Posts Tagged War

In February 1954, actress Marilyn Monroe traveled to Korea to entertain the troops. Right before she flew into Korea, Monroe was in Japan on her honeymoon with Joe DiMaggio. She flew alone to Korea as DiMaggio was still attending to business in Japan. In the four days Monroe spent with the troops she performed ten shows. She later said that performing in Korea helped her get over her fear of live performances as she entertained audiences that totaled more than 100,000 troops. She remarked that the trip “was the best thing that ever happened to me. I never felt like a star before in my heart. It was so wonderful to look down and see a fellow smiling at me.”

The troops greatly enjoyed her visit. Ted Sherman, who served in the Navy during World War II and Korea, recalled:

The movie star was at her glamorous best when she performed ten USO shows in four days for U.S. soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors during the Korean War in early 1954.

I was with a group of Navy guys who happened to be at Daegu Air Force Base when we heard Marilyn would entertain there that night. We convinced our transport pilot to find something wrong with our R4D transport, so we could delay the return flight to our ship in Tokyo Bay for that one night.

It was a great evening for all the homesick guys who were dazzled by the movie star’s performance. The sight and sounds of Marilyn singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” is a memory I still cherish.

Marilyn Monroe receives an escort while in Korea for her USO tour. Photo Credit: Robert H. McKinley Collection/Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections

Marilyn Monroe pauses for a photograph while in Korea for a USO tour. Photo Credit: Robert H. McKinley Collection/Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections

Marilyn Monroe appears onstage entertaining troops on her USO tour through Korea in 1954. Photo Credit: Robert H. McKinley Collection/Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections

Marilyn Monroe sings several songs for an estimated 13,000 men of the First Marine Division. Miss Monroe stopped at the First Marine Regiment on her tour of the military units in Korea., February 16, 1954. Photo Credit: National Archives

Monroe poses for soldiers in Korea after a USO performance at the 3rd U.S. Inf. Div. area, February 17, 1954. Photo Credit: National Archives

Marilyn Monroe greets the troops during her Korea USO tour. Photo Credit: Robert H. McKinley Collection/Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections

A couple of videos of Marilyn Monroe in Korea, the first is a compiled silent film while the others are her singing live:

Sources
National Portrait Gallery
Ted Sherman, “Marilyn Monroe entertained me in Korea, 1954,” Yahoo! Voices.com, August 3, 2012

Photo Credit: Underwood and Underwood/National Archives

Recruits with their mattresses tied to them to serve as life preservers. Photo taken at Newport Naval Training Station, Rhode Island, 04/1917.

D-Day in Pictures: Part I

You will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely….The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory. Good luck, and let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

- General Dwight D. Eisenhower giving the D-Day order on June 6, 1944.

On June 6, 1944, the Normandy landings began. “D-Day” marked the Allied invasion into German-controlled France. There are two parts to D-Day, the airborne assault and the amphibious landing. Around midnight, American, British, Canadian and Free French airborne troops parachuted into France to help secure the flanks and approaches for the beach landings. At 6:30am, Allied troops stormed the 50-mile stretch of coast which the Germans had heavily fortified. Over 150,000 Allied troops fought with the help of more than 5,000 ships and 11,000 aircraft support. D-Day became the largest amphibious landing in history. The cost of the invasion was high with around 9,000 Allied soldiers wounded or killed. As a military move, D-Day was successful, it allowed the Allies a foothold in France and to the eventual downfall of Nazi Germany.

Chalk 17 poses for a photograph before departing for Normandy. This image shows the paratroopers and air crewmen of Pathfinder Team #2 of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment/82nd Airborne Division on the evening of Monday, June 5, 1944 shortly before taking off to go to France. They are posing in front of aircraft #42-93096, a Douglas C-47A that is in the collection of The National WWII Museum. Photo Credit: The National WWII Museum

Image Credits: National Archives; The National WWII Museum; U.S. Army; Wikimedia Commons; Daily Mail

Photo Credit: (Photo Altered) Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress

The History of Memorial Day
The Remembrance Poppy

Photo Credit: England/Flickr

“After sleeping in the open for several weeks, these men of a U.S. 1st Army combat patrol, 69th Division, get well-deserved rest in a German town. 3-24-45″

Photo Credit: State Archives of Florida (Florida Memory)

Survivors of the Battle of Olustee gathered at the Monument dedication in Olustee, Florida on October 23, 1912. The Battle of Olustee was fought in Baker County, Florida on February 20, 1864. It was the largest battle fought in Florida during the American Civil War.

November 5, 1967

Hello My Darling [Linda],

Here I am setting down to write of my love for you and the horrors of war. Right now I’m pretending that I’m talking to you.

I can picture your face in front of me, and our home and our children. Oh! How much the things we take for granted can mean so much. The smell of cut grass, the wind blowing over the lake and making the trees and grass sway. The smell of autumn, the bareness of the world during winter. All of this means so much. and how little it is appreciated.

In the mornings I put on my fighting gear; web belt with ammo pouches, hand grenades, smoke grenades, first-aid pouch and canteen. Then I put two bandoliers of ammo around my neck so that it crosses my chest.

