oppose them. And the Marseillaise are a different breed of cats than the Normans. And Devers, who commands there, is pretty much of a rough guy.
 
The big secret has finally been officially released today – General Patton is announced as the commander of the Third Army, who started in at St. Lo about July 24 and has since torn the German opposition all to shreds in Brittany and central France. The Germans have known for over two weeks who was kicking them around. I’m just wondering whether it wasn’t kept secret to prevent an American mutton-headed outcry from pushing Patton out of the command before he put the Nazis in a box. My own hope is that Patton will now receive something besides brickbats for what he’s done for his country.
 
At present everything is going well. With the heat being put on von Kluge’s army while it is on the fire, matters along the Brittany coast are just over the simmerer, so to speak, and I’m still admiring the scenery around here.
 
No letter from you today, but I did get a letter sent by one of my Massawa assistants, James Cook, from New Guinea, via 11 Broadway, 714 Hanford & Southwest Harbor, and readdressed in your handwriting from there and postmarked S.W. Harbor Aug. 9, 8 AM. If that thing could come along, why not your letters 91 & 92 mailed several days before it?
 
I received a V-mail letter from Mary Adams today.
 
I enclose a cartoon indicating a British (and a London British at that) view of the desperate state of panic we are in over here.
 
I can remember the days when I was younger when the German General Staff used to have nightmares about having to fight a war on two fronts at once. Now Hitler’s military genius has them involved on so many fronts at once that they’ll have to start using the fingers of both hands to keep track of the numbers. I have an idea an officer on the German General Staff now feels it’s a relief to be hanged so he can quit worrying before he goes crazy.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #73
August 16, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
No mail today from you. The system may safely be said to be erratic. The last letter received was #94. 91 and 92 are missing.
 
Matters still are proceeding satisfactorily. Southern France will be discovered to be pretty much of a hollow shell, so far as effective German defense is concerned. In a couple of weeks we shall learn whether Laval and Petain flee to Germany, stay to be captured, or postpone the reckoning a bit by moving into northeastern France. Vichy will be finis by then.
 
The curtain is coming down on Rommel’s original army that was going to hurl us back into the sea. By the time you get this, what’s left of it will be on its way out of Normandy, looking for a convenient river on which to rest its left flank, with that brute Patton slapping it in the face each time it strives to get over its shock and look like an army again.
 
The weather continues good for operations. It hasn’t rained since the end of July, and the grass in the parks and gardens is starting to burn up, but I guess we can all stand that. It’s somewhat warmer also. I shouldn’t wonder the English think it’s hot.
 
Nothing much is happening around here. Axis Sally (Midge) is missing from radio Berlin – maybe she’s been mobilized by Goebbels in his total war effort. Still I can’t understand that, for her place is being taken by a man with a not particularly effective American voice. However, in spite of that we continue to be hurled back on all fronts with severe losses – today they were unusually severe losses. You will be interested to know that when Berlin rebroadcasts the Tokio bulletins of what has happened to us in the Pacific, that there the case is different; in the Pacific we are daily hurled back with devastating losses.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #74
August 17, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
The mail situation is, as usual, snafu, but it could be much worse. This morning, letters #91 and 92 were delivered, thus clearing up one delay, but #97 also arrived while 95 and 96 are still coyly holding out on me. I do not know what the explanation is.
 
I regret that I have been misunderstood (husbands often are) in your #91 where you intimate I thought your accidents were due to carelessness. I am quite sure I neither thought nor said that – what I upbraided you for severely and I thought devastatingly enough to prevent a repetition, was not for carelessness in having an accident (or a trio of them) but in not immediately getting a doctor when you jammed the scissors into your thigh, thus violating every known rule of first aid for the avoidance of infection. I’ll repeat it here – few people pass out from injuries whether cuts or legs blown off, but the number who pass out fromavoidable infections due to lack of immediate treatment is vastly greater. (See attached clipping). And who is Dr. Salvati, or any other doctor for that matter, that one should be so mindful of him as to let 12 hours pass after a deep wound just so he shouldn’t be disturbed? Bah! That you had three accidents is just too bad, but I am sure I have not criticized you for that – home is a dangerous place as the insurance company statistics will show and the bathtub is the most dangerous place in the home, for all of which reasons I seek the comparative safety of the battlefield.
 
I have no doubt that when I go to the far shore, any address will continue as Navy 100, certainly for a while anyway. When I have any better information, I’ll pass it along. Right now, I don’t know anything really. I have been standing by since July 4 and since that day I haven’t done a blessed thing, not knowing from day to day when I might move, or even where. Some people think war is one long succession of hazards and battles which break people down, but that’s rot – most of the shell shock cases you run across are of gibbering idiots who haven’t done anything for so long that they’ve become neurotic – when confronted with the need for action, their atrophied mentalities have given way. The real horror of war is just plain boredom.
 
About the station wagon. I said before that the best thing to do with it is to drive it home when you go. In spite of a dubious spare tire (and perhaps other dubious tires) that is still the best thing to do. Take it as far as your gas will take you; all the way since I judge from your lack of comment otherwise that you will have gasoline enough for that. As regards the tires, I wouldn’t worry about them. You don’t have to make a deadline on your return, and I never saw a tire that couldn’t be patched or lined so it wasn’t good for a few hundred miles more. You mention grade 3 tires as available. I’ve never heard of them, and probably compared to a standard tire that will go 15000 or 20000 miles, they are lousy; but if you need a tire that will take you 500 miles, it certainly can beat that, so get one if you have any doubts. Anyway, take the car home with you as far as gas or tires get you.
 
Talking about cars, I mentioned before, and you can pass this along to Mary, that unless she needs the money right now (which is doubtful) she and Ned will be well advised to put their car on ice and not sell it right now. It will be useful to them when Ned comes home again, and I think will command a higher price in the year after the war ends than right now.
 
I am deeply sorry to learn of the deaths of Mrs. Davenport and Miss Marcus. They were both real personalities, though quite different.
 
As regards Clara’s wondering whether I’d like to become a British subject, such a thing never entered my head. To paraphrase Gilbert and Sullivan about another sailor,
            “But in spite of all temptations
            To belong to other nations,
            He remains an American!” Why, of course!
 
I have learned just enough in my moderate years so far as to know the essential emptiness in inner satisfaction that goes with titles, with medals, or with public acclaim. Not that I mind them, but to sacrifice anything real for any of them is plain folly. That is something I’ve learned at least since my naval academy days. It will take far more than lack of recognition to pry me loose from the United States. Actually, I can’t imagine anything that could.
 
Thanks for sending me the clippings from the Bangor News, particularly the one about President Roosevelt commissioning the first Revenue Cutter officer back in 1790. There is something in the subconscious state of mind which lead the printer to make the error, and of the unthinking acceptance of it by the vast majority of readers who accepted it as natural, that warrants serious thought about perpetual tenure of office. What could Hitler really have done to Germany or the world, if he had not thought himself indispensable to it? Or Mussolini? Or Julius Caesar? Or Napoleon? Or Joe Stalin? The Lord preserve us from these indispensable men, who never cease moulding us to their heart’s desires, not ours, till death alone frees us from them.
 
Yes, I knew Moon. He was a classmate of Admiral Mullinix, who went out on the solitary escort carrier we lost in the attack on Tarawa. Moon had been through the Sicilian and Italian landings, then under considerably greater and far more prolonged strain in awaiting and carrying through his assault force attack on D-day here. After that he was shot right back to the Mediterranean, with no rest between, to lead the naval assault which took place a few days ago on the Riviera. (He was the only one of the assault commanders in the Channel who was returned to the Med. for that purpose). I guess he died as a result of “combat fatigue” as the Secnav put it, all right. What he needed was a rest when he got through in the Channel, but he was the only one who didn’t get it.
 
This afternoon I received the shipping notice from Dodd, Mead on the copy of Hell on Ice you asked Howard Lewis to send. I suppose the book itself will be along in a couple of weeks.
 
The news tonight is very encouraging. Patton has taken Chartres, and Dreux, and also Orleans. Von Kluge is certainly cut off from Paris, which Patton can certainly take when it pleases him. He’ll probably make sure he is well between it and von Kluge before he bothers with Paris itself. Meanwhile von Kluge is trying to get the remnants of his army away from Falaise. There won’t be many remnants to take across the Seine. And yet the Germans pride themselves on knowing the art of war! The damned fools should never have tried fighting so far from their bases and right in our back yard. Hitler will learn who the real military idiots are very shortly.
 
 
Letter #75
August 18, 1944
Friday
 
Lucy darling:
 
I’ve caught up on the mail again. Your 95 and 96 were delivered today, and also 98 and 99.
 
I loved your description of walking over the cushion of moss and needles that carpets our forest. It is beautiful both to touch and to see, and I look forward to the day (surely not later than next summer) when I can revel in it with you to my heart’s content.
 
I am very glad to know that the weather has stayed dry, clear, and even warm to hot. When you are not staying the whole summer, a few weeks of fog can be very disagreeable.
 
You have made no further mention of Mrs. Rice, so I’m afraid she never came to help. I’m sorry.
 
The papers here have mentioned the extreme heat along the Atlantic seaboard, confirming what the Bangor News has to say about Bangor. A few afternoons here have been a little uncomfortable for a blue uniform, but that’s all. New York City must be really hot, and as for Camp Meade, I should think that would be baking.
 
I’ve heard nothing from Mary since Aug. 6, the day they went back; I’ve written her only one letter addressed to Camp Meade about that time. Until I hear again from her, I have no idea where to write.
 
I notice you mention in your 98 that the news from Brittany “is thrilling to read about and to listen to over the radio.” I hoped you took the portable radio set with you to Maine, and from your comment, apparently you did. Is that so?
 
Talking about collaborationists, I trust that in the southern France campaign now getting underway, the French get their hands on the generals and their assistants responsible for the massacre in the village of Oradour, and string them up without too much red tape. The Russians did that at Kharkov, and I think it had a good effect since. Some such punishment might also act as a deterrent to the wrecking of French cities as the Germans retreat.
 
It is regrettable that Ruth Lawrence is having trouble with Miss Marcus’ brothers over her will. It aggravates me to think that some relatives believe that willy-nilly they are entitled to inherit even though they have done nothing in the way of friendliness or companionship during the lifetime of the deceased, rather than some friend who has actually done something to lighten the burdens and cheer the life of the person involved. I trust Miss Marcus’ brothers have their troubles for their pains. I see no reason why her will shouldn’t stand up. The queerest thing about the whole business though is the illustration of the fact that some men never comprehend that a woman really owns anything of her own.
 
I’ll reiterate here (in case the other letters are delayed) that in spite of gasoline or tire troubles, I think it best that you take the station wagon back with you when you go, or as far towards home as your gasoline and/or tires will take you. As I think this subject has now been covered in enough different letters, I won’t mention it again. I doubt that you will have any real difficulty so far as tires are concerned; it is always possible to keep your four best tires repaired enough to get along, even though you lose a day or so en route while they are being repaired. Think of the perils of the Overland Trail – Indians, blizzards, starvation, thirst! What’s a flat tire (or even five of them) compared to the dangers your great-grandmother overcame without dropping a stitch in her knitting as she drove along behind her sturdy oxen? I’ll back you against your great-grandmother any day in getting the family chariot through in spite of all the perils of the road.
 
I enclose a clipping on the flying bombs, which is of interest for several reasons, one the reference to Sir Ernest Gowers, and the other the mention finally of the damages around Buckingham Palace. Two bombs fell close together in point of landing but several weeks apart in time, near Buckingham Palace, and these were the two that fell closest to me. I mentioned them at the times of occurrence. Only one of these bombs (the second one) is mentioned in this clipping.
 
To my knowledge, no one was killed or injured by either of these bombs, which landed one on either side of the palace garden wall, but they didn’t leave a window unbroken in the palace or in any of the buildings fronting the gardens. St. George’s Hospital which faces this place, lost all its windows in the first blast, all its cellophane substitutes in the second blast, and now with its windows covered with tar paper and what little cellophane it can get, defiantly awaits the third blast.
 
In your #99, which came this afternoon, there is finally some news of Mary. Presumably she has already moved to Westfield. I’ll write her there now and if she has moved up to Southwest, the letter will at least be forwarded to the right place.
 
I trust Mary does get there before her birthday, and that you all have a party then. You will remember that on Mary’s fifteenth birthday we all went down the Riviera to the last village on the French side, Mentone, for her birthday party. They’ll celebrate Mary’s birthday along the Riviera this year in quite grand style. We’ll go back again and celebrate there once more on our own account.
 
My humble apologies for not commenting on the card in your #86. I thought it was lovely, and that the little girl pictured in it showed that angelic demureness characteristic of the sender. And I adored the affectionate message with it. But I said nothing then, and it’s no use saying anything now.
 
You needn’t worry if we have to assault either Ireland or Argentine to get our hands on the major devils responsible for this war. If it has to be done there are plenty of people who have never been outside the United States to handle the matter. It won’t prolong anything for those involved in the war already. And if it’s necessary, it will be highly necessary for future world peace and a chance for anybody to live at home in some safety.
 
You want to know how long the war will last? I don’t know, but I do know it will be over here before Thanksgiving Day.
 
A day or two ago I think I wrote that I gave Laval and Petain a couple of weeks to get out of Vichy, and was a little curious as to where they’d head then. The enclosed clippings indicate the boys are much faster on their feet than I suspected, and it appears they are now in Metz, cuddling up against the German border, ready for the last jump. I wonder if Laval will ever get out of France alive.
 
I noted the clipping you sent on Captain Ives. (Ed: Captain Norman Ives was director of the Port of Cherbourg at the time). I knew him well since the S-4 days, when he was made captain of the raised S-4 and with Momsen, did considerable work on submarine escape & rescue means. I met him again over here, and last had a pleasant visit with him in Cherbourg when I was there just after it was taken. I enclose a story from the Stars and Stripes here. This happened just south of Avranche on the road toward St. Malo, Aug. 2. A Lt. Comdr. Hooper and several seamen were killed in the same battle. This was a very sad affair.
           
There are a few other clippings of some interest.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #76
August 19, 1944
 
Lucy dearest:
 
As I said the other day, the mail situation is still snafu. Yesterday I received four letters. Today when consequently I expected nothing, this afternoon I received three more, 100, 101, and 102. That’s seven letters in two days. I presume now there will be a drought for a while. However, a five day delivery for your #102 from Southwest Harbor is excellent. Whether or not airmail stamps will make any difference in the U.S., you may already have learned. I’m dubious about it.
 
I am glad to see that as of Aug. 14 you are going to have Mrs. Rice at least as part time help. Never mind the expense, so long as it takes some of the burden off you.
 
No, my missing laundry is still missing. It has never come back from France. It is a month and a half now since it was sent there.
 
Thanks for the clipping about Sid Coe. I’m happy to see it.
 
Funny our letters crossed about the English Speaking Union. I now have the honorary membership card they sent me, and I’ve been there once since.
 
From your second comment on using it, I judge you did bring your portable radio up with you. It’s a good idea. There was an antennae wire over the window (inside the room) that you might hook it up to (possibly you have already) to improve the reception. It seems to me that radio had an antennae of its own, but if the end of that antennae were twisted onto the other (bare wire to bare wire) it helps.
 
As you stated, I haven’t yet started on the job I came for. Till we have acquired the locations, there’s no telling how much or how little the task will turn out to be, or whether there is any at all. At present, no heat is being put on the problem by the army, which is more interested right now on matters along the Seine. So I’m just twiddling my thumbs (not very patiently). Under these circumstances there is no use your figuring on staying at The Anchorage until October on my account. If you wanted to stay on yours or Mary’s that’s another matter, but by then I’m afraid you and Mary would have too much physical labor with the fireplace, and more even with the furnace. So I don’t recommend it. You will know as well as I (without my telling you) from the news reports when the day comes that this task can even be surveyed. I do not like this situation at all, but right now nothing can be done about it. When there is the slightest change, I’ll let you know.
 
With Love, Ned
 
PS Let me know what you intend to do as soon as you know. That is of course wound up with Mary’s uncertainties just now, I appreciate.
 
 
Letter #77
August 20, 1944
Sunday
 
Lucy darling:
 
Having received seven letters in the past two days (#102 is the latest with none missing) I naturally expected nothing today and was consequently not disappointed when I didn’t find any in my office. Besides, we rarely get any mail delivered on Sunday.
 
The weather here changed yesterday and rained for the first time in three weeks, and this morning was worse. Of course they could use rain here; things were somewhat burned up. It rained yesterday in France also after a long dry spell in which our troops and air forces made hay while the sun shined. I am not certain that the rain yesterday did the broken army of von Kluge any good; it’s entirely possible that now that he desperately needs to move, mud will hurt him worse than us, for we have the better roads to work on (and less interference).
 
The last few days the results have been marvelous. Von Kluge’s army is being slaughtered, both physically and in its mechanized equipment. The results of Rommel’s strategy and of his, have worked out better than my fondest hopes – the twin idiots have already suffered a worse disaster than my wildest dreams, and the end for them is not yet over. Their shattered remnants will be scourged to annihilation. Not least of the benefits is that the more fanatical Nazis in his army caught in the Falaise pocket are fighting to the death and not surrendering. They’ll die there, all right, which will give us so many fewer Nazis to cope with after the war. Von Kluge will cross the Seine with just about as effective an army as Napoleon had left when he crossed the Beresina at the end of his retreat from Moscow. The days of the Huns in France are decidedly numbered – for most of France, you can count them now on the fingers of your two hands.
 
