On A Security Question

The World War 2 Battle of the Bulge marks the last major offensive of that war by the German Army. In December 1944, the Allies in the western theater of war felt that by that time the Germans lost the will to fight. The end of the war loomed, they believed. That’s when Hitler’s troops launched their surprise attack through the lightly defended sector of the Ardennes Forest, causing a retreat or bulge in that part of the Allied line, thus giving the battle its name.

The Germans had managed to hide the accumulation of the armament and men and supply/support staff needed to carry out the daring attack from the advancing Allies. If successful, the German advance would have split the Allied troops in two, and, while not changing the war’s eventual outcome, it could have prolonged the war by several months if not more.

Part of the plan involved sending German troops cleverly disguised as American and British troops behind Allied lines to create confusion and to cause as much havoc as they could. Hitler appointed Colonel Otto Skorzeny, the famous Nazi commando leader, to head the operation. The year before, Skorzeny had famously pulled off a daring raid to rescue Italian leader Beninto Mussolini from a moutaintop prison where anti-Fascists had taken him. Skorzeny assembled several hundred men who spoke good English and outfitted them with captured Allied uniforms, putting them in stolen American Jeeps, and sent them towards the advancing Allied troops.

You can imagine the chaos such a group would create. The disguised Germans sent Allied troops in the wrong directions, they were given access to Allied supplies (some of which they destroyed), and they changed road and village signs, making it much more difficult for the Allies to mount a successful counter-attack against the regular German advance. The Allies soon realized that they must find a way to ensure the troops wearing their uniforms were, in fact, their troops. In addition, the masquerading Germans had sown paranoia as well as confusion and chaos. American troops in that area had no idea whom they could trust anymore.

And, in typical American fashion, a fool-proof method of verifying American troops developed. They would create checkpoints and ask simple security questions that every true American boy would know but ones that an imposter would not possibly know.

So, orders went out from General Eisenhower’s office to ask these specific security questions to all when going through the checkpoints. Even if the papers of the soliders looked to be in good order, the real test, the real security check was if the person knew the answers to specific questions. If the person couldn’t answer a particular question, that person was immediately arrested. And the security checks worked. The disguised Germans, realizing that they couldn’t teach their operatives the answers to the questions, quietly made their way back to the German lines. But the checkpoints remained on the Allied side, just to make sure.

One checkpoint managed to find an officer who seemed ok at first glance–oh, the Jeep looked right, the papers were in order, the uniform was perfect–but the man stammered when asked the security question. His eyes widend when he realized he couldn’t verify his loyalty because he didn’t know the answer. The guard at the checkpoint lowered his machine gun to point it at the officer in the Jeep, and the man raised his hands, outraged, and bellowed that this was a ridiculous way to verify him. “I showed you my papers, Goddam it!” the officer sputtered. “That’s exactly what a Kraut would say,” the young corporal calmly replied.

“Do you know who I am?” the officer yelled. The corporal grinned but kept the gun pointed at the officer. “I know who you say you are…sir. Now, keep your hands where I can see them.”

And so, in the Ardennes Forest, in the middle of World War 2, a young corporal held Brigadier General Bruce C. Clark–the real General Clark, the head of Patton’s Third Army Fourth Armored Division–at gunpoint for over 15 minutes until he could be verified because he didn’t know which professional baseball league the Chicago Cubs played in.

On An Humble Janitor

We ignore janitors and service workers for the most part. When we need something fixed or cleaned up for us, sure, we will take immediate notice of them. Otherwise, many people feel that the best janitors and cleaners are the ones that do the job and are not ever noticed. That was the case of Bill Crawford. Bill was employed at the United States Air Force Academy in Boulder, Colorado, in the 1970s as a janitor. And he went about his tasks of cleaning up after the cadets and the instructors without fanfare and without notice.

But the job was a pleasure for Bill. He was a native of Colorado, born and raised in Pueblo itself, in fact. Bill took on the job of janitor in his retirement for a specific reason: He believed in the work that the US military was doing to make the world a safer, better place, and he felt that if he could, even in his small way, help educate a new generation of officers for the nation, then that would be the least he could do to show his appreciation for their service. You see, Bill was a patriot.

