What WWII Troops Told the Principal

In the cellar of the Frenchtown School, there are many things, including 75 cardboard banker’s boxes. Most of them are filled with boring stuff like old invoices, audit reports, school-board meeting agendas and minutes, and personnel and student records.

But one of them contains a thick folder full of letters and postcards received by Principal Bert Light during World War II. He was in charge of the K-12 school in 1931-59, and was something of a father figure. He’d been an Army officer in World War I. So, some of his alumni, in uniform, wrote home to him.

Coast Guard Yeoman 3rd Class Charles Strouse (Frenchtown High School Class of ’42), stationed in Ketchikan, Alaska, wrote of “the most miserable weather I have ever had to experience. It is constantly raining, snowing or drizzly… The ground is muddy and it’s usually foggy.”

His classmate Vernon L. Wood of the Army Air Corps apologized for “griping” about Coach Miller’s tough workouts, which have been “of great advantage to me during the time I have been in the service.”

That coach, Bill Miller, then a lieutenant in the Navy, sent his former boss a three-page typewritten report on the sugar and pineapple crops on Oahu, Hawaii, the architecture of the schools there, and the style of high-school football played there. “They play a very open game and flip the old apple around like a basketball most of the time.”

John L. Case Jr. wrote from an Army air base in New Hampshire. He ask for a recommendation to be a flying cadet, instead of a clerk in a quartermaster company. But he praised his Frenchtown High School training, noting that “only about 30% of all clerks in the Army can really type the correct way.”

Infantry Pvt. Clarence Kirk, part of the Sicily invasion, was having a pleasant interlude in August of 1943. Sitting in the shade of an olive tree, he wrote, “The people were very glad to see us and said we should have come three years ago. There is plenty of fruit such as [indecipherable], lemons, figs, and some orange… We go swimming quite often and spend the rest of our free moments trying to talk to Italian fruit peddlers.” The only clouds in his blue sky seemed to be the low quality of Italian stationery and marching up the Sicilian hills.

Kenneth L. Blanchard (Class of ’44), a Seabee stationed on Okinawa, wrote in 1945 of Japanese air raids, and Eli E. Hager (Class of ’48) wrote in 1951 from the USS Walke, a destroyer stationed off northern Korea. He mentioned a time when his ship exchanged fire with a shore battery. His was the only letter from that war.

Most of the men were grimly determined to do their duty. But Pvt. Manuel Severs (Class of ’41) was jubilant. He wrote from Parris Island, S.C., in September of 1942, “I love the Marine life in every way” and vowed that if he survived the war, he would re-enlist. “We receive the best training of any soldier in the world. Therefore, we have full confidence in our selves and the weapons we use.” He achieved sharpshooter status with the .45 pistol and the .30-caliber 1903 Springfield rifle. “It makes me feel great to know that I will stand up before any enemy and know that I can fire my rifle better than he.”

He happily listed all the other firearms he learned to use, including the Browning automatic rifle, the Reising submachine gun, and the .50-caliber machine gun. But the new M-1 rifle was his favorite. It was “well-constructed,” easy to aim, and equipped with a clip of eight bullets, three more than the Springfield. He relished bayonet and grenade practice and the instruction in hand-to-hand fighting that made Marines more than a match for Japan’s best scrappers. He was also enjoying the “chow,” which was plain but plentiful. “I wouldn’t trade places with any man in the world,” he wrote.

None of the letter writers offered details of frontline combat, perhaps for security reasons, but they do give glimpses into a chapter of world history through letters that landed in the principal’s in-box.

By Rick Epstein, adapted from Terriers Forever!, a soon-to-be-published book commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Frenchtown School.