I enclose several clippings from today’s London papers on various aspects of the situation. I particularly appreciated Hore-Belisha’s (Ed: an M.P.) article, both for his realization that Hitler never was able to invade Britain (many people suffer the delusion that he could but made the mistake of not doing it) and for his clear warning that it is up to Britain (and her allies) not to let Germany have another chance. The second clipping on the program of the Conservative group also appeals to me. (The Labour Party in Britain seems at the moment to be more interested in how to secure the life more abundant in pounds, shillings, and pence, than to insure any life at all by having a realistic foreign policy). The other clippings give some British views and a report on what’s happening to the collaborators in France. I particularly enjoyed reading Hitler’s prophecies – more especially since back in 1940 and 1941 the only prophecy I ever made (when the weight of expert opinion was otherwise) was that Hitler would roll in the mud and that I should help to roll him there. I still think that I’m a better prophet than either Hitler or George Fielding Eliot.
 
The rain this morning allowed the Nazis to slip through a few more bombs than they usually get in. One of them landed closest of any yet – 400 yards off. The flash of the explosion looked like lightening and the curtains blew in as if a squall had suddenly struck them (the windows were wide open, of course). The bomb landed on the roof of a new ten story building quite close to where I normally get lunch (across the street from the club which sent me an honorary card a few days ago). Since it was nearly lunchtime, I went over to look. There was the usual shattered glass, and some brick and metal roofing decorating the square (my bank on that square had its front door taken completely off its hinges, but so far as I could judge, my deposit was still intact in the safe. This is the first time the bank had its door open on Sunday). All the glass was out on two sides of the building struck, but not on the other two sides. The amount of the structural damage to the building was amazingly slight, showing what a modern steel-framed (brick-sheathed) building will stand, as compared to the ancient brick buildings which collapse like play houses. Unfortunately, though it was an office building, some of the offices were running even on Sunday. I don’t know whether anybody inside was killed (I doubt it) but the Civil Defense Rescue Workers brought out four injured women on stretchers whom I saw. Oddly enough, in the side of the building away from the explosion, you could see the office forces in there continuing with their work. I don’t think Goebbels would like that. He thinks everyone here is in a panic over his damned bombs (which they are not) and he further vastly overrates what damage they do. To know that he got a direct hit on an office building with a lot of people not bothering enough about it but to keep right on their desks would make him mad enough to start another purge, this time on his secret weapon dumbkopfs who can’t turn out anything more effective than this.
 
Since the Civil Defense had everything well in hand and there was nothing I could do, I went to lunch about fifty yards away. By one of those freaks, neither my lunch club nor the other one across the street from it even lost a pane of glass, so I didn’t have to pick any glass out of my stew. The Red Cross girls serving lunch had felt the shock well enough, but it was business as usual with them. After that I went back to my hotel and did the laundry. Not a very good drying day today.
 
With much love, Ned
 
 
Letter #78
August 21, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
Curses on this thin paper on which it is difficult even to write, but it’s all I have in my room just now.
 
I had a letter from Mary today from Fort Meade on August 15, giving me the news up to then. As you no doubt know it, I’ll not comment. Mary may be with you by the time you get this. I wrote her immediately giving her some advise, and sent it to Westfield, but it may be forwarded to you instead of being delivered to her at 714 Hanford (one cannot rely on what the post office will do), and consequently in case she is still waiting in Westfield for some time, I repeat what I said there. You will know whether it needs to be passed along. I do not recommend her going to any school like Katherine Gibbs this fall. I think the value to her will be exactly what it was in May Davidon’s case – a waste of time and money never to be made up by a hypothetical better position afterwards for a brief time. The second thing I advised was that if they had not already sold their car, it is better to keep it unless they have a pressing need for money which I can’t imagine.
 
I hope Mary had nothing but a few days wait in Westfield, however, and that she is with you already in Maine. She mentioned also that Diana might go up with her. I hope so, and if so, give Diana my welcome to The Anchorage.
 
No letter from you today.
 
The weather has continued rainy in France and also here.
 
I enclose clippings which may interest you. One of them contains a more accurate report of a matter I wrote you of yesterday. It appears the upper part of the building was residential. The account is in one way humorous. The episode took place “in Southern England yesterday.”  You will observe that a “Daily Telegraph Reporter” quotes what various people thereabouts “said to me.” Remarkable how fast the Daily Telegraph gets its reporters to Southern England.  All this reminds me of a standing joke of the last war: “The Prime Minister arrived at an American Port for a discussion. He was welcomed by Grover Whalen, representing Mayor Hylan.”
 
Still six people were killed, probably all on the top floor, which was rather a penthouse effect, and there is no humor in that.
 
I think the two pictures of Margaret Rose are charming. The last impressions we have of her are as a little girl of six, dutifully waving her hand from the balcony of Buckingham Palace under, as I remember it, Queen Mary’s guidance.
 
The Evening News throws the spotlight on a different angle of what’s beginning to engage the thoughts of British women. I don’t blame them (or American ones either). They are evidently figuring on wearing themthis winter, since evening dresses are not summertime apparel. I think they are right. What’s the significance of bright cherry? Is that a camouflaged name for bright red? (Which I think has a meaning).
 
Then the picture of the Palazzo Vecchio decorated with British Tommies gave me a nostalgic thrill. I see “The Bag of Melons” has escaped any German cultural corrective attentions.
 
The gibe at Laval made me laugh.
 
I heard Montgomery on the radio today in a message to the troops regarding the victory in Normandy over the German Seventh Army. Somehow I like that man. Always have. As an added attraction, he speaks with a nasal twang that you’d swear was Yankee.
 
The war in France goes better every day now. Another dry spell would be a help to even more satisfactory results, but we should thank God for the last three weeks and not grumble over a few wet days to interfere with air action now.
 
I often wonder how dumb the German people really are. Since June 5, they have heard the following from Goebbels:

1. The Atlantic Wall is impregnable. No landing is possible.
2. We never said a landing was impossible. However, our troops will push the enemy back into the sea in nine hours.
3. We had no intention of stopping the invasion immediately. What we desire is to let the whole Anglo-American army get on French soil so we can destroy them all and end once for all this nonsense about continuing the war.
4. France, her provinces and her large cities are of no importance. We withdrew from them to preserve our freedom of movement, and to gain time for the use of our new secret weapons which will change entirely the concept of war from outmoded methods (including, I suppose, the Wehrmacht, which is certainly outmoded).

 
That’s where it stands at the moment. All I have to say about the Germans if they continue to believe Goebbels’ outpourings is to paraphrase a famous remark of the Duke of Wellington to a smart aleck who said to him, “Mr. Brown, I believe?” to which Wellington’s answer was “If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. Stand aside, sir!”
 
Germany’s tank forces, air forces, and armies are being so visibly kicked around and kicked to pieces on all sides each day as to make it difficult to believe that only a couple of years ago they made the world shiver with the thought that the German soldier was invincible. The German soldiers as I’ve seen them coming in look like rats – there isn’t even any manhood about most of them, for even in defeat a man still looks like a man if he is one. But there will be far fewer rats to plague the world in a very brief time. It won’t be long now.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #79
August 22, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
Three letters from you this morning all together – 103, 104, and 105, all postmarked out of SWH Aug. 16, 103 at 8 AM and the other two at 5 PM. Whether the airmail stamps make any difference in transit to N.Y. I doubt, as the results seem to be about the same as on the letters from SWH before you put them on. However, they may occasionally help a bit so I see no harm in their continued use.
 
I appreciated very much the cartoons you enclosed, particularly the one about the experienced cat showing the young idea how to “get your back into it.” Our cats evidently had been well trained.
 
In reply I enclose a clipping from today’s Times on the dog side of it. I always knew that Scotties had their hearts in the right place – I’ll bet that even lovable little Babbie would have reacted instinctively in the same circumstances.
 
When we can again have a pet, I’m for letting someone else let the cats get their backs into it, while we stick to Scotties.
 
The weather here continues bad – mist, overcast, and some fog. This has the disadvantage (among others) of letting the Nazis get more bombs through the defenses than usual. Last night two of them woke me up at different times, noisy enough to make me get out of bed to see if they were headed my way, but they went right and left. The damned things make a noise like a motorcycle running all out with no mufflers right over the roofs. We have a good air raid shelter in the basement of our hotel, and since I’m on the 1st floor (we’d call it the second storey) right by the stairs, I could get down in a hurry in case of need. There hasn’t been any yet. It so happens my window looks out southeast towards Westminster Abbey, which is the direction they all come from, so if they come at all near, day or night, I can always see them and take evasive action if advisable.
 
Darling, it is perfectly all right for you to write me love letters on your thin paper – I wish we had nothing more than that thin paper separating us – it is so easily both seen and broken through, like your black filmy nightie. Each night and morning I look longingly at your pictures, in particular those two taken in Fanwood where you smile at me so lovingly that separation seems intolerable.
 
With love my dear, Ned
 
 
Letter #80
Aug. 23, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
No mail today, but that’s not surprising. It seems to be postmarked out of S.W.H. in bunches every two or three days only.  Three letters, 103, 104 and 105 came yesterday, all postmarked the same day.
 
This afternoon the weather cleared beautifully after several days of rain, mist, and fog which did us no good either here or in France. Now there is a gorgeously clear sky overhead and I guess the air force will be out en masse where they can do the most good, and our A.A. and fighter force will get a better chance to see and knock down the flying bombs. Good weather has never meant so much to me before as it has these last few months.
 
Over in France things are going much better than hoped for. The lacing that the German Seventh Army got in the Falaise pocket was terrible and they’ve certainly lost 300,000 men on a conservative estimate since D-day, over half of everything von Rundstedt, Rommel, and von Kluge ever had in Normandy. A good part of the rest of that army and most of their mechanized equipment will be gone before they get over the Seine.
 
As regards the rest of France, the Maguis are having an easier time than anticipated. Two days ago I wrote that in ten days most of France would be liberated – it appears now it won’t take that long. The day of retribution is at hand – already in many places in France the collaborationists are being tried and shot and with them will go such of the Gestapo as the FFI get their hands on and that will be plenty. Up to a few days ago, Goebbels regularly announced on the radio in his commentary on the war news “Yesterday 100 (or 200 or 300) terrorists were wiped out in France.” For some days now such announcements have been completely absent from all Nazi broadcasts. Possibly Goebbels has suddenly seen the imprudence of such comments with his own Gestapo now exposed to reprisal, but whether he has or not, the “terrorists” have the situation so well in hand that their enemies, not they, are the sole targets of the firing squads. No Frenchman, with the memory of Oradour so fresh in mind, is going to show the slightest compunction when the vultures, whether Nazi or French, who for four agonizing years were plucking at the soul of France, now are seized in their flight. Hitler is going to learn that the game of shooting what he is pleased to call “franc-tireurs” can work both ways. And every British soldier marching into Germany is going to be just as interested as the French and the Poles and the Russians in seeing that summary justice with the rope is done to the Nazi overlords responsible for all this. Psychologically, Hitler and Goebbels chose the wrong moment for what they are so gaily calling “reprisal weapon #1.”
 
I have just finished reading a small book I bought yesterday, “How to Treat the Germans,” by Emil Ludwig. It was probably published also in the United States, possibly last fall. The edition I have is British. Surprisingly enough, his recommendations are greatly similar to those of the Conservative MPs whose program I sent you in a clipping a few days ago. Ludwig’s analysis of German character and mentality is lucid and convincing. I think it explains why the Germans in America, when away from Bunds and Turnverein, can individually make fine citizens, but why in Germany (or clustered in groups in America) they continue (or revert to type) to become highly dangerous to the peace of the world. In general, I believe the corrective programs suggested are possible and the only ones likely to have lasting beneficial results.
 
If you haven’t or can’t conveniently get this book, I’ll send you mine. It will easily go in a first class letter, it’s quite thin.
 
Later – Midnight
 
“The Day of Glory Has Arrived!”
 
The news tonight has been electrifying – Paris is free, Marseilles is captured, Rumania is knocked out of the war! Patch in the south has Grenoble and is racing north, Patton’s tanks are streaming up east of the Seine, Montgomery is plunging ahead west of it, and overhead the planes are tearing von Kluge into shreds! I see now what the glowing sunlight of this afternoon indicated. Hitler’s house of cards is collapsing about his ears!
 
In a swelling chorus of triumph the Allied stations are roaring out the news in English, in French, and in German and never have I heard the Marseillaise played and sung with so much meaning. The German stations, all of them, are suddenly interested only in jazz and in classical broadcasts – not one of them has come on the air in English to comment on the situation, and so far as I can make them out, the German statements in German are very brief and mainly announcements of their musical programs.
 
The shock in Berlin over Romania’s defection after one strong smash from Russia, must be terrific. That Paris and southern France were slipping, Hitler could foresee though he was counting evidently on more delay, but the Balkan collapse must have been unexpected, and it is a solar plexus blow. Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland will certainly hasten now to abandon the sinking (and stinking) Nazi ship; Russia has huge southern armies freed for other fronts. Things will snowball up from now on, and it will not surprise me to see another and more successful assassination attempt shortly on Der Fuehrer.
 
I am positively intoxicated at today’s events! If only I had you in my arms now my joy would be complete! But the end is in sight! And sooner than I dreamed of!
 
With love and longing, Ned
 
PS At this moment the German radio station can find nothing more apropos to work on than “Indian Love Call.”
 
 
Letter #81
Aug. 24, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
No mail either yesterday or today. Tomorrow I shouldn’t be surprised to get three letters.
 
This afternoon I went to Westminster Abbey to hear the chimes rung in special celebration of the freeing of Paris. Over the Abbey, the French and British flags flew from a single staff, both run up side by side to the peak in close union, symbolic perhaps. I have never seen flags flown that way before.
 
For an hour, from four to five, the bells rang out wildly and continuously while I and others stood in a pouring rain before the Abbey, listening and watching the flags of France and Britain, welded into one by the rain, streaming out over England’s shrine.
 
The last time I heard those bells (the last time they chimed) was on November 4, 1942 in Massawa, when over the radio, their music with that of other English cathedrals pealed out triumphantly for the victory of El Alemain. Two years ago nearly. As I thought of all we had gone through to make this possible, it made tears come to my eyes. At El Alemain we were taking the first step along the hard road to victory; today our struggles have brought us near the end of it. Never will I forget the swelling music of those bells ringing out – a fitting sign of triumph over evil, of the resurrection of liberty from its ashes. Some of those bells in the Abbey tower rang out to celebrate the defeat of the Armada in 1588, but never have they rung with more meaning than they rang today.
 
The real event of military significance yesterday was neither the fall of Paris nor of Marseilles, but the defection of Rumania. This is likely, I think, not only to bring about the swift collapse of Germany in the Balkans, but will I believe have an important effect on the Italian front. I believe it will cause the German High Command, if it has any sense and is not wholly dominated by Hitler’s intuition, to abandon its plans for Kesselring’s stand along the so called Gothic Line just south of the Po Valley, and withdraw his forces from Italy altogether as rapidly as possible to set up a new front to try to hold Hungary against a Balkan drive, or failing that, to form a front to protect Austria and Germany against attack from the south through Hungary and through the Brenner Pass.
 
Where else Hitler can get an army for this purpose I cannot see, and for any prolongation of the war, this is of more importance to Germany than holding on to northern Italy a little longer. But whether Kesselring can retreat with any more safety than von Kluge is a question. His army is just as likely to be slaughtered in a retreat across the plain of northern Italy as von Kluge’s was in Normandy. Hitler faces a serious dilemma there. He desperately needs Kesselring’s 25 divisions more in Hungary than in Italy, but whether he leaves them on the Gothic Line or has them cut to pieces trying to move, they are now worthless to him in the new situation.
 
It has interested me to observe the effect of the calamities of the last few days on Goebbels’ radio offerings. Here also Goebbels is trying to disengage his forces. His news programs would still make the Man from Mars pity the enemies of Germany who everywhere are still being hurled back on all fronts with heavy losses. Germany is still, of course, disengaging according to plan, but for all that is said about it, you would think the plan was a wholly voluntary one. So on this front Goebbels has thrown his critics back with heavy losses. But on the other fronts he has suffered annihilation. His major program in English, entitled “Invasion Calling,” which has been going since early May, has completely vanished these last two days. This program was a peach, given day after day with hardly a variation. It always started with the same song, “Invasion,” a sarcastic gibe at such an idiotic venture. After a line about the invasion gathering “to conquer Europe,” you hear the song interrupted by a chorus of raucous “Ha, Ha, Ha’s” at such a silly idea. Then followed “On D day, which means Death, Disaster, Dunkirk, and Dieppe” and after that the moans of millions of mothers, “My son must die in the Invasion,” and as a finale “Don’t forget that everything is ready to greet you on your landing day!”
 
Following “Invasion” were always some rotten limericks, usually attacking the Jews, though there were also some perfectly filthy ones reflecting on the morals of the RAF. Then a discussion addressed to the Tommies or G.I.s in a very friendly tone pointing out how Hitler was fighting for culture and civilization, and telling them they didn’t know what they were fighting for. Then a discourse informing them that if they weren’t killed, they’d really enjoy life in a German prison camp where they’d be safe, and a final suggestion (the real meat of the program) that when they got to France, why fight anyway, ending in the advice (in a tone I can’t duplicate) “Take it easy!” Then came “Lilli Marlene” sung in a honeyed German accent (the only thing in the program not in perfect English) and the final statement,
 
            “Do you realize all your sacrifices are for the benefit of Jewish power politics directed from Washington and Moscow?” with a strong inflection on that last syllable.
 
Why Goebbels didn’t have sense enough to drop this rot at least after the invasion forces were firmly established ashore, I can’t see, but through thick and thin he kept it up till the fall of Paris yesterday. Now it’s gone. I’m sorry. I enjoyed listening to “Lilli Marlene.”
 
