"June 2, 1944
My dear Ellen,
At last I am writing, answering your letters and as usual asking your forgiveness for my failure to hold up my end of the correspondence.
I got a letter from brother Joseph and he's waiting to get shipped out. Now he is in the States at Alameda, California and he said they expect a tour of duty in New Caledonia. Boy he is getting all our bad breaks thrown over on him I guess. Well a few of my friends returned from California but a few remained. They will be back within a few weeks - I hope. The Polish kid I'm running around with is shipping out the 8th for Jacksonville. I don't think he('ll) like it down there at all. After my sojourn there I don't see how anyone could. From the information he could gather he will only stay there a short time then God knows where. I hate to see him go but that's Navy life.
Right now I should be working but I'm taking it easy. Its as hot as the pits of hell around here and no relief in sight. It has been this way for a week or so. Last week it rained continually so what can you do.
Now I'm leading a hectic life and I mean hectic. I'm a member of the Station baseball squad and I'm losing lots of weigh running around. I really mean it. Things are desperate. We've played three games so far, have won two and lost one. The one we lost was a wow and I mean a wow. We played a high school team and were leading eight to one in the third. They beat us in the seventh 11-9. A seven inning game. Memorial Day we beat the best team in the area here 4-2 which goes to show you, you never can tell about sailors, or can you. That was one reason I haven't answered your letters till now. I'll write Monday night for sure as I have an eight hour watch so keep your chin up.
Love always
John
P.S. --- what do you mean 'do I miss you'?"
Meanwhile the war continued. On June 3rd there were daily bombings of the Cherbourg peninsula and the Normandy area in France.
On June 4th the Allies entered Rome - one day after the Germans declared it an open city - the Germans fell back. Also on May 4th Operation Overlord was postponed 24 hours due to high seas.
On June 5 Operation Overlord commenced when more than 1000 British bombers drop 5000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day. The first Allied troops landed in Normandy - paratroopers were scattered from Caen southward.
On June 6 D-Day began with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France. The Allied soldiers quickly broke through the Atlantic Wall and pushed inward in the largest amphibious military operation in history.
On June 7 Bayeux in Normandy is liberated by British troops.
On June 10 at Orsdour-sur-Glane - a town near Limoges in south-west central France - 642 men, women, and children are killed in a German response to local Resistance activities.
I found the following images of the D-Day invasion on Wilkapedia.com and Britannica.com.
The city of Caen after being taken by the Allies.
"June 10, 1944
My dear Ellen,
From herewith on I shall discontinue using the overworked, on my part, phrase 'Please forgive me for not writing' and shall start right in. I'm glad your not going to bawl me out any more - well any more than you used to do. But honestly I really do wish you would bawl me out a few times as it helps the situation out and sort of deflates my ego which I hope don't need deflating. Maybe!
Your sentence that you are losing faith has me puzzled. Do you mean me or my lack of correspondence? I am a great putter-offer and when I sidetrack an issue I usually don't remember till its about two hours too late and then I have to wait till the next day. Maybe you understand and maybe you don't but I hope so.
This may be a shock and a surprise and maybe a very deep disappointment but I'm sorry to tell you that I don't mind seeing you in slacks at all. In fact it shall be something I can look forward to when I journey home this coming weekend. After seeing you all my life (the best part of it) in dresses I can't visualize you in slacks. I hope their a nice sharp pair not a drabby affair. Madeline must really fill them out. By the way I was very much surprised to hear about Annie, maybe I should slow down before I wear myself out. Seriously speaking though it was a great shock to me. I sincerely hope it hasn't to great a hold on her and that she can shake it off really quick.
My weekend was very damp wet and dreary. I(t) rained clouded and rained again for two solid days making life miserable but we all managed to survive and returned safely altho a wee bit weary. Your weather at home ain't nothing compared to here the same thing only oftener. It must be the war. Thanx for the P.S. for Brother Joe. I think it will help him out a whole lot.