Then comes my pack containing poncho, poncho liner, five C-ration meals, rain jacket, sweater shirt, extra canteen, extra ammo, gun-cleaning kit, extra smoke grenade, an extra bolt for my rifle, a camera and some cigarettes. Then I pick up my weapon and put on my helmet. With that on, I call my squad leaders and explain what my plan for the day is, based on what the captain passed down to me. Mud, I never knew how much mud I could hate. We live in mud and rain. I’m so sick of rain that it is sometimes unbearable. At night the mosquitoes plague me while I’m lying on the ground with my poncho wrapped around me. The rain drips on me until I go to sleep from exhaustion.

This continues day after day until one wonders how much the human body can stand. . . . And yet it is my job, and I do it willingly, knowing that war is a constant factor in this world and has been since the beginning of man. There is something that keeps us fighting past the time when we feel like quitting.

We go in tomorrow, for sure. Everyone’s morale is high, including mine. I’m looking forward to getting clean and relaxing  Most of my men will be drunk as lords by tomorrow night.

There should be some mail for me. I surely hope so. Letters mean a lot.

You know something honey? I love you lots and lots. Only you know how much.

I’ll write when we get in.

With all my love,
Fred

2Lt. Frederick Downs, Jr., from Kingman, Indiana, was a platoon leader assigned to Company D, 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division, operating out of Duc Pho, from August 1967 until January 1968, when he was wounded in action. Linda was his wife.

Bernard Edelman, ed., Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002. 60-61.

Photo Credit: Jack Delano/FSA/OWI/Library of Congress

Model airplanes decorate the ceiling of the train concourse at Union Station in Chicago during World war II, February 1943.

Photo Credit: Jack Delano/FSA/OWI/Library of Congress

Little boy shows great interest in the model airplanes on the ceiling of the Union Station in Chicago, February 1943.

Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force

Newly freed prisoners of war celebrate as their C-141A aircraft lifts off from Hanoi, North Vietnam, on Feb. 12, 1973, during Operation Homecoming. The mission included 54 C-141 flights between Feb. 12 and April 4, 1973, returning 591 POWs to American soil.

Photo Credit: State Archives of Florida (Florida Memory)

Student at the Florida State College for Women reading about the Pearl Harbor Attack in Tallahassee, Florida, December 1941.

An American soldier stands next to a sign erected by the U.S. Army to mark the site of the Nammering atrocity, May 6, 1945. It reads: “In eternal memory. Here lie 800 martyrs who were murdered by Nazi executioners in April 1945. Rest in peace.” Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Seymour Schenkman

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum detailed the events of the Nammering atrocity in association with the photo above:

On April 19, 1945, a freight train with nearly 4,500 prisoners from Buchenwald pulled onto the railroad siding at Nammering. The train had been destined for Dachau, but at Plattling it was diverted towards Nammering because of damage to the railroad caused by Allied bombing. Once in Nammering, some of the local inhabitants attempted to give the prisoners food and water, but these provisions were stolen by the 150 SS and police officers guarding the train. The commanding officer in charge, Lieutenant Hans Meerbach, ordered during the halt that the bodies of the dead be removed from the train and cremated. This work proceeded too slowly for him, however, and prisoners were forced to carry the bodies of the dead to a nearby mass grave in a ravine roughly 500 yards from the train. There the prisoners carrying the corpses were shot by the guards and they were also buried in the grave. Altogether 524 prisoners were shot and nearly 800 were interred in the mass grave. The bodies were then covered with lime and the grave was flooded to speed up decomposition. Those 3,100 prisoners who had remained on the train were sent on to Dachau, where they were liberated. After the discovery of the site by U.S. troops on April 28, the ranking American officer in the area forced SS men collected from a nearby POW camp to exhume the corpses and lay them out on either side of the ravine above the mass grave. The inhabitants of Nammering were then ordered to walk through the gravesite, and the bodies were buried in the surrounding towns of Eging am See, Aicha vom Wald, Nammering, and Fuerstenstein.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Photo Credit: England/Flickr

To Phyllis M Baguley, y.2C, 423 Allen St. Lansing Michigan, goes the honor of being the first SPAR to set foot on overseas soil. Pictured here as she suns herself on the boat deck of the former luxury liner that transported her overseas, she led the first overseas contingent of SPAS as they debarked from the ship at Honolulu. Daughter of Mr and Mrs WC Baguley, she is a graduate of Lansing Eastern High School and enlisted in the SPARs in March, 1943.

(SPAR’s were the Coast Guard Women’s Reserve. The name comes from “Semper Paratus”, and “Always Ready”)

Photo Credit: Roy O. Bingham/Denver Public Library

One of many Easter services held on Apennine mountainside by the Tenth Mountain Division. Conducted by Caplain William H. Bell for the 605th Artillery Battalion at Rocca Pitigliano on April 1, 1945. A large group of soldiers sit in a grassy open field with heads bowed. Before them stands the chaplain with a box beside him, a jeep marked beneath the windshield with “Chaplain” in between two crosses, and a portable pump organ.

In the foreground, four men bow their heads together. Corporal Ralph Squires sits at a portable organ and two soldiers face the Chaplain who stands in front of his jeep draped with a white cloth in use as an altar for a small crucifix. Photo Credit: Roy O. Bingham/Denver Public Library

Photo is of Tenth Mountain Division Cpl. Squires playing the organ. Worshipers sit on the grass listening. Photo Credit: Roy O. Bingham/Denver Public Library