And the cadets at the academy and the staff seemed to sense Bill’s pride that he took in his humble role. Oh, Bill never boasted about helping out; it was the opposite, in fact. He went about his job quietly, almost unseen. Yet, there was a certain way he carried himself as he mopped or swept or cleaned the facilities that caused others to notice him. He was always dressed neatly–shirt tucked in, trousers pressed and creased, and hair neatly cut and combed. The students and staff, rather than calling him simply “Janitor” or by his first name, often called him “Mr. Crawford,” adding the title “mister” because, well, the honorific seemed to fit Bill.

There was something else about Bill that stood out to at least a few of the cadets there. Those pressed clothes. The neatness about him. The quiet confidence he showed. A few of the young men (women first entered the academy about that time, in 1976) talked among themselves and decided that Bill had to be former military. He had to be. Now, back then, there wasn’t the internet where you could easily look up someone or do some quick digging on a person’s background. No, one of the students took it upon himself to go to the academy library to see what he could find about Bill. And what he found astounded him.

Taking the book out of the library, the inquisitive young man named James Moschgat (academy class of 1977) found Bill cleaning out a restroom and showed him the information. “Is this you?” James asked the janitor. Bill raised his chin and looked at the ceiling a moment as if contemplating whether or not to admit what up until that moment he alone knew. “That was a long time ago,” Bill said, “and only one day out of my life.” Bill lowered his head to look at the young man.

“But it’s you, right?” James persisted. Bill nodded in acknowledgement that it was. “Holy crap,” James said under his breath. “Holy crap.”

“Yes,” Bill said. “Holy crap, indeed.”

Bill Crawford died in 2000 and was buried at the Air Force Academy, the place where he loved the last job he had and did it well. Interestingly, Bill Crawford was not in the Air Force He was a private in the US Army in World War 2. And he is the only person who served as an enlisted man in the US Army to be buried there.

And that’s because William Crawford, the humble janitor, won the Medal of Honor–the highest award for bravery in the United States–in Italy during World War 2.

On a Vital Modification

The year 1941 was one of those years in history that could easily be called a “make-or-break” year. Germany had swept across the European continent since World War 2 had been declared in September 1939, taking almost every nation in its path. Hitler and his armies were attacking Russia in the east, while only England stood between the Nazis and complete control over the continent in the west. The United States had yet to enter the war, and it seemed like only a matter of time until the Germans would launch an invasion of the British Isles and end the war on that front.

All that seemed to stand in Hitler’s way was the British Royal Air Force. Hitler preferred to bomb the British into submission, as he knew that an invasion of Britain would be costly in Reichsmarks and in lives lost. And as the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, was pounding Britain with bombs day after day, the only British response was the work of the RAF. Thus, the Battle of Britain was also the battle for Britain. Those British planes would engage and harass the Luftwaffe bombers and fighters in daily dogfights, and the British public came to realize how important those planes were to keeping the invaders from their shores. For every fighter or bomber shot down by the British, that meant a slightly better chance the Germans could not invade. Later, Prime Minister Winston Churchill would say that never in history had so many owned so much to so few; he was speaking of the brave pilots, mechanics, and crews of the RAF.

The best fighter plane the British had was the Spitfire. While the Hurricane aircraft were more numerous, the Spitfire was faster (upwards of 400mph/600kph), better built, and much more maneuverable than the Hurricane. The British plan was to destroy the German fighters that accompanied the larger bombers. If left undefended by fighters, the bombers would be much easier to pick off and shoot down. But the Germans had the Messerschmitt B-109, a worthy adversary to the Spitfire. Both machines had 12 cylinder engines, with the Spitfire’s power being supplied by the Rolls-Royce company.

And there was a major problem with the Spitfire. When the German fighters were being pursued by a Spitfire, all the German had to do was to execute a roll–a simple spin of the aircraft–and peel off from its flight path. Spitfire pilots were chagrined to find that, when the Spitfire tried the same maneuver, the plane’s engine would stall because the carburetor would flood the engine with fuel. That meant the German pilot–flying his Messerschmitt with fuel injection–could easily escape a pursuing Spitfire.

To fix this problem, the British turned to the most unlikely of sources: An engineer who had experience working on motorcycles with the improbable name of B.T. Shilling. Shilling also didn’t look the part of a war hero. Bespeckled, frumpy, and slightly pudgy, Shilling was nonetheless the foremost expert in the UK on handling problems with carburetors. Despite having a long background as a grease monkey, working on racing bikes and cars, Shilling had a masters degree in mechanical engineering. Recognizing the talent they had at their disposal in Shilling, the RAF had given the engineer the position of chief technical officer over carburetors when the war began. And now, with the Spitfire’s engine flooding problem, they turned the situation over to Shilling.