With Rita asking for my picture I'll have to start giving out autographs. --- No. Well I've got to wash now - a whole tub full - all whites. I'll see you Saturday.
Love Always John"
- I am so glad my father is going to stop apologizing for not writing - it is driving me crazy!
- Now I know where I get my procrastination - from my father! Although I can understand why my mother would lose faith if she hardly heard from him.
- I can't imagine asking someone what they would think of me wearing slacks!! What a different time! And that was a nasty crack about Madeline. I wonder what was up with Annie that shocked my father so much?
- And is it Rita O'Hara or my aunt Rita Keohane looking for a picture of my father?
- I wonder if they had heard about D-Day? My father's letters are censored but my mother never mentions anything about the war.
My dear Eileen,
I've received two or three letters from you this week and I guess its about time for me to answer at least one of them. Sometimes I wonder why I don't get to answering them but maybe I need a good boot where it really hurts. As this letter indicates, I hope, I arrived safely after having a long lovely sleep all the way down so I didn't feel too bad when I arrived here. I guess my good fortune ended when I left the train as I wound up doing a hectic work routine all week with the gay prospect of working fourteen hours a day all next week till our program is completed. What a prospect and what an outlook.
Our ball club played two games last week tying one in ten innings, 3-3, and winning the other 6-10. The strange part of it is our first game of the week was with a bunch of palooka's but the 6-0 game was with a pretty fast snappy team. The ball club is improving every day and were getting plenty of practice which helps out quite a bit.
Well my upstate Polack friend got himself shipped out to Norfolk Va to the same unit my brother is in. I'm going to miss the guy as we always ran around together, all over the place. I started to run with him last February when my Irish friend was shipped to Chicago. Since then we've done plenty and seen plenty together. Today my Irish friend showed up from Chicago but he wants to get transferred out. Why I'll never know. Must be something wrong upstairs.
I hope you are enjoying your vacation on the Cape and I wish I were there with you but maybe I'd spoil your fun. I do miss you a lot everyday but I guess I never do get around to telling you about it. Bashfulness, maybe! Well I've got to close now kid so have a good time and
Love always
John"
June 26, 1944 Cherbourg is liberated by American troops.
July 3rd the Allies find themselves in the "battle of the hedgerows", as they are stymied by the agricultural hedges in Western France which intelligence had not properly evaluated. Various impromptu devices and inventions, often made out of cut-up German "hedgehog" shore defense devices and mounted to Allied tanks, are designed and made to successfully deal with the matter. (Per en.wikipedia.com)"
"July 7, 1944
My dear Ellen,
I am in a very relaxed position as I write to you, sitting here by a window with a light summer breeze blowing around. My only worry is that I'll be caught smoking but what's that. How did you enjoy your vacation at Falmouth by the way? I really hoped that you would enjoy it and I honestly believe you did. I suppose Hannie took you around to a few of her joints or I mean spots.
Things here are fair. I('m) working myself down to a mere shadow, of an elephant I mean, but by tomorrow I'll be finished. Our officer took a seven day leave commencing today so things will run smoother for a while I hope. Boy at times he certainly gets this place shook up. He reminds me a lot about my own faults never doing anything until the last minute and then rushing like all ---- to get it done. But we never let him down as we get a drift thru our sixth sense of what is coming so when he does get around to rushing us were in high gear already.
Last week he got us kind of peeved though. All of us. We have a big shot on the station, an officer who has a farm on the station and he needed someone to go down and hoe it especially the corn. Nobody likes the guy so no volunteers were available. Four or five of us were waiting to get calls from him and we would have asked for transfers but no call came. To top it all off we were working till ten o'clock at night on rush jobs when this incident arose. What can you do, take gas? My last weekend I spent at Atlantic City with a kid who lives there and another fellow. This kid who lives there is named Tommy Mursheno a French kid and he has the finest parents I've ever had the occasion to run across. They really were swell. His mother put us up over Saturday nite and fed us Saturday and Sunday. The other guys name is Red Richardson hailing out of Pittsburgh another swell guy. We really had a swell time the Boardwalk and all. The place was mobbed with people walking the streets trying to get rooms to no avail. I'll have to give it another fling later in the season. Well honey I've got to close now and I still miss you.