Then in addition to “Invasion Calling” (that was the program in which before D day he told us at Selsey Bill about the white crosses he had waiting especially for us in France), he ran “Calling the Yanks.” This was the one in which “Midge,” our sweetheart so she made out, intermingled nostalgic songs and Nazi propaganda. “Calling the Yanks” is also a fatality of the last two days. Nothing but straight music appears now on that hour. Both Midge and the propaganda have vanished. Maybe they have concluded so many Yanks are so busy chasing Heines there aren’t enough left with time enough left to listen to the radio to make the program worthwhile. Or maybe they’ve concluded that nostalgic note was the wrong one to sound – it’s made the boys over eager to cut Nazis to pieces so they can get back to the girls they’ve left behind them. Anyway it’s gone.
 
In his news broadcasts, Goebbels today completely ignores any mention of Paris. As for Rumania, nothing has happened there except a despicably treacherous attempt by King Michael which has already been repudiated by a new gang of Quislings which all Rumanians are implored to support. King Michael, it seems has his plane ready to flee at the proper moment, having already sent ahead of him a huge store of gold. (This statement gives an insight into what the Nazis themselves are thinking of.)
 
Goebbels is a liberal education. I shall miss him.
 
Everybody in London is happy over the liberation of Paris. However, I have gathered from some Londoners that they won’t feel liberated themselves till the Pas de Calais and the Belgian and the Dutch coasts are in our hands and the flying bombs quit bursting here. Maybe they are right.
 
With much love, Ned
 
PS I enclose a couple of clippings. I gather from one of them that Einstein has not sufficiently absorbed the relative values of sail area versus ballast in the keel (or lack of it). Or perhaps like other theorists, while his eyes are fixed on astronomic distances, he neglects the sail before his nose. However, I’m glad some dumb sailor was able to fish him out injured.
 
​Letter #82
August 25, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
As I anticipated, after two days without any letters, I received three today, #108 this morning, and 106 and 107 this afternoon. I also received a letter from Mary of Aug.18, saying she was leaving Fort Meade next day, which I presume she did as the letter was postmarked Baltimore, August 19. Mary did not state specifically whether Ned was leaving Aug. 18 or Aug. 19; I presume it was one day or the other. Nor did she indicate in that letter that she even knew what camp he was temporarily bound for; maybe she doesn’t know. I presume I’ll get another letter from her in Westfield, stating at least when she goes to Maine. I trust she doesn’t have a long delay waiting.
 
I see they sold their car for $290. That settles the question of their keeping it. Mary says they came about even, which is satisfactory.
 
She gave me Ned’s present APO; that’s of little value to me, since any letter so addressed would undoubtedly go back to the U.S. I hope if he gets another on sailing Mary will immediately let me know.
 
The inoculations Ned got are no indication of his destination, except that if he had got a yellow fever shot, he might have been destined for the tropics. It is of course possible he may as likely be sent to the Mediterranean area as this one.
 
By the way, I enclose a clipping on Canadian officer casualties; the American experience would be more or less the same, but better, I think. It bears out what I thought and said – the second lieutenants have no cause for special worry. My belief was that the generals had a higher casualty rate, and this proves it. The Lt. Cols. And up have the highest casualty rate. The majors, captains, and lieutenants (even including the higher ranks with a higher percentage) show a lesser loss ratio; and the enlisted men least of all. Frankly I’m sure that the lower the rank, the less the danger. As regards the actual figures, these percentages cover allcasualties, killed wounded and missing. Both our experience and the Canadian show a ratio of about 1 killed to about 10 wounded; about 991/2% of the wounded recover. These figures give no basis at all for the pessimistic belief Ned had of a second lieutenant’s chances.
 
I left the office early this afternoon with the idea of going to a movie for a change, but on the way I passed a bookshop where a book called “The Left Heresy” by Harry Kemp caught my eye. Inasmuch as Harry Kemp used to be known years ago as “The Bobo Poet,” I looked into it, and having decided to invest my five shillings in it rather than the movies, I came home to read it instead. Harry Kemp is noted in the preface as an ex-communist. Not since I read Eugene Lyons “Assignment to Utopia” have I seen anything on the communist scene so thoroughly worthwhile. This book deals with why a Left (mainly British) gets that way, and particularly is illuminating regarding Left literati, including Laski. You might ask Clara if she’s ever read it. It was published here by Methuen in 1939. I’ll send it to you when I’m finished it.
 
With love, Ned
 
P.S. This finishes my supply of thin paper.
 
 
Letter #83
August 26, 1944
Saturday noon
 
Lucy darling:
 
Your #109 and 110 came this morning. Mary’s letter of Aug. 18 reached me yesterday, as I’ve already mentioned to you.
 
We are having fine clear weather these last two days, which has been a great help to our air forces over the Seine, and a drawback to the flying bombs. There hasn’t been one I’ve heard nor any alert for over 24 hours.
 
I see you state V-2 (according to the radio on Aug. 19) has just been launched. Maybe it has – we don’t know it over here. I think however the radio announcement must have been in error. Lord Haw Haw was still threatening us with it a night or so ago.
 
I’ve been spending a little time locating Ned and I’ve succeeded. I’m arranging to have dinner with him the same day Clara has her last dinner with you. We’ll probably have army beans at his army camp in southern England while you all (including Mary) are having lobster.
 
It now being Saturday afternoon, since I have nothing more urgent in a military way to do, I’ll go home and do the week’s washing.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #84
Aug. 26, 1944
Saturday evening
 
Lucy darling:
 
To my considerable surprise and intense gratification, I received this morning, when I was expecting nothing, two letters from you, #109 and 110.
 
Since tomorrow is Sunday and I doubt this letter will actually go forward then, though it will be mailed, I sent you a brief note this afternoon which I presume did go on its way. It is misnumbered 81. It should be 82 (Ed: nope, 83).
 
I did a little personal investigating with some of my army friends in the transportation business and got some actual data this morning. You will guess on what. I cannot of course, discuss it by mail.
 
Unless she delays for other reasons, Mary should be with you in Maine by the end of August, more or less. To my knowledge there is no reason why she should stay at home after Aug. 30, and probably not even that long. I hope she gets up there for her birthday (Ed: August 29), which may be possible. I haven’t yet heard from her again since the letter she posted Aug. 19 while passing through Baltimore.
 
What the reasons actually are I don’t know, but there have been no alerts or bombs now for about 40 hours. This is the record free period since the first one came over. The clipping enclosed speculates on the whyfors. I judge that Goebbels had better hurry up with V-2 or he’ll never get a chance to launch it, and that would make a bum out of Lord Haw Haw, which would be just too bad.
 
There are signs of loosening up in this country. The enclosed clipping on going to the beaches for the weekend has a deep military significance, both as regards the beaches and as regards taking weekends. Then in addition there is a considerable demand in the press for a loosening up right now of the blackout, which for most cities (even including London) has about as much practical value as it had in Westfield last winter and this spring. About its only value is, in the opinion of these Englishmen, just what it was in Westfield – it reminds them that there is a war on, but Londoners at least know that without the blackout. My own belief is that there are a lot of Colonel Pearsalls in London as well as in Westfield.
 
You mentioned something last July about advising Clara to have a diagnosis by a different surgeon before any operation, but you’ve said nothing regarding it since you’ve seen her. It sounds like a good idea to me. Have you pursued that suggestion further? Since the X ray man seemed to have doubts about it, I should think it would be worth getting an independent check.
 
Since this will probably be about the last letter to arrive while Clara is still at Southwest Harbor, will you tell her that I am happy to hear that she has received some rest and relaxation from it and is feeling better. I look forward next summer to having her for a visit there when I’m there myself, for Clara is always mentally stimulating to me. However, for her sake, I suppose it was just as well I wasn’t there this summer, for she might not have relaxed as much, though even then as a counter irritant I might have taken her mind off her operation. Now let’s see – speaking of operations – I guess I’m going to be at a disadvantage there – I’ve never had anything more complicated than having my tonsils out. I’ll have to stick to something like the fifth term problem, or the ethics of forcing communist revolution in Britain as the price of labour support in a war to save labour from fascism (among other things). But against a connoisseur in operations as Clara will be then, I doubt I’ll have a chance.
 
Since General Eisenhower moved the Supreme Headquarters to France (not to mention the few soldiers who went over on D-day) “southern England” doesn’t look as martial as it used to. In fact, I’m beginning to feel (and look) like the last rose of summer, lingering forlornly around Hyde Park, and as far as I’m concerned, I’d be quite happy if some kind omnipotence cut me off the withering stem around here and sent me home. But I must wait.
 
I notice in the news today indications of a serious assault by land, sea, and air on Brest. Perhaps that may soon have a significance.
 
With love, Ned
 
PS I am pleased to hear your father is better. How is your mother herself, and Betty?
 
PPS Talking about the loving embrace the chubby little girl you sent is giving the flag, Selfridge’s burst out today in a display in one of their large windows of quite an assortment of allied flags offered for sale. I think that is symptomatic of something. Merchants usually only stock up on something when they consider the season is right.
 
 
Letter #85
Aug. 27, 1944
Sunday evening
 
Lucy darling:
 
Sunday, and a very quiet day here, except that about 7 this morning we got about four flying bombs that I heard burst in this general vicinity. The “All Clear” came about 7:30 AM and there hasn’t been anything further. Altogether we had a 48 hour clear spell up to this morning, which is the record so far. It was a little hazy this morning, but it soon cleared into beautiful flying weather, and I have an idea there will be a massacre along the lower Seine’s course today. It is still clear tonight.
 
There has, of course, been no announcement of strategy from here on, but I doubt any drive in force along the coast from Le Havre eastward toward Calais. I imagine practically the whole army will drive straight for Germany by the shortest lines, without bothering about the Nazis to the north of them at Calais, in Belgium, or in Holland. One army might drive for Rheims, Luxembourg, and Coblenz, while another crashes through further south at Belfort. We’ll see soon. These moves would outflank the Channel and Belgium and if the Nazis have any sense left about getting out while the going is good (which they haven’t shown yet) they will have to withdraw in a hurry. If they don’t there will be another pocketed German army which will be thoroughly liquidated very quickly, probably by the Free French who would enjoy the task.
 
I see Bulgaria didn’t take very long after the collapse of Rumania to see the beauties of peace and declare herself “neutral.” Berlin is breathing invectives about Rumania and King Michael that would give your hair a permanent wave; other than that, it is telling the world that Hungary and Slovakia have given assurances they will fight loyally beside their German comrades till victory is won. Just wait till the Russian army has a chance to move through Rumania to the Hungarian border and down thru the Carpathian border passes and it will be remarkable what a little applied heat will do to Hungarian “loyalty.” I noted that Berlin omitted all mention of Finnish loyalty.
 
Other than the above, Goebbels heaved the enemy back on all fronts with heavy losses as usual.
 
As I mentioned yesterday, I expect to have dinner with Ned about Sept. 4 or 5.
 
I am sending you some assorted clippings from today’s papers illuminating the English scene. There is a doubt about what’s happened to von Kluge. It is believed that Field Marshal Model now has the command. A Nazi commander-in-chief gets worn out very quickly on the western front. The “military idiots” he has to deal with there are very wearing on the nerves, especially when he has also the prime idiot in his rear to deal with.
 
The clipping dealing with the German delusions about what their flying bombs are doing is I think, a quite authentic account of what the Germans believe and what keeps them fighting. I doubt that the German high military command believes it, but the troops and the man in the street does. Actually such beliefs as to damage done or their effects on the civil population are quite ridiculous. London is being hurt in a minor way – all the rest of England is no more touched now by the actual war than Chicago is, and could keep on if London vanished.
 
Yet even the British and the American reporters give a grossly exaggerated idea both of the danger and the damage, and the German radio, by quoting from them, bolsters up home morale. For instance, a young naval lieutenant who had been in England for two years up to July 1, got leave to go home for thirty days plus travel time. He just returned to London this morning. He had been in London for the first two weeks of the flying bomb blitz before he went home. There everyone asked him what it was like. He told them. Then while he was home (in Ohio) he read daily the American accounts and came to the conclusion that the assault must have been hugely intensified since his departure. He returned expecting to see devastation all about. A look around this morning convinced him he’d been misled – London looked just the same to him as when he left, which it was essentially. I am afraid if anyone told the American public just how slight an effect the flying bomb attack has had on London, he wouldn’t be believed. There has been some damage, it’s true, but it has had slight effect. Even the evacuation of which much has been made, has in essence been nothing more than a grand opportunity for women and children (while school was closed) to take a summer vacation at the shore or in the country at the government’s expense. If they had had to pay their own traveling expenses and their lodging away from London, not a thousand would have been frightened enough to go. Even so, the government is having a hell of a time with lots of them (who don’t find their new billets with all the comforts they expected on their vacation) who insist on coming back to London and do come back regardless. People don’t do such things in the face of real danger. About all the damaged houses, it should be borne in mind that the vast majority only have some windows broken.
 
The cartoon over the exhibitionist who hung out a flag and beat a drum when Paris was freed is true to life here. I haven’t seen a single flag displayed on any private house here, and not over a dozen on public buildings – the British are what you might call “undemonstrative.”
 
I went to the office this morning but there was no mail. (That was normal for Sunday). After that I took a walk along Bond Street (which was practically deserted) looking into the windows. Now, if you had been at my side, it would have been very enjoyable. Somehow I’m not much interested in looking by myself, though the shop windows, especially the antiques and the pictures displayed, were quite enticing. Talking about antiques, it made me grin as I looked as I remembered the time Mary wandered into one of those shops to price some tapestried chairs and nearly had them sold to her for about 1000 pounds. Somehow it seems to me she escaped only by promising to come back.
 
My idea is that when we’re clear of all this trouble, we’ll want to spend several winters (in Africa and the Mediterranean) and springs and autumns in England and the rest of Europe, with the summers in Southwest Harbor. I could have a grand time with you leisurely looking again at Bond Street, the Place de la Concorde, Florence, Rome, Algiers, the Pyramids and Luxor, and maybe even, briefly in season, Massawa. Then the North African Riviera is quite worth riding over, and I think we’d both like to see Greece, and have another view of Switzerland and possibly also Vienna. I think all this could nicely be done in about two sixth months’ visits in successive years, starting say in the early autumn of 1945. You save your pennies and I’ll start hoarding kisses (I’ve got quite a batch in reserve now, but I’ll need more), and it will be wonderful.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #86
August 28, 1944
Monday evening
 
Lucy darling:
 
I am overwhelmed – five letters from you today! #113 arrived this morning, and #111, 112, 114, and 115 this afternoon, good for all of them and excellent for 115 which was postmarked in S.W.H. only 41/2 days ago. I just reveled in them all!
 
As regards your query on my letter #70 which has a long slice taken off one side of the last page, that happened after the letter was written when I was cutting a newspaper clipping and the knife cut through into the letter which was underneath. I didn’t bother to do anything about it.
 
I have no doubt that the radio commentators and perhaps the press also have been urged to soft pedal a quick war ending, strictly for home consumption, to avoid slacking off of production, quitting war jobs and to prevent any political kickbacks if too high hopes are not realized. I have every belief the war will be over by November, not because Germany will collapse or surrender or Hitler will be spread over several acres in small pieces, but because by then Germany will be knocked flat by invasion regardless of internal happenings. A quicker ending may come by Hitler’s assassination, but it can’t be counted on. Germany is already defeated and her case is hopeless, but Hitler, Himmler & Goebbels are keeping the corpse on its feet. An invasion push from the Allies or a successful bomb inside Germany will end that act.
 
You asked how Hitler, Goebbels and Goering can explain the going astray of all of their plans and prophesies. The way it works is that Goebbels never explains such things, never apologizes, never intimates he was wrong in the past. He simply with great assurance tells the Germans that all is foreseen by Der Fuhrer, and provided for, don’t think, don’t question – obey and all will be well. If anyone should question why they should believe that in view of past assurances which have gone haywire, the response would be to shoot the questioner. So no questions are asked, and no embarrassing explanations are required. However, even Goebbels knows that even Germans have some slight memories and may have inner doubts, so he assures them that it is still all necessary to save them from a fate worse than death – the Bolshevists and the Jews. For those who think and doubt, that is the bugaboo he parades – for those without sense enough to think, there is the continual ballyhoo about the Fuhrer, - and for those who are satisfied with neither of these answers but still ask questions, there is the headsman’s axe which is the final Nazi argument in reply.
 
The end of the war will be different from 1918 and requires the crushing blow by invasion – there can be no new government taking over to make peace nor any acceptance of an armistice by the existing German government. Hitler’s government fights to the death, but it is still uncertain whether the death will come from our hands or be anticipated by a more competent group of German generals than Beck led.
 
However, on the Western front, the Eastern front, and in the Balkans, the attack is snowballing up and there can be no successful nor long continued defense. The assassination of Hitler is being delayed by his accomplices while they hope the miracle of V-2 may come off. Shortly both the bases for the attack will be lost and the remaining factories for its manufacture smashed, destroying even that unfounded hope. At that point, a group closer to Hitler than the generals (they’ll have to be), an inside Nazi party group led most likely by Goering, will bump Hitler off. But under no conditions is the European ending more than a few months off now.
 
Tomorrow is Mary’s birthday. My love to you, my dear, in remembrance of it; and to Mary, many happy returns under far happier circumstances. I look at both your photographs before me as I write, and kiss you both in thanks for the great happiness each of you has brought me.
 
In your #114 you note Mary has heard from Ned but doesn’t know where he is. I don’t either, but I do know when I may expect to see him here.
 
That picture you enclosed from Life, I am returning herewith. I agree with you, that if it were not for the movie camera in the picture, I could only look at it and wonder when that snapshot of me was taken without my knowledge.
 
Admiral Kimmel’s statement interested me a lot. It is possible he had some secret instructions from on high regarding the avoidance of “provocative” actions during a peace carnival in Washington. Maybe we’ll know – after election.
 