Sure enough, within a few weeks, Shilling had an answer, and it was deceptively simple. The solution was to restrict the flow of fuel to the Spitfire’s engine during the rolls and dives. That would keep the fuel from flowing into the engine too rapidly and killing it. The restrictor that Shilling designed ended up being a small, nut washer size disc with a hole in it that would be added to the fuel line in all the Spitfires. After testing the device, it was soon evident that Shilling had resolved the issue. Soon, after fitting the restrictor into the Spitfires, the German fighters couldn’t escape the power and speed of the British planes–nor could they escape the bravery of the British pilots. For the work that perhaps saved their nation, Shilling was awarded the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) after the war.

And the grateful mechanics and pilots, who realized how important that little device was, named the life-saving (and probably also war-saving) restrictor after its inventor.

Miss Shilling’s Orifice, they lovingly called it, after its inventor, Beatrice “Tilly” Shilling.

On Children in Wartime

In 2016, Time magazine published a story that recognized the 75th anniversary of the entry of the United States into World War 2. It did so by recalling the stories of several children whose lives were directly affected by that war, children who witnessed the war first-hand, and children who, as adults, were still alive and sharing those tales when the article was written. And the stories these adults told of their experiences in wartime still resonate today, now more than 80 years after the US entered the war.

Take the story of Walter, a boy who was 13 when he witnessed the power of modern warfare first-hand. Walter tells of feeling an explosion of bombs so close to him that it almost knocked him down, even though he was almost half a mile away from the blast. He then recalled how, later that day, the long procession of coffins, each one containing the body of one of the dead in them, the dead who had been the targets of the bombing, were brought past his house. And he clearly remembers the blood splotches that were clearly evident on and stood out against the yellow-white of the coffin wood as they passed, stacked high on the back of military trucks.

Then there’s the tale told by Edwin who was 14. He was eating his cornflakes one morning when he saw the planes fly low overhead and then begin to strafe the targets on the ground below them. He was fascinated and horrified at the same time. It seemed like a movie to Edwin; surely, humans couldn’t willfully bring such violent destruction to other humans in this way, he remembers thinking at the time. He then remembers the countless nights of blackouts, of building a bomb shelter, of hoping–no, praying–that if he hid under his bed when and if the planes returned, that the mattress would be thick enough to stop the bullets…

How about the tale told by a boy whose family called “Chick?” Chick was 12 when the war came home to him. He and his brother were making some spare change at a local cafe by washing dishes for the breakfast customers. A taxi driver stopped by for coffee and told the boys through the service window to the back that if they wished to see the war first-hand, to go outside and climb up on the roof of the cafe. That vantage point would give them a great view of some live war action. The boys did so. But what Chick saw frightened. him: Hundreds, he later said, hundreds of puffs of smoke indicating bombings and anti-aircraft fire. He took his brother and ran home. He yelled for his mother as the brothers entered the yard in front of their home. “Momma! It’s war!” he screamed. Sure enough, as soon as his mother ran out of the house at her son’s cry, a bomb screeched down and struck the neighbor’s house with an ear-splitting explosion. Chick knew the family next door was dead. The fire that resulted from the bombing quickly spread to all the houses in the neighborhood, including that of Chick’s family.

All three of these boys and many, many other children saw war up close and personal, witnessed death up close and personal. Today, in dozens of conflicts around the world, children are still forever changed by their personal experiences with warfare and the death and destruction that are caused by it. These American boys who spoke to Time 75 years after the fact, however, were slightly different than other American children during World War 2.

You see, all three of these boys were of Japanese descent and living in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, when the Japanese Navy launched their attack on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941.

On a Political Grudge

Lyndon B. Johnson was the consummate politician. As a congressman, senator, and, eventually, president, LBJ would lie, cheat, steal, bully, and threaten to get his way when it came to passing legislation. And it was not only that he could force people to do things for his agenda, but part of his power lay in his charm and charisma. Johnson towered over most people, being well over 6’4″ (1.9m) and was the consummate storyteller and mimic; he would often imitate colleagues, friends, and enemies, skewering them with dead-on impressions. And, as part of that larger-than-life persona, Johnson would often overstate his role in affairs to make himself seem more important to events that he actually was.