Love always
John"
I found a WWII draft registration for Thomas Jacob Mursheno, 3913 Boulevard Ave, Atlantic City, NJ. At some point this address was crossed out, and the same address was written along the side of the draft registration. He was 21 years old and was born February 16, 1920 in Philadelphia. He was an ice cream salesman. the person who will always know his address is Mr Jacob Mursheno of the same address. His employer is B F Tompkins of 933 Boardwalk, Atlantic City. Place of business is B F Tompkins Ice Cream, 933 Boardwalk, Atlantic City, NJ.
Page 2 tells us that Tom was 5'8" and 130 lbs. He had blue eyes, brown hair, and a light complexion. He registered for the draft on July 1, 1941 at Local Board No 6 for Atlantic County for Professional Arts Bldg at 1616 Pacific Ave, Atlantic City, NJ.
3913 Boulevard Ave is the door on the right - in the house on the left.
The directions from Tom's house to the ice cream parlor are shown below.
The 1940 US Census for Atlantic City showed Tom living with his parent at 3913 Boulevard Avenue. Jacob is a 42 year old carpenter for a building construction company. His wife Anna is also 42 - the family lived in the same house in 1935. Tom was a fountain boy in an ice cream shop. He had a 15 year old brother who was in high school. All of the family were born in Pennsylvania.
I didn't find any information on Red Richardson from Pittsburgh - there were too many Richardsons in the Pittsburgh area.
Back in the war, on July 9 after heavy resistance, Caen, France, was liberated by the British troops on the left flank of the Allied advance.
On July 11 President Roosevelt announced that he will run for an unprecedented fourth term as US President.
That same day my father wrote to my mother.
"July 11 1943
My dear Ellen,
Right now I am sweating and straining trying to beat the heat. Honest honey it's almost unbearable it's so hot. For the past week or two its been continually well over ninety with no relief in sight. But it's better than the cold.
From your letter I gather its warm at home too, well I figure you will survive it. I dearly hope so anyway. By the way how are the beaches this crowded as ever or do they give you a break at all? I got a V-mail letter from my brother Joe and he is now in a replacement pool in New Caledonia awaiting further orders. He said he'd sooner be aboard ship and is hoping he gets one. I, for one, hope he'll land one too as the island duty is too good. He said conditions there are really swell with good chow and movies every night. Not being a night carrouser he seems all set. I hope so anyway. Imagine little Joe at war and big brother John messing around in peaceful quiet Philadelphia - C'est la guerre.
Well chick, we've had a bit of excitement here since I wrote last. A colored boy chased a colored civilian around the Bachelor Officers Barracks last week threatening to kill him but he was apprehended and confined in the brig. Nice heh. That night a colored boy in the barracks occupied by the colored boys was given a barefooted hot foot while he was asleep. After a lot of jumbled confusion, shouting and running the boy who got the hot foot cornered his assailant in a corner and proceeded to carve him up with his knife. The officer of the Day and Medicos were called and not having the necessary equipment around they rushed him to the Philly Naval. He died a few days later. His bowels were slashed his stomach and all. It required about 130 stitches and I don't know how many blood transfusions. The day after the incident they took away all our knives officers and all. Last night there were four shots fired at the B.O.Q. (Batchelor Officers Quarters). Nothing has been mentioned as yet. Well I've got to close now and will be home this weekend coming. I'm going to try to fly.
Love always John"
I have to say that was some excitement at the barracks!