You ask what Hitler et al think of “soft” America and Britain now? I can tell you that Goebbels never refers to “decadent” democracies any more and never intimates that they are “soft.” We are now ruthless, perfidious, Bolshevistic, and ruled by “Jewish power politics” but we are no longer “soft,” except that the propaganda would indicate he still thinks we are soft in the head, but not in the muscle. I trust we are not soft either in the head or in the heart.
 
As regards the New Yorker covers you sent me, I think the one about the nude mother and her baby on the sands with the colored maid stiffly dressed up to the ears and down to the toes, is rich. So also is the one of the Italian monks gazing goggle-eyed at the pin-up girls. You ask if the pin-up girls shown are a fair sample. I regret to tell you they are not – they have too much clothing on. You should see the collection our navy mail clerk has pinned up on the walls of his navy post office cubby-hole behind his mail window! Or some I’ve sailed with in officers’ staterooms in vessels in the invasion fleet!
 
In rebuttal, I’m sending you a few clippings from the Stars and Stripes here and some English papers. The number of people being slaughtered in the U.S. is so great, the English are wondering when Washington is going to order an evacuation from the place to a safer area. It is estimated the buzz bombs will kill 24,000 people in a year (if they could only keep going that long) which is safety itself compared to the U.S.
 
My favorite pin-up picture is the middle one of the strips, labeled “Bon Ami.”
 
With much love, Ned
 
PS Fruit is very scarce in England, but today I saw some grapes displayed which looked so nice, I bought some. They were $2 a pound – ten shillings! As that was a lot I bought half a crown’s worth, a quarter of a pound for fifty cents. When I got home, they looked so skimpy I counted them to find I had exactly seventeen grapes for fifty cents – three cents a grape!
 
 
Letter #87
August 29, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
Yesterday I received five letters from you, thru 115. I presume I’ll get no more for a few days. Yesterday also, unfortunately, the papers report that an American mail plane at its Scottish terminus, crashed in a village while landing in a fog, with the loss of its whole crew, which is tragically regrettable. Whether it was an Army or Navy (or both) mail carrier I don’t know, and won’t be able to figure out for a few days now, till the mail has (or has not) been delivered. However, on the chance that it was carrying Navy mail, I would suggest that any special information which you may have embodied in letters from say 116 to 119, be repeated immediately in the next letter you write after you get this. (There are no missing letters up to and including 115).
 
A week ago Monday, I listened to a broadcast “Signal to U.K.” by Emlyn Williams. It struck me so forcefully that I wrote the B.B.C. requesting a copy to send to you, and also suggested to them that they have a record of it rebroadcast in the U.S. in Mr. Williams’ own voice. His delivery was so simple in its deep intensity and sympathetic understanding I felt it constituted a landmark in broadcasting, and that American women should also have the balm of hearing it.
 
I have just received from the B.B.C. a copy of the broadcast, which I am enclosing. The second paragraph of their letter refers to my suggestion as above.
 
I would suggest that you read this “Signal to U.K.” aloud. For me (and for all us overseas) it expresses my feelings exactly.
 
So on this day, Mary’s birthday, I send you as my gift for this day, Emlyn Williams’ beautiful expression of what is in my heart.
 
With love, Ned
 
Here is the B.B.C. letter:
 
The British Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcasting House, London, W. I
 
Reference: 28/MBH           26th August 1944
 
Captain E. Ellsberg U.S.N.R.
U.S. Naval Forces in Europe
15 Grosvenor Square
W.I
 
Dear Sir:
 
In reply to you letter of 22nd August, I am enclosing a copy of the talk by Mr. Emlyn Williams in which you are interested. It will be quite in order for you to send it to your wife in America.
 
I am afraid that there are no records of the talk, and I have no information up to date, of its being broadcast on any of our Overseas Programmes. But your appreciation has been noted with interest and is being brought to the notice of those responsible for these Programmes.
 
Yours faithfully,
 
(Miss) M. B. Hobbs
Director, Secretariat
 
 
Letter #88
Aug. 29, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
As I had five letters from you yesterday, up to #115, I did not expect anything further today, when I wrote you this morning. However, your #116 arrived this afternoon. This makes it unlikely that any navy mail was aboard the mail plane which I wrote you of this morning which crashed yesterday morning in Scotland.
 
I commented already on that Truman clipping you sent me, which is astonishing in its statement. Discussing the matter here with persons who have some knowledge of the situation, they say that the criticism is well founded in fact and that the responsibility lies where I guessed it did. The critic is stated to be correct in his statement “our people will be amazed by the truth.” It will be interesting to see whether they get it before my birthday, of ever.
 
Things are quieter here. From last Friday morning until Sunday morning, a 48 hour period there were no alerts and no bombs. On Sunday morning there were a few, with one alert. Then we had 30 hours more with no alerts or bombs. Yesterday afternoon (Monday) we had several alerts but no bombs were heard in our area. I understand a few fell in the outskirts. Today we had several alerts, but no bombs heard, though tonight I saw one flying through the night, a ball of fire some distance off and still traveling, so to me it looked as if it might overshoot London altogether. I didn’t hear any explosion.
 
The answers are several, but one is that the AA gunners are knocking most of them down. However, today has been rainy off and on, which somewhat cramps their style. It’s overcast now.
 
Another one just went by about half a mile to the left, quite a brilliant meteor, spotted in the beams of a dozen searchlights playing on it to mark its course for air raid wardens. So far as I could judge, it kept on about three miles beyond, and I could see the sudden glow when it exploded, but heard no explosion. You would think you’d hear a ton of TNT exploding three miles off, but in spite of the fact that I could hear the motor cut out a few seconds before the flash, I still heard no explosion. Queer.
 
Tonight’s radio reports put our troops at Soissons on the Aisne, and entering Rheims. Yesterday they were at Chateau Thierry on the Marne. In World War I, even when things were going better in 1918, it took them from July to about October to cover that much ground – now they’ve done it in 24 hours.
 
It was somewhat of a disappointment that any of the German Seventh Army got out of the Falaise-Argentan pocket, but there were three rainy days at an unfortunate period there that stopped the air assault. However the bulk of that army was disposed of, and most of their equipment was washed out. Practically all the rest of it was lost in the Seine. One cannot expect perfection in destruction all the time. The remnants of the Seventh Army amount to little now. We’ll shortly see how much the German 15th Army from the Calais area, which has moved up to cover the fleeing fragments of the Seventh, is worth. It looks to me as if with Montgomery hitting them frontally, and Bradley’s 2nd Army on their southern flank, they are in for a short life and a merry one unless they start running like hell immediately. In that case, they’ll have the pleasure of dying for Hitler closer to home. However, I think they’ll be ordered to stand and defend the flying bomb coasts. And that is shortly going to spell the end of the German 15th Army.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #89
Aug. 30, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
No letter today, but that was not unexpected after the mass of mail of the last three days, ending with #116 yesterday.
 
Things are moving very fast on the other side. In a week or less, Patton will be either in Belgium or Germany. Germany is my bet. From a strictly military view, I think that is correct, but there is a psychological angle that might change his course more to the north. Every German broadcast, every German statement, shows the Germans know they have lost (see General Dittmar’s statement enclosed) but they are desperately holding on waiting for the miracle of V-2 and fooling themselves over V-1. Now neither V-1 nor
V-2 (if it eventuates) will make any difference but the Germans still think they will, and are hanging on by their eyebrows, thinking that they are with V-1 (or will with V-2) hurting the Allies (Britain) so much, as Dittmar says, that the Allies will ask “Are the losses---worth the candle militarily and politically, taking a sane view of the situation?” Now honestly in no way are the Allies, and least of all Britain, being hurt anything like in World War I, or in 1940-1941, and no such question is even being dreamed of here. However, if the German delusion were even in German eyes dissolved, it would make a serious difference in the German attitude towards continuing to hang on. So for that reason, it is possible that the war will be swung north to wash up the flying bomb coast quickly and destroy that German dream, though it is sounder strategy to bypass the Calais coast and break as quickly as possible in Western Germany. The next few days will show how this problem sizes up in Allied headquarters strategy.
 
The Germans are still crazy. Dittmar’s sole hope is to so hurt Britain by “a tooth and claw struggle” that she will want to compromise. What else does he think Britain has been up against since 1940? The Nazis have learned nothing at all – “Spurlos versankt” and “frightfulness” in the last war, more terrible ruthlessness and plain mass murder in this one are useless weapons against Germany’s enemies. From now on, German resistance is going to be a Nazi massacre with slight Allied losses, which will be a good thing in leaving less fanatics to deal with in Germany after the war.
 
The defense against flying bombs is getting better and better. If the Germans knew how few of the bombs they now launch get through to London, it would make them positively ill.
 
I enclose a report by two British reporters on what they say in Lublin (Ed: Poland), one report quite in detail. Here is what Nazi Germany has been doing to hundreds of thousands of helpless civilians, Jews mostly, but plenty of others of all nationalities in her grip. A more damnable crime was never perpetrated on this earth in history. And yet I swear that within a few years in the United States you will hear the “good” people absolving Germany completely of all this, denying it ever happened, laughing it off as just wartime propaganda to make us hate the enemy.
 
The other clippings illuminate the English scene from blackberries to buzz bombs to blackouts.
 
My dinner date with Ned (Ed: Benson) seems fairly definite now for next Monday night (Sept. 4).
 
With love, Ned
 
Mary ought to be with you now.
 
 
Letter #90
Aug. 31, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
The news tonight is breath-taking. General Bradley’s army has taken Sedan, crossed the Meuse, and may already be in Belgium; Montgomery’s men have taken Amiens and are closing on Dieppe; and Patton is sweeping into the Argonne forest to Germany’s border! I have not been conservative in what I thought our armies could do, but they are outstripping all expectations. Without doubt all this is the result of their so crushing von Kluge’s Seventh Army at Caen-Falaise-Argentan and the divisions of the Fifteenth Army sent to bolster it up, that there is not enough of a German army in northwest France to offer a battle in opposition, or to get into position to oppose the advances on Belgium and Germany.
 
Not the least important news is that General Montgomery has been promoted to Field Marshal, which no soldier has ever better merited. I send you a clipping from the July 16 Baltimore Sun, just at hand, showing how the experts on the eve of his great victory, were so blind as to what was going on as to hint that he might well be eliminated. If half the newspaper experts were boiled in oil and the other half set to selling newspapers on the street, we should be much better off.
 
I enclose also a cartoon from today’s Stars and Stripes, sent by a sergeant at the front, which when my eye lighted on it at lunch today, practically rolled me out of my seat. It’s an excellent illustration in a few strokes of what’s going on. Maybe it isn’t as funny as it seemed to me, but for us over here, it’s tops.
 
Your #117 came this morning. I judge from its delivery that no Navy mail was aboard that Army mail plane which I mentioned crashing over here a few days ago.
 
I repeat that I expect to have dinner with Ned II on the evening of Sept. 4.
 
With much love, Ned
 
P.S. I suppose Mary has been with you since her birthday at least.
 
 
Letter #91
Sept. 1, 1944
Friday
 
Lucy darling:
 
Yesterday it rained intermittently and sharply all day long. Today it’s clear and the sun shining, but with decidedly an autumn tang in the air which seems to say that September has come (as it has) and that the summer, which we have never had here this year, is over even officially (or astronomically, even).
 
As regards the question of my going again to the far shore, which you ask in #117, frankly I don’t know now. It is for that that I am waiting, in reserve, so to speak, but there have been so many changes in plan, some hinging on the military situation and some not, that I have no idea of what will happen. If I go again, I certainly have every intention of returning home as soon as my task there is completed; meanwhile I am just waiting. I once knew what was intended with regard to the far shore ports; now I don’t any more.
 
I think Mary’s idea of sending her bicycle to S.W. H. is an excellent one – she has a shipping crate for it in the garage, and I suppose she had it crated and shipped without waiting for her own departure.
 
Now as regards the furnace, which, as you say, you’ll certainly want in September. There’s coal enough, but you’ll probably need kindling. There is a water filling copper pipe to the humidity pan in the furnace which I think I disconnected to avoid freezing, and I think you’d better leave it disconnected and unused, and also warn whoever closes up the house (Gilley?) to see that it is so left, particularly with regard to its valves both in the kitchen above the hot water tank, and in the basement.
 
Your major problem will be the thermostat clock. You will want to use that, or you’ll probably alternately find yourself freezing and roasting, and all the time rebuilding a burned out fire. To put the clock in service, you will have to plug it in by plugging in a connection you will find in the basement overhead and to the right of the furnace. It will also be necessary to insure that the clock hands are synchronized for day and night, or you may find yourself 12 hours out of cycle, as Rose Bristol once was, with sad heating results. I do not think it advisable to meddle with the settings for “on” and “off,” morning and night on the thermostat, nor with the “on” and “off” temperature settings, unless absolutely necessary.
 
You can plug in the thermostat yourself if you desire, and then synchronize the time setting to insure heating in the daytime and not at night, by moving the clock minute hand till you are sure you are in the right 12 hour cycle. If all goes well, that’s all there is to it, but if you are dubious, you’d better get the electrician to come out and do it for you. When you leave, I suggest you yourself unplug the basement clock thermostat connection, and not leave it for the general closing up of the house.
 
I quite agree with you that next summer it will be desirable to have an architect look the house over to see what can be done to increase its beauty and its utility with a veranda; also to make it more habitable for early spring and autumn. My own idea is that for that we’ll want an oil burner and paneling downstairs at least, and probably upstairs also. And of course a big plate glass window in the front of the living room and of the porch also (the latter sliding, if possible). Then we’ll need a lawn on the point, and possibly even, a vegetable garden back on the old garden patch, where the Manset (Ed: their house was in a section of Southwest Harbor called Manset) bunnies can nibble carrots and cabbage. (I don’t insist on this latter). And we’ll see if we can buy a strip of land from the Woods, and clear up our own forest. (Talking about summer homes, a sizeable flight of glistening fortresses is passing overhead, bound homeward after unloading across the water. They don’t often pass directly over the town.) (See clipping).
 
Well, I see from one of the clippings you sent me that the activities of the N. J. Shipbuilding Corp. at Perth Amboy are coming close to the end. I quite agree – we have enough LCI(4)s to more than finish off the Japs, and they are no longer needed in Europe, where certainly amphibious assaults in France have come to an end and Germany lies wide open to land attack west, south and east. I shed no tears over the near closing of New Jersey Ship – that outfit gave me plenty of headaches.
 
Thanks also for the other clippings, which I have enjoyed reading.
 
If you haven’t already sent one for September, I will appreciate getting the Times financial pages.
 
I’ve got about $650 here now between my bank account in the Chase and my pay account, which we might use towards improving The Anchorage; I think that might be a good permanent memorial of Hitler’s contributions towards a new “world order.” I may have a little more by the time I come home.
 
I enclose a clipping of Mr. A. P. Herbert’s views on forgiveness. As between Mr. Herbert and Mr. Priestley (who is now one of Britain’s parlor communists) there is no comparison; I always felt that Priestley, after his disgraceful performance in America some years ago, was below par as a man. I’m glad to see Herbert, on the contrary, rising in stature.
 
Meanwhile the Pope is to broadcast tonight on the sixth anniversary of Hitler’s starting the war. As it is to be a shortwave broadcast and my radio doesn’t cover the shortwave bands, I’ll have to wait for rebroadcasts to see what he says. However, his previous statements have never to any sharp degree opposed Hitler’s progress while he was winning, and I am not prepared to listen with enthusiasm to any “turn the other cheek” or “forgiveness” counsel from the Pope now. Actually, while I know that up to the capture of Rome, the Pope’s position was not a happy one, still he passed up the opportunity to denounce the devil while the devil was in the ascendant; it’s too late now for him to get the world’s ear. What will be remembered when this war is over, will be Churchill’s voice, not the Pope’s.
 
I wrote a few days ago that the Germans had dropped their ridiculous “Invasion Calling” and how I was going to miss “Lilli Marlene.” Well, after two days they pulled themselves together and put on a new “Invasion Calling” program, leaving out the more laughable parts of the song “Invasion” but still keeping the rest of it. Thank goodness, they recognized the value of “Lilli Marlene” as an attraction and kept that. In between “Invasion” and “Lilli Marlene” are sandwiched some entertaining songs by Midge (back again) but no more of the nostalgic “Down By the Old Mill Stream” stuff, and some of the most adroit and poisonous propaganda items as before for dissention amongst the allies. However, I’m afraid I’ll shortly have to kiss this program goodbye, for while it’s broadcast on both Calais and Bremen, it is only from the Calais station that I get it really clearly. And in a couple of days, that Calais station is going to be all washed up, so far as German broadcasts are concerned.
 
All our armies are going great guns. Dieppe, Arras, Verdun, all in one day. The long weeks of heavy slugging at the German Seventh Army from Caen to La Haye de Puits (remember them?) are paying off heavily now. I don’t think there is anything left of the Seventh Army but its third commander, and the British captured him yesterday. Pretty tough when an Army commander can’t even stop for breakfast without having enemy tanks drop in on him. (See clipping).
 
It was a grand and glorious feeling to hear that the same Canadian division which assaulted Dieppe two years ago, captured it today. It was the Dieppe raid which brought forth Hitler’s shrill gibe, “The next time Mr. Churchill cares to invade Europe, I promise him he will not stay even nine hours!” Well, perhaps Adolph stopped his clock at H hour on D day, for it’s been a long nine hours since then – especially for him. By tomorrow night our troops will be on the Belgian frontier and long before you get this will be on the German border and probably across it.
 