Take the instance of a story Johnson would often tell of how close of an advisor he had been to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the years leading up to World War 2. Now, while Johnson was a young congressman from Texas and he did have opportunity to meet with FDR in the White House from time to time, in no way did Roosevelt consider the tall, thin Texan to be a trusted confidant. But that’s not the way LBJ would tell it in later years.

It was in January 1953, in the dining room of the US Senate in the Capitol Building when Johnson, at the time the second-most powerful man in the senate, came into the room. As was his custom, he would make his way around the room, shaking hands and trading bon mots with the other senators and their staffs. When he came to the table of the powerful senator from Wisconsin, Senator Joseph McCarthy, the senator and the staff at the table rose to shake Johnson’s hand out of respect. That is, except for one lower-level staffer from McCarthy’s office. This young man stayed seated and glowered at the powerful Johnson.

As Johnson made his way around the table, he reached the seat of the young man with the scowl on his face. Johnson knew that the staffer was purposefully being rude. You see, LBJ made it his job to know everything about, well, everybody. He knew why the young man refused to stand and shake his hand. So, in a show of power and to put the young staffer in his place, Johnson hovered over the seated man and stuck out his hand. Onlookers later said that the staffer swallowed hard, looked around the table at the other, standing staffers, and slowly stood up and offered a limp hand that Johnson took and shook vigorously. His point made, Johnson then made his way to the next table. The young staffer slank back into his chair and finished his lunch.

Later, an aide to Johnson asked him about the incident. Johnson let out a loud guffaw. He then reminded the aide of the following story, and it was a story that he LBJ had told often before. He said that McCarthy’s staffer was the son of a government appointee back during Roosevelt’s second term. During one of their meetings in the White House, Johnson said that FDR had complained about this staffer’s father. And Johnson bragged that he had advised Roosevelt to fire the man because he was a Nazi sympathizer and was antisemitic. To hear LBJ tell the story almost two decades later, it was Johnson’s advice that convinced President Roosevelt to ask for the appointee’s resignation. The young staffer’s rudeness and dislike of Johnson therefore stemmed from LBJ’s part in getting his father fired.

Of course, Johnson grossly overstated the importance of his advice to Roosevelt. The fact was that President Roosevelt had already made up his mind about removing the appointee from his post long before Johnson said anything–if in fact he had said anything at all to the president. So, while it probably wasn’t Johnson’s hand in getting his father removed from the post as much as it was that he had heard about the story Johnson told about the incident, the story about making himself out to be more important and influential than he was. You see, the young man, that scowling McCarthy staffer, he was the opposite of Lyndon Johnson. He was almost an anti-politician. He was more of a crusader, a fighter for justice and truth. To him, men like Lyndon Johnson were part of what was wrong with Washington. And the young staffer was working to bring honesty and accountability to congress. And to know that LBJ was telling untrue stories about his dad and laughing about his dad’s removal from his government appointment, well, it was all too much.

By the way, the post that the staffer’s father had held was the ambassadorship to the United Kingdom in the days before World War 2. He knew that his father wasn’t fired from the job and he also knew that Lyndon Johnson had nothing to do with his father’s resignation from the post.

And that’s why, in January 1953, young Bobby Kennedy refused to stand and shake Lyndon Johnson’s hand.

On a Risky Mission

The captain told his crew that the flight mission over the French city of Calais would be the most dangerous the men’s B-24 445th bomber squadron had yet faced. The target was the German V-2 rocket production facility, the the place where a radical new high-speed and highly destructive weapon that the Nazi scientists created was produced.

“Fellas,” the captain said, “You are not ordered to go on this mission. To be frank with you, well, we’re not expected to come back. It’s that dangerous. What I’m asking for is volunteers.” The crew of the bomber looked at each other. Then the captain’s co-pilot spoke up. “We’ll all go if you go, sir,” the man said. The captain grinned. He nodded. “We take off at dawn,” he said; he saluted and walked away.

The captain was born in Pennsylvania in 1908. His great-grandfather had fought in the Revolutionary War, and his grandfather had been in the American Civil War. His own dad was a veteran of both the Spanish-American War and World War 1. So, it stood to reason that he would continue the family tradition and serve his country. He’d received a degree in architecture from Princeton University, but, because of the Great Depression, he couldn’t find much work in that field. He managed to get other jobs first in New York City and then in California. It was out west that he learned to fly a plane and received his pilot’s license. He said later that he was inspired, as many were, by people like Eddie Rickenbacker and Charles Lindberg and Amelia Earhart. When World War 2 rolled around, his university degree and his experience as a private pilot gave him a head start in the Army Air Corps (what would become the US Air Force).