July 12 Hitler rejects General Field Marshall Model's proposal to withdraw the German forces from Estonia and Northern Latvia and retreat to the Daugava River.
"July 20 1944
My dearest Ellen,
This is my first opportunity to write since I returned Monday morning. I am supposed to be working but since today is pay day things are different, we just lay around and wait for old 'money bags', the Disbursing Officer, to come around with his satchel full of green stuff. As yet I don't know how much I'm drawing and I really don't care seeing that I am on the straight and very narrow road to healthy and sane living.
Well chick I did get back safely and sound and believe it or not on time. I don't know what time the train pulled out of Boston but it hit Philly before six ayem anyway. To make things better I didn't get fouled up in the subway on my way back which saved a lot of time also. As it is they have two subways here - one North-South the other East-West. The sign boards designate 'Broad St Subway' for the former & 'Frankfort' for the latter. When you hit the subway alleys you can't tell where your at, that is if your not wide awake. After a trip from home I'm not exactly wide awake.
When I returned the new regime had taken over and our old officer was around to bid us all a sad farewell but left us with the hope that he's be back again real soon. After seeing how this group works I doubt it. He was an old Navy man with half his life in the service, 33 years and he was pretty set in his ways. He (k)new Navy procedure backwards and foreward and didn't like these new recruit officers coming around telling him this and that. The head of the new outfit is rather quick & arrogant also, so they locked horns and everything was done grudgingly. Now as yet things are as usual but our fingers are still crossed hoping for better, if it could be, and prepared for the worse.
Monday night, little chum, I played me a game of ball and the weekend must have been on my mind in fact the whole teams mind, but mine especially. I filled in at short stop and what a night. The first ball that was hit to me the first baseman dropped when I threw it to him, after that hell broke loose. In less time than it takes to write it the other team was leading seven to two. But we buckled down and with a little luck and a couple of home runs by our left fielder we finally won 9-2. Yours truly couldn't even get a piece of the ball all night and I think I would have been a worthy substitute for a swinging door or a rusty gate.
Tuesday night we had another game scheduled but I figured I needed a rest so I went out on liberty. There's a show in town 'Catherine was Great' starring Mae West so we figured we should see it. After all Mae West is Mae West. We went to Philly and after a few drop arounds to the joints finally wound up at the show. I didn't like it before it started. The seats were too close together and we were all cramped up. When the first act was over I knew I didn't like it. All I could get out of the show was a lovely splash of color and the fact that Catherine the Great was a 'great' woman in more ways than one. Some parts of it we(re) fair but Mae West is almost synonymous with fast snappy & suggestive cracks. The only thing snappy was the garters the men wore in the 1760 costumes and the only thing suggestive was that we should get the hell out of their. The acting was pretty fair to keep on the good side. I didn't like it at all. Maybe I went there with the wrong intentions and point of view. If some sultry damsel had taken the part I believe it might have been much better.
Well last night was wash night and wash I did. Everything. It isn't easy work but it gets to be a habit after a while and it turns out ot be much easier than you comtemplated.
I got a letter from my friend at Norfolk my Polock friend and he ran into my kid brother (ego you know). He told me we looked alike but there the similarity ends. Oh well I guess we can't all be cursed. Poor me. He was a terrific liberty hound when he was here but since he hit Norfolk, none what so ever. Boy does some places change some guys!
After back tracking thru this letter I'm surprised no fooling what length what shape what form. Must be the hard work. Can't be I'm not doing any.
Well honey I've got to close for now and scribble a couple of more passages to Tom & Joe etc to keep in the good graces of all concerned so I'll shove along. I miss you a lot and I hope your feelings are mutual. My romantic line of gab I guess is passe' or maybe its rusty and needs a little oiling to get it reconditioned but never the less, anything I said before when I was more romantic still goes but double honestly.
All my love
Always
John"
"West's biographer, Simon Louvish, described the play as West's opportunity to finally "prove herself a great dramatic actress" ...