About five years ago (this is the sixth anniversary thereof) two songs sprang into popularity, one German “Wir gegen nack England” (approximately) or “We Sail Against England” which the Germans used to sing vociferously but have now conveniently forgotten. They were reminded of it when the first prisoners from the Normandy beachhead were greeted by a band playing it when they came ashore at Portsmouth shortly after D day. The other song was sung by British tommies during the “sitzkrieg” before the assault on Holland in May, 1940; it was “We’ll Hang Out Our Washing on the Siegfried Line.” I predict a sudden revival in the popularity of this song – in fact Polish, French, Dutch, and American versions of it will be roaring out lustily from now on. Odd how both those songs came true. Maybe that’s where my washing is hanging out, for it has never come back. Perhaps it went east with our troops from Normandy and will shortly literally be doing that. I may ask General Patton to have the MPs search the Siegfried Line for my stuff.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #92
Sept. 2, 1944
Saturday night
 
Lucy darling:
 
I may have misnumbered my letter of Sept. 1. It should have been #90, regardless of how it was marked.
 
Your #118 and 119 came this morning. I rather imagined from what I knew over here, that Mary should be in S.W.H. for her birthday. I trust nothing in the complicated travel and taxi arrangements went wrong, and that she made it all right. It will be pleasant to have Diana there also.  It’s particularly nice to have Mary arrive before Clara leaves since they haven’t had a visit together for some time.
 
I don’t expect anything to result from the recommendation that Admiral Irish made; not that he didn’t mean it, but I’ve learned from Capt. Pickering (also a reserve officer now) that there are certain Navy Department policies which make action quite unlikely with regard to reserve officers. I wasn’t aware of them before, and I doubt that Admiral Irish is either. I’ll discuss this when I get home. Meanwhile I’m not worrying over it.
 
It’s too bad your own radio wasn’t working well enough to take up. I hope Alice leaves hers with you till you and Mary leave SWH. Does that leave them any in Springfield? Possibly if Alice’s goes back with Clara, you can rent one in SWH for the remainder of your stay. Otherwise there is Mary’s now, which perhaps you can get Madelline to pack up and ship to you.
 
The Oradour massacre came in July when the Germans in a perfectly fiendish manner wiped out the town of some 500 people, (including the people) in reprisal for some minor Maquis attack, which took place in the vicinity. A particularly revolting feature was the fact that there is Oradour sur X and Oradour sur Y, and the SS troops in their reprisal burned up the one that wasn’t even so much involved as being in the vicinity of the Maquis attack. Lidice was not in a class with what happened in Oradour; there in Oradour most of the inhabitants were herded into their church, the doors barred, and the church burned up. Hardly seven people escaped alive from the whole town. It made quite a stir over here, particularly in our Army, since Eisenhower’s statement about the F.F.I. being a part of his forces, was involved in the situation.
 
You may be interested in the flying bomb situation. It is now this:
            Friday, Aug. 25 & Sat. Aug. 26. No alerts, no bombs for 48 hours.
            Sunday, Aug. 27, in the morning one alert, 4 bombs that I heard.
            Monday night, Aug. 28, nothing for 30 hours, then two bombs seen, no explosions heard.
            Since Monday Aug. 28 to tonight (Sept. 2) no bombs seen, no bombs heard for five days now. A few brief alerts in that period, with a few bombs reported, but I believe they all fell short of London.
 
It looks pretty much as if V-1 is now washed up, though the German radio claims daily “Retaliation fire of V-1 on Greater London continues.” I suppose it does in Goebbels propaganda scripts. The causes for the practical cessation are probably: 1. Many sites captured. 2. Many supply depots captured. 3. Communications to remaining sites in danger. 4. Sites at present uncaptured temporarily out of commission while an attempt is being made to move their equipment to new sites further east, not yet ready for action. The probabilities are that this V-1 will not again get in action on any but a very limited scale from Dutch bases, and that for not long. I think V-1 can now be written off.
 
It is doubtful that V-2 will ever be heard of, except on Goebbels’ radio. Even that talks less now of secret weapons than of going down fighting, with a “people’s army” inside Germany defending every village to the last gasp – just the way they defended Cherbourg. There may be some value in this “people’s army” business, for it will help to disillusion America of the “good” German delusion. Actually I have no doubt we’ll run into some Nazis of that stripe in every village, ready to duplicate the performance in Notre Dame de Paris of last week. The Swiss papers believe, however, that giving the German worker arms for a “people’s army” will be a boomerang – that many of them will then be able for the first time to use them to bump off the Gestapo, in collaboration with the remnants of the German Wehrmacht, which also now hates the Gestapo, the SS, and all their works and will hate them even more if they are forced to continue the war after it’s lost and the Wehrmacht is broken into small bits.
 
Without any question, Goebbels is fighting for time now, not to put secret weapons into operation, but in the hope that given a few months (on top of war weariness in the U.S. and Britain) he can yet split the Allies apart on political questions. Even a relatively unpromising matter such as Montgomery’s promotion to Field-Marshal, is given a big play in creating discord between him and Eisenhower, in setting up dissentions among British and Americans (each of whom is told (believe this or not) in the same broadcast that the other is playing him for a sucker) and when I read what our own Senator Chandler spouts on this general subject, I don’t know but that Goebbels is succeeding.
 
The big hope, of course, is to split the Allies wide apart over Poland. It would amaze you to listen to the skill with which Lord Haw Haw plays on this theme. Then of course all the other Goebbels standbys are being ridden for all they are worth now, and most expertly, I can assure you. I give these scoundrels credit for being able within a couple of years (when the Allied cohesion because of war dangers is over) to split the present Allies much further apart than they were in the 1920s – unless every one of them from Goebbels down to Haw Haw and the lesser American and British radio traitors, is executed remorselessly. I ago was an amateur compared with Goebbels and his satellites.
 
I’m sending some clippings that illustrate some of these things.
 
By the way, since I’ve just heard Ned won’t be at his camp till early Tuesday morning, we are changing our dinner date to Tuesday night instead of Monday night.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #93
Sept. 3, 1944
Sunday evening
 
Lucy darling:
 
This morning I went to the office, not that anybody works there Sundays anymore or even attends, but because it is the only place I can mail a letter. But virtue was rewarded – there were two letters from you, #120 and 121, and one from Mary of Aug. 25. This is the first time we’ve had a Sunday delivery in weeks.
 
Clara will be gone by the time you get this, but thank her anyway for the clipping she sent on the London publishing situation. It’s quite so. I told you some time ago I’d tried to buy here one of my books for General Gale, but the booksellers were out and after contacting the publishers, told me about the same as the clipping said. So I forgot it. (The book, by the way, hasn’t arrived yet from Dodd, Mead, though it was shipped several weeks ago. I got a bill and a shipping notice then.) I was surprised therefore when a bluejacket walked in yesterday with a British edition of “Captain Paul” for an autograph. He told me he had just bought it at Selfridge’s. So I rushed over there to buy one for myself, and asking the clerk how come, they said the book was so much requested (all of a dozen buyers I shouldn’t wonder) that the British publishers, Heinemann, had decided to reprint a new edition, and they had consequently stocked up on it again. (They had, too; aside from what they’d already sold, they had over a dozen copies on the shelf). I imagine that, for Captain Paul, in England of all places! After I read that clipping over again, I felt quite set up. So that you also may get the same swelled head for your part of it, I am sending that clipping back to you for your reperusal.
 
Your remarks on the cooling off in SWH and your warming up the bathroom with the hot water in the tub, strike a sympathetic chord here, where it also grew quite cool immediately Sept. 1 rolled around. Tonight I dug through my trunk for a sweater and emerged with the one Mary knitted me in SWH. I’m wearing it now in my room.
 
In response to your question in #120 of Aug. 26, I certainly have no intention or desire of staying over here for work once the fighting is over. I have no urge to spend the rest of my life on salvage, whether it’s in French harbors or elsewhere. As a peacetime occupation, I hate it.
 
Talking about your report of Leland Stowe’s broadcast on delusions about reeducating young Nazis, here’s another clipping on how “Tomorrow The World” strikes English critics.
 
I gave you a report on flying bombs yesterday. This evening it was announced that not one bomb had even been launched at England since Friday evening, and also that for the first time since they started almost three months ago, that the German war communiqué did not include its usual phrase “Heavy V-1 fire was directed at Greater London all day yesterday.” It didn’t even mention them. I have no doubt the Germans will try to resume later at longer range from some points on the eastern Dutch coast, but the defensive position against such points of attack is even more favorable than it was lately, so few will ever reach England from there. And even those bases couldn’t last long.
 
While I’ve heard plenty in the last few days about how Germany’s total mobilization will bring about stabilized fronts in the West as it has (?) in the East, no more mention is made any more about “secret weapons.” Having had the Calais coast kicked out from under them, the V2 weapon has suddenly burst like a pricked soap bubble right in Goebbels’ face, and now when he needs it more than ever for propaganda, if for nothing else, he is compelled to ignore it completely to avoid embarrassing thoughts in the home front mind. After all the hot air he has blown out about it, this sudden reversal of his propaganda might cause blushes to the garden variety of propagandist, but not to Goebbels who from long experience is used to sudden reversals. No apologies, no explanations will be offered, and Himmler will see that there are no questions.
 
The “stabilized front” business, makes me laugh. The Warsaw front will burst suddenly asunder before long just as the Normandy front did at Caen-Falaise a few weeks ago. And there is never going to be any in the West that will last over a week.  If a stand is made at the Siegfried Line or on the Rhine, it may cause a pause for about a week while Bradley and Patton bring up the necessary concentration, and then they’ll go through the “stabilized front” as if it weren’t there.
 
The Nazis should have learned by now that all their “Lines” and “Walls” and “Festungs this and that” are just about as good as the Nazis behind them, and that’s not much when we hit them in earnest.
 
I enclose a clipping on how Rommel gambled on the weather in Normandy and consequently sacrificed all the Western German armies. The writer misses the point. The weather was not only as bad as Rommel figured on, but much worse, so it cannot be said that Rommel acted on a meteorological miscalculation. He didn’t. What sunk Rommel was that he hadn’t figured that we had figured out a way to make the bad weather immaterial. What licked Rommel and ruined the German campaign in Normandy was our artificial harbors – save for them, Rommel’s plan of attack might have defeated the invasion, or at the very worst have cost us such terrific losses that our further progress would have required a campaign running at least a year longer. And God knows what the effect the reaction of that would have had in the United States.
 
I saw a review of “Anna & the King of Siam” which sounded interesting, but don’t bother to send it. I have access to libraries over here, including the Armed Services books. Just now I’m engaged in reading a very interesting book called “Captain Paul.” (Ed: written by himself). I’ve got so far as where the hero has just arrived at the island of Tobago. I can recommend it to you, but I shan’t send you my copy, as it may be available to you in the U.S. at some libraries.
 
Mary’s departure for SWH jibes pretty much with my information on this side.
 
I trust the weather in SWH doesn’t get too cold and that as long as you stay, you and Mary and Diana all have a grand time.
 
There is of course no point in punishing yourself by staying after it really gets too cold for comfort.
 
With love, Ned
 
The B.B.C. states that is certain that von Kluge now is dead, but not certain yet whether he committed suicide or died of a heart attack. German C in Cs facing our armies have a short life. Having seen our armies in action, I can well understand it.
 
 
Letter #94
Sept. 4., 1944
Monday
 
Lucy darling:
 
No letter from you today, but as two came yesterday that is as expected.
 
Tomorrow morning, as I’ve explained to Mary, I’m driving down to Ned’s camp to see him. He’s not likely to be there long. I should be back, perhaps late tomorrow evening.
 
Now that Mary’s there, I see that for a few days (till Clara left) you had a full house; however, since Clara’s departure you have been reduced to four queens, but that is still a pretty fine poker hand. It would however be improved by the addition of at least one king.
 
Things seem to be moving still at high speed. Belgium has been entered; Finland is withdrawing from the war; our soldiers will shortly be having to use German instead of French with the natives.
 
Meanwhile, no flying bombs over England since Friday afternoon; not one has reached London since Thursday. It’s getting monotonous here – listening to flying bombs was practically the only excitement; now, I fear, we’ve had the last of them.
 
It is now definitely stated that von Kluge died of heart failure about 12 days ago. I don’t blame the poor devil. One good look at all the men and all the equipment we put into France would give anybody who had to face them, heart-failure.
 
I am so glad you were able to have Mary with you for her birthday, and from her account, everybody had a beautiful time.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #95
Sept. 4, 1944
Monday night
 
Lucy darling:
 
I shoved a rather brief letter for you into the letter I wrote Mary this afternoon. Since tomorrow I’ll be several hours on the road to an army camp to see Ned, and probably won’t get back tomorrow night to write then, I’m doing it now, though this can’t be mailed till Wednesday morning.
 
Things are rushing along at breakneck speed. Tonight is announced that Brussels is freed and the British are approaching Antwerp. I said yesterday I expected that today the Allies would enter Belgium. It looks now as if by tomorrow night the Germans aren’t all out of it, they’ll never get out. Day after tomorrow, it will be Holland’s turn. And by that time, Patton’s men will be about ready to wash their socks and hang them out on the Sigfried Line.
 
Patton himself continuously is getting a big play in all the British papers – more even than Montgomery – it seems that the British don’t care whose face gets slapped as long as Patton includes Hitler’s.
 
I enclose a few clippings. I particularly invite attention to the one on the Tyler Kent case. That this scoundrel was not hanged is his luck; but to see growing out of it and the confidential correspondence of William Phillips to the President, the attempts of Senator Chandler and Drew Pearson to cause trouble between us and the British, is just too much. Chandler and that damned common gossip, Drew Pearson are playing Goebbels’ game – this is exactly what he is aiming at as the one Nazi chance to avoid retribution. And don’t think Goebbels is missing it – tonight the Nazi broadcasters were using this very data on Phillips and India to try to split America and Britain. Chandler at least should know better than to disclose official opinions made in confidential reports, whether they be complimentary or otherwise (the British could honestly say a great deal about us that isn’t complimentary either); and Drew Pearson should be put in jail for what he’s doing to sabotage our chances of winning the war. There is absolutely no reason for making any of this public except to cause trouble between us and Britain. If the Allies start to fight amongst themselves nobody wins but Hitler – long ago in North Africa General Eisenhower told any American who started anything like that that he’d find himself on his way home in disgrace so fast he’d be dizzy. They ought to hang the Iron Cross with oak leaves on Chandler and Drew Pearson for services to Nazi Germany for what they are doing.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #96
Sept. 5, 1944
Tuesday evening
 
Lucy darling:
 
I drove down to Ned’s camp this morning. I found him and his friends all asleep in the barracks as they had been up until 3:40 AM this morning. I tried to see if I could pick him out among the sleepers, but as most of them had blankets drawn up over their heads (it was cold enough) I couldn’t. However one of them awoke and asked if he could give me any information. He turned out to be Lt. Zimmerman; when I asked for Ned, he said he was in the next cot. Sure enough, when I pulled down the blanket, there he was. As it was already 10:30 AM, he didn’t mind getting up, and shortly they all did.
 
Since it was their first day there, and their program was unsettled, they couldn’t leave camp, so I had lunch with them there. After lunch, Ned and Lt. Zimmerman got a six hour pass. I couldn’t take them back with me on that, since it was nearly a three hour ride each way, so instead we drove to Winchester which we could easily do and looked over the cathedral there which I’d never seen before.
 
Outside, Winchester Cathedral, which is very large, is surpassed by some others in architectural grace, but inside, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more lovely cathedral anywhere. The columns, the stone work in the roof vaulting, and the lighting, are exquisite. As for its age – it dates from 1079 – it’s probably older than most. After about half an hour in the cathedral, we spent a while looking over the old town of Winchester, and then we drove back to camp, where I left the two to return here, getting back about 8:30 PM.
 
Ned had never seen any thatched cottages, and as the countryside around the camp was full of them, and the gardens and shrubbery all in blossom against a lovely green background, I think he got a fine first impression of southern England.
 
Ned told me he had ordered some flowers sent for Mary’s birthday (which in your letters which I picked up at the office on my return I note you say she received).
 
Ned doesn’t expect to stay in camp long; at the camp they told me the stay might be very brief. When they get their assignments there or at the far shore, they don’t know yet. Whether I’ll see him again before he goes over, I don’t know. I told him if he could get a long enough pass, to come to London for a brief visit, and I’d put him up.
 
Ned will let me know when he leaves and anything else he learns, but his telephone chances here are poor, and mail will take about as long from his camp as it does from here to you, so I may not hear further very soon.
 
With love, Ned
 
PS Tonight I received your #120 of 8/28 and 121 of 8/29. Your numbering system has collapsed; I already have #120 of 8/26 and #121 of 8/27.
 
 
Letter #97
Sept. 6, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
This morning I received your #122 and this afternoon #124. (123 hasn’t arrived yet). You duplicated your #120 and 121. I have two of each bearing those numbers. I imagine that under the impact of the blitzkrieg caused by the unprecedented advance of over 500 miles made in one day by Mary and her supporting forces, you completely lost control of your retreat to your previously prepared position and your numbering system disintegrated.
 
I sent you a cable at 2 PM today (that would be 8 AM your time) saying “Saw Ned yesterday.” I shall be interested to know when you got it. Ned’s chance of cabling from his camp was negligible.
 
I think I forgot to mention that day before yesterday the book sent from Dodd, Mead for Major General Gale arrived. I find that Gale is now a Lt. General and also that he is somewhere in France. As soon as I get some more exact information as to his address, I’ll send it to him; I don’t care just to throw it into the yawning maw of the far shore; I’d like to be reasonably assured he gets it. The book was mailed from N.Y. on Aug. 10, so it took a little under four weeks to get here.
 
I’m glad to hear you were able to stage such a gorgeous birthday party for Mary – lobster and chocolate cake! Oh! Oh! It makes my mouth water. And a sail in the afternoon! That makes my fingers itch for the feel of the tiller!
 
Today, I see from your #124, Clara goes home. I earnestly hope she did get a rest which built her up. I hope she does what you felt advisable, and has an independent check of the need before she has the proposed operation.
 