The captain knew his men. He had once entered the barracks of the enlisted men and found that they had stolen a beer keg from the officer’s club. Rather than throw the book at them, the captain calmly asked if he could have a glass. The men laughed and gave him a foamy mug of the stuff. As he shared the drink with the men, he casually said, “Say, fellas, the officer’s club is missing a beer keg. You men know anything about that?” The men, eyes wide, looked at each other. Rather than wait for an answer, the captain continued. “Well, I’m sure that whoever took the keg, that it won’t happen again. Thanks for the beer.” He stood up and left. And nothing like that happened again, just as the captain said. And his men loved him.

At the same time, the captain was a taskmaster. He put his crew through their paces, creating emergency scenarios for them as they trained and flew, insuring that the men knew their jobs in any situation. He also asked the men to cross-train to insure that vital jobs could be done in case one crew member was injured or incapacitated. So, he was a man who was tough but fair. The type of man you’d follow anywhere. The type of man you’d volunteer to go on what would essentially be a suicide bombing mission over the French city of Calais.

Over 2,000 aircraft were involved in the important bombing mission, the largest operation up to that time for the 8th Air Force in the war. And the captain’s plane was chosen to lead the raid. Rather than bombing from over 25,000 feet, this mission was to be low-level bombing, under 2,500 feet above the target. That’s what made it so risky and dangerous to the crew. Over 1/3 of the bombers that took off from England on that Christmas Eve, 1943, didn’t come back. But this captain and his crew made it. Their B-24 was shot up pretty badly from German anti-aircraft fire and the bullets from German fighters, but the crew managed to get the plane back home to England in one piece. For his leadership and his bravery in the successful raid, the captain was promoted to major. His skills at preparing his men for battle were also recognized, and he was ordered to become an instructor of other pilots on how to organize their crews and prepare their men for the remaining battles of the war.

After years of service to his country, the captain retired from the US Air Force Reserve with the rank of general in 1968. His son, continuing the family tradition, fought in Vietnam and, sadly, was killed there. The captain died in 1997 and was buried with full military honors, much mourned by friends and family and the public at large, too.

That’s because you know this heroic pilot as the actor, Jimmy Stewart.

On a Bad First Impression

First impressions are hard to get over for good or ill. Sometimes, when you meet a person, something about that person bothers you or makes you feel uncomfortable; that person somehow sets off alarm bells in your psyche. That’s what happened in September, 1918, at a dinner in London, England. World War 1 was winding down; the Allies, led by the United States, Britain, and France, were pushing Germany back on the Western Front after over four years of stalemate in the trenches. By November 11, 1918, the war would be over.

A young American government administrator in the Department of the Navy had come across the Atlantic to assist in the final preparations for the end of the war. He had taken a tour of the areas in England where staging bases were located. Then, donning a steel helmet, he was given a tour of the areas behind the constantly moving front lines near Verdun, in France. There, he saw the huge piles of ammunition, bombs, materiel, and food supplies–and also the piles and piles of coffins and dead bodies produced by the war. While he never came under fire, he got enough of an idea of the logistical nightmare that not only prosecuting the war was but also how difficult ending it would be.

He had been sent there on orders of the White House. President Woodrow Wilson needed someone to be his eyes and ears in Europe, someone he trusted. And the young administrator had put together quite the dossier of what it would take for the demobilization of the war effort and the re-establishment of peacetime order and daily life (later on, a man named Herbert Hoover would be in charge of one part of this post-war plan by organizing food relief for Europe after years of having almost no farm harvests because of the war).

Upon his return to London after his tour of the front, this American official had been staying at one of the city’s swankiest hotels, the Ritz. Among the meetings that had been scheduled for him there were appointments with the head of the British Navy and even had some time with King George V, a meeting at which he expressed President Wilson’s admiration for the king. One of the last meetings on the administrator’s agenda before returning to the United States was to meet with one of Britain’s chief war administrators, another navy appointee like himself. The meeting was to be conducted over a supper at the famous Grey’s Inn in London.