"The critic Howard Barnes wrote that West 'returned to Broadway last night, decked out like a battleship in a swimming pool' but also described the play as 'incredibly boring and monotonous' and West's dramatic abilities as 'more limited than ever.' Louvish described West's performance as Catherine alienating her critics and audience with her 'standard wide Brooklyn tones'.
"July 31 - 1944
My dearest Ellen,
I received your letter this noon time and I guess I had better answer it now before complications set in. You must be kind of peeved at somebody, maybe me even. Those letters help out quite a bit as it shakes me out of my lull which now and then completely engulfs me. As for your previous letter asking about that guy Duggan no one I know seems to know him here. Maybe he was a mole or something. Most of the guys that were here when he was here have been shipped out so no know - savvy!
You think it is hot around home down here it stiffles you. You sweat swear and groan. We haven't any mosquitoes but we have a few million flies that dive bomb you into submission in less time than it takes to tell it. They are all over. They really get you down and there's no defense. Between flies and Japanese beetles the other insects haven't a chance.
Well things are kind of slow around here now so I have again taken up studying technical books that we can procure here from our chief. They cover about fifteen subjects all pertaining to aviation. Right now I am devouring a book devoted to 'Hydraulics' one of the greatest fields in the country barring none. After I get thru I won't know all about it but I'll know what it's about anyway which will help out a lot.
Today's letter almost floored me and I mean floored me. Especially the clipping you inserted pertaining to the WAVES. The statement that you were going to join almost finished it but good. Puleeesse -don't jump to conclusions and get patriotic all of a sudden - think before you hang yourself.
Well the past weekend I spent in Hershey Pa. the most beautiful city in the country for my money. It would make a Hollywood set look puny and I mean puny. Hershey Chocolate runs the city and with billions of dollars at their disposal you can imagine what it looks like. We went swimming & dancing Saturday but came home yesterday after spending only a day at the place. I regretted leaving it was so nice honestly.
We left the base Saturday on our journey to Hershey. Who selected our destiny I don't know but it seemed like a good choice nevertheless. We stopped at a gas station and procured a map to plan our route and after a wee bit of discussion decided on 422 thru Reading Lebanon and thence to Hershey our destination. We began to bum but traffic seemed dull but finally a lift did come along and we got us a ride to Lansdale Pa where we ran into a road to Morristown the start of Route 422. Waiting about ten minutes a gal came roaring down the road heading our way. Turning on the personality she stopped and gave us a lift. It seems she was late, twenty minutes in fact in picking up her rider for work so she really made tracks. We walked cross town in Morristown and finally got us a ride for four or five miles. I never knew there were so many towns in the state till we went thru them. After about three short rides a man and his wife came along and picked us up. He said he was going to Hershey much to our liking so our travelling situation was settled. It took us a little less than four hours to go from the base to Hershey a journey of about 100 miles for us. We got us a room and it almost floored us it was so clean and neat. Rugs all over the floor and a tile bathroom with a built in tub & show(er.) Really beautiful. After getting something to eat we toured Hershey Park set on going swimming. It really was a site. They have an arena there that looks like a model building at a fair only on a gigantic scale. The High School must have been a mile wide at the front end and I don't know how deep. I figure you could put all of Watertown into it. The swimming pool was the loveliest I've seen built in a hollow with climbing gardens all around. The dance hall inside was pretty with indirect lighting etc. The McFarland Twins were the attraction last Saturday and they really played some good dance music. One of my buddies insisted that we come back and after much argument we gave in to him. After two short hops we got us a ride all the way to Philly. The guy that wanted to come home had a date with a WAVE much to our regret since he hooked us in. We were glad when he got stood up. Well, got to close now so take it easy and I'll write again this week.
Love to you always John"
I can't believe my mother was thinking of joining the WAVES! Was she really or was she trying to get my father to write?
I guess we should see what August brings!