I note your statement you expect to go home on Sept. 25. I’ll start addressing my letters to Westfield on Sept. 16 unless I hear from you to the contrary in the meanwhile.
 
Yesterday when I drove down to see Ned, and with Lt. Zimmerman we went to see Winchester Cathedral, we had two blowouts and a flat tire from a leak, all in that 30 mile round trip from camp to Winchester. Of course the sailor driving did all the tire changing, but it was a mess. As a coincidence, I was just talking with Ned about the flat tires Mary and he had just before they sold their car, when Bang! went our first blowout – the right front. Fortunately the car had two spares, but the first spare blew out just as we were starting to leave Winchester, and the second one started to flatten out immediately we had it on the wheel. We hardly got to a garage on it before it was too soft to go any farther. Luckily the garage man was able to do a good repair job on two of the tires – one to ride on and one for a spare (the third one which was our first blowout was beyond hope) so that I got the two boys back to camp and myself back to London with no further trouble.
 
In view of all of which I suggest again that when you go home, you stick to the main roads and resist the temptation to take the lovely country roads which have so little traffic on them that it’s a pleasure to ride on them, but hell when you need help.
 
I may say in explanation of all this that the first tire that blew on us, we found to have the tread completely worn through, rubber and fabric, right down to the inner tube. It should never have been on the car. The second tire to blow was in itself all right, but blew off the rim because the casing had never been properly put on the rim in the first place. The third one to go went because it had an unrepaired puncture in it to start with. Just damned carelessness all around in the government garage before they sent the car out.
 
So I have no reason at all to believe you will have any such trouble, since you’ve had your tires checked over.
 
A dull day – no new large cities captured or new countries liberated, unless the entrance into Luxemburg turns out to be authentic. Russia got tired of Bulgaria’s procrastination and declared war on her, and 5 1/2 hours later Bulgaria asked for an armistice – the shortest war in history. Both east and west there may be a short lull while the forces build up for a smashing crack at Germany – it won’t be but a few days.
 
Meanwhile I see Goebbels’ propaganda having some effects – we play into his hands over India, and Poland once again gives him ammunition for causing trouble between themselves, Britain, and England (Ed: sic). Who in Heaven’s name do all these think they are fighting? I enclose some clippings in illustration.
 
I may say that no one who ever saw Indian troops in action would ever sneer at them. And far be it from us to criticize Britain for not being able to get India to enter whole heartedly into the war – I notice we had no great success some months ago trying to force or persuade De Valera and Ireland to quit acting as a base for enemy spies, nor in quelling or punishing our own fascists and traitors right at home, including Gerald Smith and his “America Firsters.”
 
There have been various radio statements from Germany that they have there given up hope of a military victory and are now aiming at a “political decision.” I have no doubt of it, and it pains me exceedingly to see various people in the U.S. and in Poland helping them along the road to one. Goebbels isn’t striving for time any more to get secret weapons into action (that’s all blown up); what he wants time for is for the allies to start fighting amongst themselves so Germany may escape disaster in the scuffle. But in spite of all the damned fools, the scandal-mongerers, and the self-seeking politicians of various nationalities helping Goebbels out, I don’t think it will work.
 
As regards Warsaw, it is just as naïve to expect the Russians to upset the campaign plans they think best suited to smash Germany to an impromptu rescue party for the Poles in Warsaw, as it would have been for Eisenhower to change his campaign plans in France in late June and July because London was being attacked by flying bombs.
 
Suppose that last mid-July, while we were facing an unbroken German line from Caen to La Haye de Puits and London was being heavily smacked, Eisenhower had been ordered by Churchill (or/and Roosevelt) that he must immediately smash through to the flying bomb coast or withdraw his army from Normandy by sea to assault the Pas de Calais to stop those bombs, it would have wrecked the whole campaign.
 
But London took it, suffered, and shut up, in the conviction that Eisenhower was doing the best possible; so also must the Poles in Warsaw – about the Russian offensive.
 
By the way, talking about propaganda, I am sending back to you for rereading, a clipping from News of the Week you last sent me. (I hope Clara also read it before she left). It should be pasted on the wall in the O.W. I. and taken to heart by plenty of Americans.
 
In the same section of News of the Week, I noted your footnote on Mr. Albert Volk’s letter on keeping the war going for another 3 to 5 years at least. You are right – the gentleman is a very prominent New York contractor who is not himself fighting. Not only will he not get hurt, but he won’t lose any money either if the war kept on forever. Germany is going to be smashed, but everyone here engaged in the smashing is perfectly willing to finish the job in five weeks and not drag it out for five years, just to suit either Mr. Volk’s ideas or his business. Mr. Volk forgets we suffer losses too when we send our airmen over Germany – they would have perfect grounds for mutiny if they were told that voluntarily we chose to keep them at it for five years for such a crack-brained reason.
 
The best news of the day is Sweden’s announcement that she will neither receive nor harbor any war criminals. With more or less like statements made by Spain and Argentina, the air is beginning to clear up on this. Switzerland remains to be heard from, but I believe will certainly take like action; to a degree she already has about Laval and his associates. Ireland has said nothing, and is as yet a doubtful quantity.
 
Finally there was the usual false armistice rumor, coming from Radio Brussels. Why the devil we have to have these false alarms I don’t know. Coming on top of the false announcement in America of D- Day last June, and the false armistice of Nov. 7, 1918, this is too much. A little checking up before spreading such rumors wouldn’t hurt either newspapers or broadcasters but I suppose that is too much to expect of those whose minds run only to scareheads and special announcements.
 
Since mine runs only to you, I have no sympathetic understanding of such doings.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #98
Sept. 7, 1944
Thursday
 
Lucy darling:
 
Your missing #123 arrived this morning. I got 124 yesterday.
 
I am glad to know you have gasoline enough to take a few short trips around S.W.H. The Flying Mt. and Valley Cove one is always rewarding.
 
You may have beautiful black hulled schooners as symbols of approaching victory; around here we are getting definite relaxation of the intense blackout as a symbol of the same. Many cities of England will shortly go back to complete peacetime lighting. London will go from a blackout to a moderate dimout.
 
Now that we are coming to the end of the blackout, I may say that almost the most dangerous situation I’ve been in since I left New York resulted from it. Late last June I got back from the far shore on a dispatch boat which landed me at 1:30 AM at Portsmouth. I had to be in London in the morning for a conference, and there was a car (a Packard) waiting at the dock with a navy driver for me). The distance was 80 miles over roads strange to me and to the driver, on a dark moonless night with an absolute blackout of all road and other lighting the whole way; the car, fitted out in accordance with the blackout regulations had no headlights, and only two tiny fender lights inferior to the parking lights on our Chevrolet, which meant no road light at all. That drive was a nightmare, which took over four hours to cover 80 miles over roads, which, thank God, were practically free of all traffic. After two hours, during which the bluejacket driver twice went completely off the road at imagined turns which didn’t exist (fortunately there were no ditches there when we brought up in the hedges), the driver was completely knocked out from eyestrain, and couldn’t go on. I drove the car myself the other half of the way, with no worse results than twice going up on the curbstones. Finally as dawn was breaking we arrived. I swore I’d never ride or drive in a blackout again, and I haven’t. Do you know that more people have been killed in road accidents at night in England since the blackout started in 1939 than have been killed by both the bombing blitzes and the flying bomb attacks?
 
So you can imagine what the lifting of the blackout means to the people of England.
 
As another symbol of how near victory is, the British have today released the story of the defenses against the flying bomb. I am enclosing the Star, with the whole account. It may be admitted now that if Hitler had ever been allowed to get going with it on the scale he intended, 300 bombs an hour, he would have destroyed both London and all southern England, including the invasion ports on the Channel. But the counter measures taken in advance, mainly bombing his launching sites, factories, and depots, set him way back in his starting schedule and cut down his capacity so he never on his best day got off more than 200 in a day, and averaged only half that.
 
The defense put up was magnificent, so that on the average only about one an hour reached London, and the last four weeks, much less than that with the defense continually improving. The result was the attack never was a military danger; Hitler probably doesn’t believe it yet and honestly thinks the British were lying like hell when they kept claiming London was not only still on the map, but wasn’t even seriously incommoded, let alone not in a panic.
 
V-2 we’ll never see at all. Even the Germans tacitly admit that this is so, for they have completely quit talking about what their marvelous secret weapons are going to do to retrieve a hopeless situation. Goebbels is now relying solely on the allies fighting among themselves “sooner or later,” and all he is striving for now is time enough for them to fall out. See clipping, “Terrible Crisis.”
 
I enclose also “Warweek” with an account of the Oradour massacre, which you say you saw no notice of.
 
I got off my book to Lt. General Gale today.
 
It rained all day today here and in France, which was no help to our air attack. Our September weather so far has been lousy – rain nearly every day.
 
The German radio still uses up most of its time discussing how horrible conditions are in the freed countries, anarchy, starvation, looting, in France, Italy, Belgium, Rumania, and now in Bulgaria. I should think they would now lay off this line, for all their satellite states, Finland, Bulgaria, Italy, Rumania, Belgium (and Holland soon) are lost to them. They have only Hungary left as an ally; and Denmark and Norway still in their grasp. So they can hardly count on such stories being of value any longer in scaring satellite or occupied countries into staying by them. It may be such stories help to keep the still hypnotized Germans inline inside Germany, but why they should spread them in England I can’t see. Possibly it is to keep American fascists supplied with ammunition for their work.
 
I note with interest that in the U.S. Raymond Gram Swing and others gave some radio attention to the beach supply job that made our victory in the Battle of France possible. What was done on those beaches that way still has the Germans dazed.
 
I had a horrible dream last night – I dreamed that over night Brazil had suddenly reversed its position in the conflict and declared war on us! And I thought, good God! Between Brazil and Argentina they’ll turn all South America into an enemy country just when things are going so beautifully. I was glad to wake up and learn in the morning that the only overnight declaration of war seems to be Bulgaria’s against Germany. As a matter of fact, today the BBC ran a special radio broadcast celebrating Brazil’s Independence Day. It may have been their advance announcement last night of the program that got my subconscious mind beamed on Brazil, with queer results.
 
If I don’t comment on the clippings you send me, don’t think I don’t appreciate them. I do. But usually I don’t have the space for much comment.  Paper is scarce.
 
I hope the clear weather you seem to have, keeps up.
 
I haven’t heard anything from Ned II since I saw him day before yesterday. That certainly means he hasn’t been able to get away from camp, and probably means he has moved to the far shore.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter # 99
Sept. 8, 1944
Friday
 
Lucy darling:
 
Your #126 arrived today, a most remarkable delivery, for though it is dated Sept. 2, it was postmarked SWH Sept. 4, so it came through from there in 4 days.
 
It was pleasant to see the photograph of Mal and his son. I wish with you that the boy has better luck than his brother.
 
I received the tail end of the editorial on cotton, but as 125 hasn’t come yet, I haven’t the main part of it.
 
I quite agree with you that it will be as well if you and Mary leave SWH Sept. 16 to return to Westfield. Unless there is something in the letters I receive the next three days to indicate otherwise, I shall start addressing my letters (starting with that of Sept. 11) to Westfield. I do not believe any letter mailed here on or after Sept. 11 could possibly be delivered to SWH by Sept. 16 when you leave. However, you had better yourself write to the Postmaster, Westfield, telling him to hold there any mail which comes for you, say after Sept. 13 and not forward it, or you will find the letters are merely kiting back and forth to SWH for a week or so, with only more delay in delivery resulting.
 
I may add that when you get back to Westfield, if you need heat, do not hesitate to use the oil burner. There may be no present let up in the rationing, but there will be long before next spring, so there is no call to save fuel and court a cold or pneumonia if September is cold, to stretch out our oil allowance to cover next April or May. However, be sure there is about half a glass full of water in the furnace before you turn on the oil burner. (There probably will be).
 
You mention a comparison between SWH fogs and London pea-soups. I can’t make any, because there has not been anything you could really call a fog in London since I’ve been here. I doubt that London will have any more fogs till the war is over and the coal rationing is off. A main breeder of London fogs is undoubtedly the vast quantity of sooty smoke from the millions of London fireplace chimneys, and as the Londoners get next to no coal to burn in their fireplaces now, there is no smoke and no fog, and London is one of the cleanest places in the world to work. The return of the fogs will be one of the blessings peace will bring back to London.
 
It’s cooling off here and I wear a sweater every evening in my hotel room. I have a real fireplace in the room, but there is no coal supplied, and the manager would fall dead if I asked for any. He’d probably ask me if I knew there was a war on.
 
I saw Ned tonight. He telephoned in the late afternoon, and I took him out to dinner late. He had a brief pass and goes back to camp at noon. His movements are still uncertain. No assignment yet.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #100
Sept. 9, 1944
Saturday night
 
Lucy darling:
 
No mail today. Your last letter received was #126. #125 is the only one missing.
 
As I said yesterday, Ned, who got into London yesterday afternoon called me up from the house of some second cousin whom he had gone to see in Chelsea, and came over about 8:30 PM. Since it was still light, we walked over to see Buckingham Palace and then Whitehall. By then it was dark and it turned out that Ned hadn’t had any dinner, so we walked up to Piccadilly Circus and had dinner at the Regent Palace Hotel, which I blundered into in the blackout. For dinner, roast beef and roast potatoes, but not so hot, since as it was getting around toward 10 PM, London was locking up. (Most of the town is completely locked up and in bed by 9 PM, at which time all the theaters and cinemas (I’m getting quite English) close up. When we came out, the blackout was complete. The stars were lovely, but as the moon wasn’t out, it was very dark. With the help of a bobby, we got on the right street for Trafalgar Square where Ned was stopping overnight in the Queen Elizabeth, apparently an overnight club for Allied officers on leave. I left him there and went home. Since he had to leave about noon today, I thought it best to leave him free this morning to wander around London with two other officers who came up with him. So I didn’t see him again today. As I said yesterday, his assignment seems uncertain and when he’ll move along or where, he has no idea. It may not be so soon.
 
Tomorrow’s letter, which won’t go out till Monday the 11th, (this one probably won’t either) will be the last one addressed to Southwest Harbor, unless by a freak I get I get a letter when I go to the office tomorrow morning for a few minutes to mail this, which tells me you intend to stay longer than the 16th.
 
Things are dull here. It is nine days since the last few bombs came over, and about two weeks since we really had what you could call an attack. The German radio, having taken notice of the full report (which I sent you day before yesterday) of the whole history of the flying bomb attack, the numbers knocked down, and the damage and death caused, denounces the report as a gross perversion and suppression of the facts. It relies mainly for substantiation, on what it says are American reports of Americans returned to Washington, of the terrible destruction caused and the terrific effect of each explosion. Actually the British have truly reported what happened; all I can say from the point of view of one who was in London for the entire 80 days of the attack (except for 12 days when I was on the far shore during this period) that the effects have been grossly exaggerated in America, and I have an idea that those away from here who read the exact British account still get a distorted impression of what happened and the reaction on the Londoners. I was never once in an air raid shelter during the whole period, day or night. I never saw another person even start for an air raid shelter that whole time, whether in my hotel, in my office, on the street, or in a bus, when we could hear a bomb approaching and didn’t know where it would land. Actually, I have been at meals when we could hear one approaching and no one even bothered to get up to look out a window to see where it was headed; the waitresses serving wouldn’t interrupt their passing you the bread or whatever they were serving. The evacuation of which so much has been made, especially by Goebbels, was promoted by the government, in my opinion not because the population was in terror, but for an entirely different reason – for the soldiers on the fighting fronts in France, Italy, and in Burma, who would undoubtedly get the same impression that America got, of terrific danger to their wives and children in London, and it was to ease their minds that the government promoted the evacuation. But even though the government officially promoted the evacuation, there wouldn’t have been any on any scale at all, if it hadn’t seemed to those involved a grand chance to get a free vacation at government expense in the country or at the shore during what Londoners thought was summer heat. As it was, the government was much plagued by women and children by the thousands who wanted to (and did) return to London, bombs or no bombs, because they didn’t find their evacuee billets up (sic: to) their ideas of what constituted a comfortable vacation standard. And finally I’ll bet it can be proved that more people evacuated New York in a panic to escape the heat than left London this summer.
 
And with this, I think I’ll quit mentioning the flying bombs. As I mentioned a few days ago, the blackout is a worse menace than the flying bombs. I’ll be more grateful at its passing in another week than I was to hear the last of the flying bombs.
 
Germany’s position is getting what can honestly be stated to be utterly hopeless. No oil from Rumania, no iron ore from Sweden, no wheat from anywhere outside Germany itself; Bulgaria, Rumania, France, and Italy actually fighting it, and Finland no longer a source of dividing Russian attention; with three armies pressing it heavily from west, south and east, and with the rain of bombs from the skies radically increasing since Germany herself is the sole target; and with Belgium now and Holland soon getting into the fight – with all this, Hitler’s worst nightmares of “encirclement” never approached what he has brought upon himself and Germany and the end draws very close. I doubt that Germany will stand up very long after Montgomery in the north, Patton in the center, and Patch in the south, punch through the Siegfried Line into Germany itself. The Watch on the Rhine has practically run down – it is on it’s last few feeble ticks now.
 
I was listening to music on a German station, which was just interrupted by (all in German) “Achtung! Achtung! Bombers are over Hanover and Brandenburg! Achtung!” and then the music came on again. I trust those Forts and Liberators smack Hanover and Brandenburg a good one. (Or since it’s dark now, I suppose they are British Lancasters and Wellingtons).
 
It won’t be long now till I hear, “Achtung! Achtung! The Yanks are here! Achtung!” and the music won’tcome on again.
 
With love, Ned
 
PS Washday this afternoon. I’ve got it all out on the line in my bathroom now. Looks like a good drying night.
 
 
Letter #101
Sept. 10, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
No mail from you, but being Sunday, I expected none.
 