The dinner didn’t go well. To begin with the Englishman was late. When he finally arrived for the meeting and supper, it appeared that he had been drinking. The American was underwhelmed. In a diary entry, he later wrote that the Englishman was, in his words, “a stinker…[who] was lording over all of us.” The Englishman seemed to give the impression that the Americans, and this American in particular, were somehow beneath him. And that chagrined the American no end.

So, it’s important what first impressions can do to relationships. Funny, that. In this case the two men later became close friends. The American man later told the Englishman, “You know, I didn’t like you at all when we first met.” That surprised the Englishman because his first impression of the American wasn’t negative.

In fact, years later, Winston Churchill told Franklin Roosevelt that he didn’t remember the meeting at all.

On a Bureau Chief

The Chicago Tribune was historically a conservative paper in a fairly moderate to liberal town. Run by the McCormick family, the paper reflected the conservative American values of that family. And practically none of the paper’s reporters was the best embodiment of those values than the firm’s Washington bureau chief, a man named Arthur Henning. Over the course of almost half a century, Arthur Sears Henning reported back to Chicago all the news that the conservative slant of that esteemed newspaper could print.

Henning began reporting from Washington for the Tribune back in 1907, during the William Howard Taft administration. Back then, and up until Teddy Roosevelt a couple of years earlier, most presidents of the United States never held press conferences where reporters could ask questions. No, any time the Chief Executive wished to convey a message to the press, he would call certain reporters to the White House for a meeting. Henning was one of the few that Taft favored, and he was a frequent guest for White House sit-downs with the president. That gave the Tribune many scoops over the years. And it also gave Henning unique insight into the workings of the White House. He got to know the next several presidents well as reporting on what he saw and learned from them.

Woodrow Wilson, he said, was not patient with unintelligent people. Calvin Coolidge, a man notoriously taciturn, would “talk your ear off,” if given a chance. Taft, a large, jovial man, was remembered by Henning as laughing and making his large belly shake like Santa when he told jokes. But Henning had little use for Franklin Roosevelt. The McCormicks were completely against FDR and his New Deal plan for dealing with the Great Depression. And Arthur Henning wasn’t writing anti-Roosevelt news stories simply to please his boss; according to a colleague, Henning was a True Believer. He actually agreed that the policies of the Democrats was tantamount to socialism. Henning would be more at home today on some right-wing media show. Which was interesting, because he had the reputation of being a fun-loving, kindly man who was often generous with his friends.

But that’s not why we remember Arthur Henning. You know about him because of only one story he wrote and for no other. In fact, we can narrow it down even more to three words he penned that you have most likely heard or at least seen. You see, when Roosevelt died near the end of World War 2, the nation worried that the new president, Harry Truman, might not be able to lead the nation like FDR had for over 12 years of first the Depression and then the prosecution of the war. But Truman brought the war to a successful conclusion in the months after assuming the office mostly by following Roosevelt’s blueprint. The peace that followed, however, proved daunting. Inflation, the re-absorption of the millions of service men and women into both the economy and society, the housing crisis, and the rise of communism after the war tested Mr. Truman’s mettle. As 1948 rolled around, it seemed that Truman might suffer an ignominious defeat in the election that year. After all, in the UK, Winston Churchill himself had been ousted after the war ended because people wanted a fresh start.

Henning reported throughout the summer of 1948 about the state of the election. He wrote stories for the Tribune detailing how unpopular Truman was to a wide swath of Americans. So it was no surprise that when election night rolled around, Arthur Henning turned in a story that everyone, including this experienced Washington bureau chief, expected.

The story’s headline?

Dewey Defeats Truman.

On a Returning War Prisoner

Andras Toma had been a 20 year old Hungarian soldier when he was captured by the Soviets near the end of World War 2 in 1945. Toma was taken to a POW camp near what is now St Petersburg, Russia. The German soldiers and their allies, including captured Hungarians, often had to trek across hundreds of miles of countryside by foot when the war ended and they were released from custody in order to return to their homelands. I have some friends in Western Germany, near Cologne, who had their ancestor show up unannounced at the front door of the family homestead in 1947, fully two years after the war ended. They thought he was dead. That wasn’t an unusual event. Toma, too, had to stay some years in Soviet custody before his release, and his family had long since though him deceased in the war.

But Toma had survived. After the POW camp, an illness saw the young Hungarian transferred to another facility, a Soviet hospital, still deeper in the Russian interior. He languished there for several months, and then he was transferred to yet another facility, and that’s when he lost track of time. He didn’t realize how long it had been since he was put in the facilities. Back home, since he didn’t return after the war, his family had him declared dead. Again, this wasn’t unusual for families whose sons, husbands, brothers and other relatives didn’t come back.