This is the last letter which I am addressing to SWH unless letters received after your #126 show a decided change in your plans.
 
Today Sunday, was quite a pleasant day here, clear, sunny, and cool.
 
I enclose a brief clipping regarding Mr. Amery, Secretary of State for India, which of itself is of no particular significance except that on the German radio Saturday night I heard,
 
“You will now hear a statement from Mr. John Amery, son of the British Secretary of State for India. Mr. Amery speaks of his own accord and is himself only responsible for his statements.” Then followed young Mr. John Amery in as vicious and as vile a Nazi speech as I have heard, denouncing Britain, denouncing democracy, hailing dictators, with all the usual Nazi trimmings to the end, when once again we were told we had been listening to the “son of the British Secretary of State for India.” We had been too. My heart bled for his father.
 
The other clipping may interest Mary. It would appear that Ned had the honor to travel on the same ship that carried Mr. Churchill and his party.
 
I divided the day between basking in the sun in St. James’ Park and doing the ironing. Not very exciting.
 
I see the Germans now officially announce Model as C in C in the west. I wonder how long he’ll last.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #102
Sept. 11, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
No letters from you today. I did, however, receive a letter from Mary dated Sept. 4 and postmarked 8 AM Sept. 5. In this letter Mary confirmed your statement in your #126 that you were leaving Southwest Harbor Sept. 16. Inasmuch as this letter (mailed tomorrow morning, Sept. 12) could never possibly get to SWH for delivery on the morning of Sept. 16 (even if you waited that morning till the mail came in, which is dubious) it and all following go to Westfield. I hope you have told the Westfield postmaster not to forward, but as insurance, I’m so marking the envelope.
 
At the moment, your #126 is the last letter received. #125 is the only letter missing.
 
I see you intend to return in time for Barbara Pilling’s wedding. Give her my love, kiss her a good one for me, and tell Barbara I wish her all the happiness in the world. I always thought Barbara was (except Mary) just the sweetest girl I knew.
 
It doesn’t look as if I’m going to become as closely acquainted with Brittany as I was with Normandy. The war has shifted so far to the east that I’m afraid I’ll have to wait for the piping days of peace to make acquaintance with the quaintness of the Breton scene. When, if, and as I go to the far shore again, it’s more likely to be to the east, not to Brittany. I somehow regret this a bit, for I have expected to stand on Mont St. Michel and see the tide come racing across the sands so fast that a man on a racehorse could not outrun the incoming tide (maybe this is as much hooey as that other wonderful tide at Monckton) but anyway, I’m not going to find out – not till the sweet by-and-by.
 
So I’m waiting as patiently as may be, for something to turn up to the east. And that isn’t very patiently, for I’m hoping only for the day now when I can kiss both the near shore and the far shore goodbye together.
 
With love, Ned
 
Welcome home to Westfield. I hope you have no troubles getting your various gadgets going properly.
 
 
Letter #103
Sept. 12, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
Your letters, four of them, arrived today - #125, 127, 128, and 129. That brings everything up to date. And reaffirms that you are leaving SWH on Sept. 16.
 
You should get this in Westfield when your hegira southward is over. I trust nothing untoward happened on the trip. I presume you had sufficient gasoline, since your itinerary encompassed an extra 40 or 50 miles to go to Springfield, rather than to Willimantic direct.
 
I am very much disturbed to hear of your mother’s second accident to her hip – I suppose it is no use talking about making a habit of safety. Practically every industrial plant has learned that giving some thought to safety and safety practices is the only way to reduce accidents. When one is over 70, the carelessness that is of no great moment in a younger person, takes on an entirely different aspect. Perhaps you can persuade your mother that this is not a matter of luck but a matter of habit, and it is essential that she begin to cultivate the habit of safety. I enclose a clipping on the subject, showing that falls are far more hazardous than the battlefield.
 
Well, today Le Havre was captured. It will be of considerably more importance to us than the Breton ports, since it is far closer to the scene of action. Actually, except to wipe them out as U-boat nests, it is dubious that the Breton & Biscay ports have any meaning to us any more – the fighting has left them so far in the rear. If the Germans think they are hurting us any by hanging on in them till their men there are all killed (we’ll be glad to oblige) they are much mistaken. Patton got away from the west coast and even Paris, so fast, that he long ago made those ports about as valuable to our armies as Iceland today.
 
Thanks for sending me the financial sheets, and the various other clippings. So many came in the letters today, including the News of the Week, it will take a few days to go over them. I did however, read the editorial on Roosevelt’s unique value as President from the facts that Stalin & Churchill are personally indebted to him (together with their countries). In my view Roosevelt suffers from a unique disability shared with no other possible candidate, which ought to settle him with any voter who knows the slightest amount of the history of previous republics – that of being a candidate for perpetual tenure. For me, that quality is fatal, regardless of whether Dewey comes near being an ideal candidate or not.
 
Welcome home, and I hope it won’t be too long till I’m there too.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #104
Sept. 13, 1944
Wednesday
 
Lucy darling:
 
A somewhat warmer day today with clear weather for some days past, that should be a great help to the air boys.
 
I’m beginning to think that it might have been a good idea if I had put in some time in my youth in studying Flemish and Dutch instead of Latin and Spanish. Luckily I haven’t got a heavy investment in French – I could sell that language short and still apparently be on the safe side.
 
All your letters thru #129 have been received. Nothing today, however. Starting with 101 (Ed: 102), I have addressed my letters to Westfield and not to Southwest Harbor.
 
Times have changed around here, presumably for the better. A few weeks ago the blasted sirens used to wail out at odd hours in a most annoying way, but es macht zwei wöche jezt das nicht eine kommt aus der lüft; on the other hand, I can turn on a German radio station practically any hour now I choose to and the chances are I’ll hear, “Achtung! Achtung! Aircraft over – (fill in anywhere in Germany you wish; if that isn’t the spot now, it will be in a few hours).” Just at the moment, it seems that Schleswig Holstein and Mecklenburg are getting a little attention according to the Heine announcer; about fifteen minutes ago it was a couple of other places. To top off all, I can’t remember now that for over a week I have heard any of Goebbels’ boys telling us about what either V1, V2, or any other secret weapon was going to do to us – they seem to have dropped the subject with alacrity.
 
It will be very interesting to watch the German reaction over the next week or two when it’s German towns and German civilians (another Achtung! To add Brandenburg to the list of places receiving attention) who are being rolled over by our troops and whose towns are being shot to pieces to dislodge the Nazi defenders. It really hurt me to see what we had to do to towns like Isigny, Carenton, Mountebourg and Valognes; but when our gunners have German towns and not French ones as their targets, they can really put their hearts into it. However, I doubt that the German population will regard it quite so enthusiastically.
 
Goebbels’ real secret weapon – dissention among the Allies – doesn’t seem to have made any progress these last few days in spite of the Polish situation; the poor devil must be getting discouraged. His announcers don’t speak with as much conviction in their voices as they used to; his main program for the Yanks isn’t “Invasion Calling” anymore – it’s just “Germany calling” and the invasion songs have all been jettisoned, together with (I’m sorry) Lilli Marlene again.
 
Very dull over here. (Another Achtung! to add West Deutschland to areas being entertained).
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #105
Sept. 14, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
That cable I sent you and which you mentioned receiving in your #131 was slightly abbreviated in transmission. As sent it read “Saw Ned yesterday.” That was passed by the cable censor at this end. As you say you received it, the last word was eliminated. Apparently the censor on your end decided that such information should not go through. Remember how they changed the time in the cable I sent you from Natal when I came home from Africa? Apparently time has to be very vague in cables.
 
Today I received your letters 130, 131, and 133.
 
I was very sorry to learn that it was a break, not a sprain, that your mother’s hip had suffered. However, I had not underrated the seriousness of the accident, even supposedly as a sprain, but a break does make the situation worse.
 
That the medical situation in Willimantic is distressing is just too bad. I suppose your mother has gone to the hospital in Hartford. I don’t know that there is anything I can do except to say that whatever money may be required for your mother’s hospital or medical expenses we shall, of course, be glad to give.
 
The x-ray matter you mention is no credit to the doctor involved. As you say, Dr. Salvati x-rayed your toe, and last May when I dropped down the hold of a Dutch salvage ship, our naval surgeon drove me 50 miles from Selsey Bill to Netley to have my heel x-rayed, and insisted on having it done even though a careful examination showed no sign of a break.
 
There is no question the flying bomb is cooked, but the Government here apparently believes we may yet get a few samples of V2. The Germans still have a clutch on the Dutch coast and a few spots on the Belgian and French coast, and the Government may think they may get off some rockets before they are finally chased far enough back to make firing unlikely. That at any rate, is what seems to lie behind the Govt. warning to evacuees not to return yet. But the evacuees, the summer vacation season being over, are coming back in hordes regardless of the warning, thus demonstrating that danger had little to do with their original departure.
 
I read with much interest the clipping on Bullitt. I have a very low opinion of the gentleman, but in the light of the Soviet denunciation of Bullitt as a liar his previous history is queer. Bullitt is, I think, the kind of man Pravda says; it ought to know. Bullitt’s political gyrations much resemble those of the unlamented Sir Oswald Mosley. Bullitt, a college mate at Harvard of John Reed, communist par excellence, married John Reed’s Russian widow after the untimely death of Reed in Moscow. Bullitt is credited with persuading Roosevelt to recognize the Soviets in 1933, and was our first ambassador to Soviet Russia in consequence. Why he ultimately fell out of favor there, I don’t know. Possibly his sympathies changed when he found he couldn’t run the show, just as Oswald Mosley quit the Socialist Labour Party in England when they wouldn’t let him run it. Bullitt then turned up as French ambassador, and since then has fallen pretty badly. Regardless of anything else involved, Bullitt’s article will be just what Goebbels wants (as a matter of fact, Goebbels referred briefly to it on the radio already). With the enemy yet unconquered, what sense is there starting dissention among those who jointly must do the conquering by spreading to the world Italian doubts as to Moscow’s intentions? To have such an article appear in an American journal is right now to encourage Goebbels’ chances of rousing such hard feeling between the Allies as to give him an opportunity of making a compromise peace on any terms at all with one group or the other and then fighting off the remaining opponents. I often think there should be blazoned all over the U.S. the query: “Who in hell are we fighting?” It might give some people pause before they turn their energies towards helping our enemies by fighting our allies. (By the way, at some stage in all the above, Bullitt’s Russian wife died or he got a divorce, I don’t remember which or when).
 
Where is Ted Parker? (Ed: Son of Mrs. Ellsberg’s cousin).
 
That editorial you sent me from the New York Times on Antwerp is exactly right. Antwerp is far superior to any French port. Everybody realizes that, and its capture puts a different complexion on the situation, just as the Times points out. That is as far as I can go in discussing this matter.
 
Don’t send me either of the books you mention.
 
I received a letter from Sophia (Ed: Ellsberg’s cousin, Sophia Milroy) in Denver today.
 
Nearly everybody around here has got a cold in the head from the beautifully cooled off offices and hotel rooms. So also have I. My nose is running beautifully and I’ve already used up about a dozen handkerchiefs today. Unfortunately I can’t fall back on my old standby, Scott’s; and the kind of paper they do have around here is about as useful for the purpose as a coarse rasp. Meanwhile I’m inhaling Benzedrine and taking pills religiously every four hours.
 
With love, Ned
 
PS Take warning from my plight. Don’t keep the house when you get back, a good imitation of a well chilled refrigerator.
 
 
Letter #106
Sept. 15, 1944
 
As I told you yesterday, I had a lovely cold in the head (quite common around here now). Today, as my nose was running even more freely, which I think is usual on the second day, after another visit to the doctor, I went back to my hotel and stayed in bed. This evening, there appears to be considerable improvement. I guess I’ll go back to the office tomorrow.
 
As a result I spent the whole afternoon listening to what was practically a solid afternoon of BBC performance. A good part of it was music, mostly records, but they had some transcribed American programs, including Raymond Gram Swing’s American commentary (on the election situation, elucidating it for British listeners).
 
I see Maine is Republican by more than usual. I trust that means something.
 
Out here our troops have started to chew up the Siegfried Line. It won’t take them long. And I look for increasing movement on both the Italian and the Russian-Polish fronts very quickly. Meanwhile our bombers gave several German cities an awful pasting both with bombs and incendiaries these last few days, which must have caused serious thought inside Germany. I notice in the Pacific that both MacArthur and Nimitz have stepped closer to the Philippines and I should think Japan has plenty of reason to be concerned also. My impression is that when Germany is cleaned up, Russian neutrality with regard to Japan will follow the identical path that Russian neutrality with regard to Bulgaria did.
 
On your finally revised schedule, this is the day you left SWH and started for home. I hope again that you had a trouble-free trip.
 
I don’t know whether to deduce from your letters that your mother has already gone to the Hartford hospital or not. At any rate, you will have seen her before you get this. When next you write give her my best wishes.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #107
Sept. 16, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
No letters today. The mail seems to run in bunches with intervals.
 
In the last letter I had, #133, you said you and Mary were going to leave Sept. 15. Presumably you did. Now I see from the reports here that a first class hurricane passed that way that day, and while I judge it eased down before it hit Maine, still it must have left the roads in bad shape with fallen trees, so that as you went south there must have been plenty of road blocks even if the storm had passed. How did you make out?
 
The cold I mentioned was very much improved by my staying in bed yesterday, so this morning I went to the office. While there I had a telephone call from an officer apparently in the city on a brief leave who had been with Ned, and who was relaying a message. Ned has gone to the far shore, apparently in the last day or two, with a specialist group of both officers and men. Whether that was his final assignment or whether he gets reassigned on the other side, this chap didn’t know, nor did he have any information as to unit or APO number. He said Ned would write me that when he could (or when he knew) and of course he’ll send Mary the same information direct. I haven’t seen Ned again or heard from him, other than the above, since I last took him out to dinner here, of which I wrote you.
 
This afternoon I went to a matinee, being the first theater performance I’ve been to. I was intrigued by the comments on the new Old Vic Repertory Theater being put on at the New Theater (the Old Vic itself was blitzed) by a group of which Laurence Olivier seems to be the leading light. So I went to see “Richard the Third” which was new to me.
 
I enclose a review clipping of the play. It’s really odd, but this play seemed absolutely contemporary. I didn’t feel as if the actors were talking Shakespeare – they were merely talking English and even the fifteenth century costumes didn’t seem to date the piece. Laurence Olivier did a beautiful job as Richard, who was a complete villain all right, but the way he twisted the Lady Anne round his finger reminded me very much (so did all his acting) of John Barrymore in “The Jest.” One thing, I suppose, that makes the play seem contemporary, rather than what as a boy I regarded as a Shakespearean classic, is that while once I thought that murdering one or a dozen persons to seize power had passed with the Middle Ages, now I (and plenty of others) know that (as you used to say till I cured you of it) it’s quite “comme il faut.” So I could look with as much keen absorption on Richard III singing out “Off with his head!” as if it were Hitler having another dozen assorted field marshals and generals purged; and when Richard finally gets bumped off one understands that is quite the twentieth century finale for a defeated tyrant. So the whole thing seemed just as fresh as the very last batch baked by Moss Hart on the American political scene. I enclose the program.
 
From the news reports, it appears that our troops ran across the Siegfried Line in the general environs of Aachen. As I had anticipated, they found it not worth bothering with, so they went on about another dozen miles without stopping, to where presumably the drying conditions were better for the washing than on the Siegfried Line. It will be interesting shortly to listen to the Nazi explanations on why the Siegfried Line turned out to be just about as effective as soft butter when we hit it; they are good at that thing – I recollect how impregnable they claimed the Atlantic Wall was till we pushed it over on D-Day, after which it appeared from the German explanations that it really was only intended as a sort of “No Trespassing” sign.
 
The papers report a few more flying bombs. There was an alert this morning – the first in over two weeks. Later in the morning I heard three explosions a few hours apart. So far as I’m concerned, as a connoisseur on bomb explosions, I thought I noted a somewhat distinctive flavor to these explosions I had not before observed. Maybe these plane-launched flying bombs are somewhat different – maybe so.
 
Still in hopes that the storm didn’t cause you any trouble on your journey (nor did your tires).
 
With love, Ned
 
PS A little cartoon showing how the old theme of the country maiden going wrong on Broadway has gone into reverse; and another on fraternizing with the enemy, are tossed in for good measure.
 
 
Letter #108
Sept. 17, 1944
Sunday
 
Lucy darling:
 
No mail today. At the post office, they told me they had received none at all for several days, so, as I suspected, the intermissions are due to the transatlantic service. I trust the service going west is more regular.
 
On the radio this afternoon, there was a special announcement of an airborne landing in Holland, with instructions for the Dutch population south of the Rhine area. It will be interesting to see the effect of the first real airborne army tactics. The Nazis have gathered quite a large army to oppose Montgomery with the Dutch canals as their defensive barriers. This move should sandwich the enemy between two fires in that area and immobilize his right flank while Hodges’ group works inland to Cologne.
 
We have had a few more explosions around here, reported as being from air-launched flying bombs. I’ve heard the explosions, but I note that I have not heard the roar of any flying bomb engines. Of course, this may be because the engines have been set to cut out  and let the bombs glide in the last few miles in a flat glide with silenced engine. This may be so, for during the main blitz, a few were set that way. There have been very few of the explosions, and I note that practically all have come just about dawn. One such woke me up at six this morning.
 
I am sending you a number of clippings on various subjects. There is an interesting criticism of Laurence Olivier’s Richard III, which I wrote you I saw yesterday. I wonder if John Barrymore ever did this part. He and Olivier would have given very similar performances, I should think. This critic, Mr. James Agate, feels that Shakespeare visualized Richard physically as a “boar.” Of course, Olivier could not give such an interpretation, and made no attempt to. I’ll bet there has not been a more realistic characterization however by any other actor. If you have ever seen this play, who did it? Maurice Evans? And how?
 