Meanwhile, Toma was having trouble communicating with the doctors and the staff of the medical facility. Hungarian is a rich language, but it’s also one of the most difficult languages to learn. Besides, it’s not spoken much outside of Hungary. And Toma knew no Russian. So, when the doctors made their rounds and the nurses brought him his food and checked on him, there was almost no interaction between Toma and them. Apparently, he had no conversations with them at all while he was there.

Then, a doctor in the hospital who was from Czechoslovakia noticed the man. the doctor soon realized that, because of his name, Toma was most likely Hungarian. The man, curious as to what seemed to be a patient with no obvious or visible issue by that time, arranged for a records check on the Toma, and the entire story came to light. It seems that, for some unknown reason, Toma had ultimately been placed in a Soviet mental institution. His inability to speak Russian (and the Russians’ lack of Hungarian language skills) had allowed him to stay in the mental facility for an inordinate amount of time both unchallenged and unchecked.

And that’s how Andras Toma finally made it home to his family in Hungary after the war. He was given a hero’s welcome, and he was awarded back pay for all his time in the service, even though the war had ended some time earlier. The joyful reunion between Toma and his family occurred on August 11, 2000.

Because he didn’t speak Russian, Toma had been a POW for over 55 years.

On a Pin-Up Girl

This tale might be distasteful to some, and I’ll confess that the subject matter is disquieting. The fact remains that, during World War 2, in an effort to boost morale among the American male servicemen, the military magazine Yank–The Army Weekly (short for Yankee, the name by which most GIs were known overseas) always included a poster that featured a female in tight clothes. Known as a Pin-Up Girl, these women’s depiction was meant for the men to take out of the magazine and put up (or pin up) on the walls of their barracks, rooms, or even offices. The magazine, with a circulation in the millions, was sent weekly during the war years to every theater of war, from North Africa to Southeast Asia, Alaska to England.

Please realize that Yank never published pictures/pin-ups of women like magazines such as Playboy would later in the Vietnam War. But, while the women in Yank were clothed, they were posed in what was, for that time, suggestive postures. Bare legs featured prominently. Sometimes, the woman would be portrayed in a swimsuit or lying on a sofa or bed. Often, film or music stars were the photograph in the magazine; Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall, Maureen O’Hara, and Donna Reed were some of the more famous ones. Jane Russell and Betty Grable were favorites of the servicemen. As a tongue in cheek issue in 1943, Yank featured a man (a sergeant named Charles Gardocki, shirtless and dressed in loincloth) as the pin-up, the editors saying that they did it for the women in uniform.

The magazine also contained news about life after the war such as opportunities for work and education, interviews with celebrities, and included the famous cartoon character, Sad Sack, a typically downtrodden army private. Some issues had short stories by famous authors in the 24 page magazine. One issue carried a letter from a Black soldier who wrote that German POWs were treated with more respect in the US Army than were Black men. That letter caused some controversy because of the number of letters received from servicemen who actually supported the assertion. But the pin-ups were what most men were eager to see in Yank.

And the magazine was incredibly popular with the troops. Copies of it carried great value as something that represented home and country to the fighting men. Once, supposedly, thousands of pin-ups were dropped over a Japanese-held island with the message, in Japanese, “This is what’s waiting for us at home; this is what we’re fighting for,” as a way of hurting Japanese morale. Of course, the Americans weren’t the only ones who liked the pin-ups. Enemy soldiers were sometimes captured with pin-ups found in their pockets or in their belongings, having gotten the magazine somehow during the ebb and flow of battle.

Now, we should mention that the objectification of anyone like the photos in Yank is wrong, obviously. But, for its time, Yank‘s pin-ups had a positive effect on the troops. And, as the war drew to a close, the editors had to decide what girl would have the honor of being the last pin-up girl in the magazine’s last edition. For weeks leading up to the last edition in late 1945, the magazine teased its readers with the secret identity of the girl. She had to be the best, the greatest girl that the boys on the front had ever seen. She had to epitomize the United States and all that it stood for. She had to be the ultimate pin-up.

And that’s why, in the last published edition of Yank, the pin-up girl was the one that every American, no matter who, loved the most.

The Statue of Liberty.