Speaking of “boars,” I enclose another clipping which will express all Londoners’ yearnings about boredom.
 
Tonight the blackout is off. The London streets won’t be lighted (they say) because of technical difficulties in control, but the window blackout (always a damned nuisance) is out. In honor of the occasion, I am enclosing the criminal notice filched from my hotel room. I imagine it won’t be needed to intimidate future guests.
 
Another clipping relates to the British reaction to certain of our best known collaborationists to stir up trouble between ourselves and Britain. I need hardly comment on the Daily News, the Mirror, or Drew Pearson. These gutter-wallowers are too well known. This Quincy Howe, however, is an interesting case of Anglophobia, who in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, served both Hitler and the isolationists well by inculcating a venomous hatred of Britain so far as he could. Interestingly enough, he is wound up with the firm of Simon & Schuster in some sort of editorial or executive capacity. Those two gentlemen show about as much insight into what’s dangerous as did Mr. Moss M. Myers over here when he bragged his banking firm was helping to finance Nazi rearmament. Simon & Schuster helped it thru Quincy Howe in a literary way. (Mr. Myers, who died, was the smaller of the two partners you met. I don’t remember the other chap’s name).
 
Whether Lord Louis Mountbatten is the best C in C for Southeast Asia, I wouldn’t attempt to comment on. Those who know all the factors, like the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are best able to judge and I have no doubt their judgment will be followed. But I know of no one less qualified to pass on the problem than those two gutter-snipes, Drew Pearson and Quincy Howe.
 
Another interesting clipping is by JDS Alan, another newspaper expert, who like most of them, used to think that Hitler made a mistake in not invading England back in 1940. Like a lot of other damned fools who didn’t know anything about what they were talking, he helped to spread the idea that it was only Hitler’s poor judgment which saved England. He has at last learned what was evident to Churchill and Britain’s navy then, that if only England stood and fought, Hitler couldn’t. This chap finally timidlysuggests that maybe he was wrong. That’s going a long way for a newspaper expert. The danger, of course, to us all, is that this same set of obstreperous idiots are still blatantly experting on things they know no more about than on those they were so expertly wrong about four years ago.
 
I enclose also an insignificant little clipping “It rose high in the sky.” I suggest you keep this for further reference. I consider it the most significant item published in any of the Sunday papers here, and well worth plenty of speculation. On this item may well hinge the whole course of Germany’s further conduct in this war.
 
Another interesting item is that von Rundstedt is reported recalled as German C in C. Most interesting case. Von Rundstedt fell out of favor because he wanted to pull the army out of Normandy back to the Siegfried Line while still he had an army. Now he’s back on what’s left of the Western Front, but both his army and the Siegfried Line aren’t there any more. He can save himself a lot of worry by shooting himself right now, before the Gestapo does it for him. It might seem a little queer that von Rundstedt, who is one of the few real General Staff strategists left, would take the command again under what he knows perfectly well are totally hopeless conditions. May I suggest that von Rundstedt  does it only to get back into a position of field authority where with something like an army at his back he may be in a position to treat with the enemy for peace, and also perhaps to upset Hitler’s regime while he’s doing it?
 
It is a remarkable commentary on the desperate straits to which Hitler is reduced, that he should even dream of recalling von Rundstedt to command, for with good reason, von Rundstedt was suspected of being at least sympathetic to the generals who tried to assassinate Hitler. Hitler’s losses in generals seems to have been so terrific these last three months that in spite of the danger, he had to recall von Rundstedt. My belief is that within three weeks, von Rundstedt will either have surrendered or be dead, unless Hitler yanks him out in less time than that.
 
I suppose when you get this, you will be almost settled down again at home. Don’t forget to keep yourself warm, and don’t rely just on the fireplace for it either. Next after that, how will you be fixed on gasoline enough to get around on?
 
By the way, for various good reasons which I won’t go into here, I think it would be a good idea if you don’t imperatively need the money, for you to call Howard Lewis on the telephone and tell him that I prefer that the checks which would ordinarily be sent on Oct. 1 be not sent then, but be held up till I come home, when I’ll ask him for them. You don’t have to enter into any discussion of reasons – just tell him that’s what we want. But if you agree with this, don’t delay in calling Howard Lewis on this, as after the checks are sent out, it will be too late. They can’t be sent back. If the checks have already been mailed when you get this, don’t try to send them back – just let the matter drop.
 
I am looking forward with much interest to hearing of how your ride home through the hurricane area (and maybe the hurricane) went.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #109
Sept. 18, 1944
Monday night
 
Lucy darling:
 
No mail today. However, it struck me today what the probable reason is. That hurricane, which swept through New England on Sept. 15 was probably apparent enough so there were no flights on possibly even Sept. 13 and 14. And evidently there have been none since, including today. Since this was a bad weather condition, doubtless it stopped all westbound flights also. Of course you may not have been effected by this since you left SWH Sept. 15 (maybe) and weren’t due in Westfield till Sept. 19, so you wouldn’t have received any letters then anyway.
 
It must have been a real hurricane, since the papers here report that the destroyer Warrington foundered in the storm with most of her crew – that doesn’t happen in an ordinary storm.
 
I had a letter this morning from Ned Benson, written Sept. 14, which must have been a day or so before he moved across. I enclose it for your information. I have no doubt the mail deliveries to the address he gives will be none too prompt – how good they’ll be in the opposite direction is also dubious.
 
It took three days for this letter to be delivered about 70 miles here.
 
Last night was the official end of the blackout. But looking out my window last night, you wouldn’t have known it. London was as thoroughly blacked out as I’ve ever seen it. The street lamps were not lighted, and nobody in my area took advantage of the change in window lighting. Then to make it good, about half an hour after it got really dark we had an alert with searchlights and all. One flying bomb passed about a mile away and exploded about 1 1/2 miles away. Almost immediately after the explosion the All Clear sounded, making this about the shortest alert we’ve had – not over 3 or 4 minutes. In the case of this bomb, I heard the engine and also heard it cut out about fifteen seconds before the explosion.
 
There have been a few explosions lately which do not conform to the usual pattern of V1. As the newspaper clipping I sent you lately, stated, these have been causing “much speculation.” My impression is that while the enemy still has a few square miles left in his possession – around the Pas de Calais, one of the successors to V1 has been getting a ride. Except very indirectly, no mention of this has been made in the press or otherwise, nor has the enemy made any claims of such use. What’s going on here (if anything is) is a very deep official secret.
 
I listened on the radio yesterday to Montgomery’s address to his men, the text of which I enclose.
 
I hope tomorrow when I get to the office I find the mail has finally come through.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #110
Sept. 19, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
No letter today either. The last received was #133 (#132 missing) which came on Sept. 14. The Fleet Post Office told me today the hurricane was the reason. Some mail finally came through this afternoon but was not yet sorted. It will probably be distributed tomorrow. I imagine with nearly a week’s mail stacked up in New York (and perhaps the same here going westward) the mail deliveries for the coming week or so will be highly irregular.
 
My cold is much better, though there is still some sniffle left. The weather the last few days has been a little warmer and dryer, which has been a help.
 
I mentioned that Ned had gone to the far shore about last Friday. I don’t know his assignment. I sent you yesterday a letter from him giving his address (apparently not yet a final one) which I repeat here
                        508 Replacement Co.
                        APO 551, % P.M., NY
 
I doubt that he will get very rapid delivery on such an address, which will probably include reforwarding in this country, plus all reforwarding troubles on the other side, which will be plenty.
 
I may say here that I have never heard anything further of my laundry forwarded to Normandy, though I have had special emphasis put on tracing it in every port it may have gone through. I guess I can consider it a total loss. Such is life in the reforwarding area.
 
The assault seems to be going well across the water. That airborne attack on Holland ought to rattle Hitler’s back teeth, not only in its present effect in crumpling up his right flank and tearing his defenses loose from its seacoast anchor, but in what it portends if by any chance he should make a strong stand on the Rhine. It was when the Nazis left flank was crushed and torn away from the sea at Avranches in Normandy that we started to run wild through France behind his army; the same thing can very likely happen on his right flank torn loose from the sea in Holland and with our army across the Rhine there with a flat country before them into Germany.
 
I enclose a few clippings on the Siegfried Line theme as interpreted by (1) an Englishman, and (2) an American.
 
With hopes that we finally get some mail tomorrow
            and
                        with love
                                                Ned
 
PS If the Bensons are back, please pass Ned’s address along to them.
 
 
Letter #111
Sept. 20, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
The mail did finally arrive today after a fashion. I received your letters #134, 135, 138, 139 and one from Mary of Sept. 10. That leaves your #132, 136 & 137 missing.
 
Sort of starting at the end of your letters, #139 of Sept. 14, presumably your last letter from SWH, stated you were starting that afternoon because a hurricane was announced coming up the coast and “the radio said the storm was increasing in speed & intensity & expected to reach the New England coast tonight.” So for that reason you shoved off to get out in the middle of it, after being warned it was a real hurricane.
 
It’s too late for me to offer any advice or make any suggestions except with an eye to the future. I only hope you and Mary got through all right, but your course was one that certainly was begging for trouble. Haven’t you seen enough of hurricanes yet to know that the worst place you can be in one is out on the road in an automobile with a swell chance that the falling trees will fall on you? Or if by chance they miss you, your chances of being trapped miles from nowhere in a storm or tree blocked road, are excellent? All I can say is, my God! and pray that He looked out for you. You might not have thought our cottage a good place to be in a hurricane, but I can tell you it’s a damned sight better place to be than out on the road.
 
Passing on from this, and hoping for the best (which is all I can now do) I note you say in 138 that you sent a check for $50 toward your mother’s hospital expenses. That is quite all right, but I wrote you some days ago that I expected we’d pay them all. If we don’t, who will?
 
With regard to your mother’s feeling a burden, I am of course sure that neither you nor I will say or do anything to make her feel that way. We’ll do what we can to help, and feel glad that we are able to. However, if it is at all possible to convey the idea to your mother (without making her think that financial reasons cause the suggestion) I should like to have it impressed on her that exercising a little ordinary prudence, care, and thought about safety is not discreditable to anyone, and particularly not a disgrace to an elderly person. I am sorry to say that from my own observations, your mother does not take care of herself, won’t let others take care of her, and seems to feel as if being careful is a reflection on her which indicates possibly that she isn’t young any more. I think you’ll find to a high degree her carelessness hinges around that state of mind, but whatever it hinges around, unless a decent habit of safety is somehow beaten into her consciousness, she is in for a long string of serious layups, for the bones don’t seem to stand for much when you’re seventy-five or over. Unfortunately the worst sufferer from all of that is going to be Betty (Ed: Elizabeth Buck, Lucy’s sister), so if your mother doesn’t want to break Betty all to pieces, she had better start to become safety-minded.
 
A propos your comment that there is talk of the value of gas coupons being cut October 1, the enclosed clipping on what the British expect should interest you, inasmuch as it is probable that all gasoline in the U.K. comes from the U.S. and certainly it all comes by ship. There is no longer a real submarine menace on our coasts to interfere with tanker movements. I just can’t believe there’s anything in the rumor you mention – any change should be in the opposite direction.
 
Brest is reported to have been captured today, probably a complete wreck. It is of nothing but academic interest to me or to our army; the only reason for wasting a siege on it was to wipe it out as a U-boat base. We moved away from that area so fast that as a supply base, damaged or undamaged, it long ago lost all value. The other ports along that coast are all in the same category. However, from the point of view of the French the case is different and they can hardly look on the wrecking of their ports by the Germans except with shrieks of anguish. If I were a Frenchman, I should want to put to death with the most excruciating tortures possible every one of the Nazis now engaged in wrecking the ports that the French need for the resumption of their everyday life. And when it comes to reparations, I should be absolutely merciless, even if not a solitary German got a square meal for the next hundred years as a result.
 
Well, it’s rather late now, so I’ll stop, awaiting eagerly the letters which I trust will tell me you got safely through. Though God alone is responsible if you did, in a hurricane that sank a fine destroyer, tied up the Unrra train to Canada for over 15 hours, and stopped all transatlantic air traffic for five days.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #112
Sept. 21, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
No mail today. The letters missing are 132, 136 and 137. The latest letter received is #139 of Sept. 14, which was the day you said you were leaving SWH.
 
This is a quiet area except that the flying bomb attack has been resumed on a minor scale – we’ve had one or two over each night now for four nights running. All these must be launched pick-a-back from bombers somewhere over the North Sea, as the direction of attack has radically changed. They used to come generally from the east-southeast to southeast, but since that coast is all lost now, they have been coming in from somewhere around northeast, which means they must be launched over the North Sea, but possibly from bombers from Nazi airfields still in their possession in Holland. This nuisance will probably not be abated till all Holland is captured.
 
Last night I got my closest view of a bomb in flight, going by me on the new course almost abeam. This was a little after 9 PM (completely dark) when there was an alert. I looked out my window and soon spotted the bomb by its ball of fire, on my left, several miles off, flying very low, and headed to pass quite close, and a little to the southeast of me. It was coming from the northeast. While still about a mile away, it seemed to veer a bit more in my direction as if it might be coming straight my way and I considered leaving, but a closer sight convinced me it would still pass clear so I stayed to watch. It went by not over 300 feet away and no higher than that off the ground; seen broadside as it went by, the exhaust flame looked about 10 feet long and the plane was wholly illuminated by the light of its own exhaust. It appeared to me that the engine must have been improved, for the engine exhaust throb was both more regular and not so loud as they used to be. I never heard any explosion from this bomb – whether it proved a dud or whether it went so far by the explosion was inaudible, I don’t know. London, by the way, continues just as thoroughly blacked out as ever, in spite of permitted relaxation.
 
I had an ultra-violet and infra-red light treatment for my cold this morning, and it seemed to have some effect in clearing up my nasal passages. I’ll have another treatment tomorrow. This cold in the head business is quite common here right now.
 
About voting, I requested an absentee ballot from N.J. about a month or a month and a half ago from the Adj. General’s office in Trenton. I’ve heard nothing of the matter since. Two years ago, N.J. managed to deliver its ballots about two months after the election was over. Maybe they’ll do better this time. At any rate, if I don’t get one by Oct. 1, I can use a Federal ballot which I can get here.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #113
September 22, 1944
 
Lucy darling:
 
Today your 132, 136, 137, 140 and 141 arrived, clearing up all the gaps. (Also a letter from Mary of 9/15/44).
 
I was very much relieved to get your 140 from Waldoboro (Ed: ME) and your 141 from Portland. I am relieved to learn that the hurricane blew over you while you were in Waldoboro and not on the road. And since you were able to get to Portland (the) next afternoon, I have no doubt that the roads from there on were cleared of fallen trees and broken electric wires before you proceeded on the 16th.
 
In several letters you and Mary have asked about sending Christmas packages over here. Don’t bother. I have no expectation of being here next Christmas, and if sent, the packages would probably duplicate the history of at least one for Christmas, 1942, which managed to arrive just too late for Christmas, 1943.
 
Of course by now you have seen your mother as well as the rest of your family. In the next few days I should receive first hand news of how things looked to you. I am really most concerned about the effect of all this on Betty, whose difficulties I am afraid, are not too well appreciated either by your mother or your father who take her too much as a matter of course. How is she standing up under all her new troubles?
 
It has been a long time since I’ve heard anything specific about your father. I hope this difficulty has not caused him any greater mental strain; he might as well be philosophical about it since no other attitude will do himself or anybody else any good.
 
Six or eight weeks in bed will probably do your mother some good, so for her this isn’t altogether a loss – she may as well keep her mind on the bright side of it.
 
It is a little too bad for you that your round of visits in Springfield and Connecticut should practically all be “speaking of operations.”
 
It should be a comfort any way to get back to the conveniences of your own home. I trust you found no storm damage, as we once found in my study from water on our return from a summer’s absence. It will pay to examine the attic rooms to see how the windows there fared.
 
With love, Ned
 
 
Letter #114
September 24, 1944
Sunday
 
Lucy darling:
 
                   Don’t
                                   
                                           look
 
                                                                   now,
 
                                                                                           but
 
                                                                                                                   I think
 
I’m coming home.  My orders detaching me here should be made out by tomorrow at the latest, and I’ll then catch the first suitable ship or plane home. If I can get a fast ship going right out I’ll take that so at least I can get my baggage home with me. But if there seems to be any delay about ships, I’ll take a plane and let most of my baggage follow when if and as.
 
But I’m coming home, and I may be there before you get this. If not, it won’t be long after. I’ll cable which way I’m coming when I know, and you may be sure I’ll be sailing at least within a day of that cable and should be along not more than seven days afterwards.
 
With much love, Ned
 
 
Letter #115 (last)
Sept. 24, 1944
Sunday afternoon
 
Lucy darling:
 
This morning at the office (which I am now cleaning out) I received a couple of letters from you (unusual for Sunday), one from Springfield and one from Willimantic. I am glad to note you got down from Portland with(out) any difficulty on the road except signs of wreckage all around.
 
Speaking of difficulties and wreckage reminds me of the wreckage of the main engines of a ship I went out on for her trial trip when I was chief engineer for Tide Water some years ago, and when against my advice they refused to use the oil properly and melted out all their engine bearings so that the trials were called off and she limped back to port, causing both me and Tide Water a terrific headache before I got the situation straightened  out. I’ve always since had an interest in that ship (whose name has since been changed) and you might be just as interested. You might ask John Hale about its present name and whereabouts. I’d be interested to discuss her with you.
 
I sent you a cable today, of five words, exclusive of address or signature. I’ll also be interested to learn when I see you whether you received it as sent or whether it was bobtailed in transmission.
 
With much love, which I hope soon to convey otherwise than by ink.
 
Ned
 
 
The End