The great grandson of the Confederate Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest, General Nathan Bedford Forrest III was killed in action when he went down with his B-17 over Germany. He reportedly stayed behind the controls until the last of the crew was able to evacuate, but was not able to get out before the plane exploded. Sadly, all but one crew member perished in the water before rescue. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Forrest was the last of the family line and had no children. Sources list him as the first American General killed in action in the war in Europe.
June 12, 1944 – Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements, I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day, after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore.
By the time we got here the beaches had been taken and the fighting had moved a couple of miles inland. All that remained on the beach was some sniping and artillery fire, and the occasional startling blast of a mine geysering brown sand into the air. That plus a gigantic and pitiful litter of wreckage along miles of shoreline.
Submerged tanks and overturned boats and burned trucks and shell-shattered jeeps and sad little personal belongings were strewn all over these bitter sands. That plus the bodies of soldiers lying in rows covered with blankets, the toes of their shoes sticking up in a line as though on drill. And other bodies, uncollected, still sprawling grotesquely in the sand or half hidden by the high grass beyond the beach.
That plus an intense, grim determination of work-weary men to get this chaotic beach organized and get all the vital supplies and the reinforcements moving more rapidly over it from the stacked-up ships standing in droves out to sea.
In this column I want to tell you what the opening of the second front in this one sector entailed, so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you.
June 16, 1944 – I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France.
It was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn’t know they were in the water, for they were dead.
On the beach lay, expended, sufficient men and mechanism for a small war. They were gone forever now. And yet we could afford it.
We could afford it because we were on, we had our toehold, and behind us there were such enormous replacements for this wreckage on the beach that you could hardly conceive of their sum total. Men and equipment were flowing from England in such a gigantic stream that it made the waste on the beachhead seem like nothing at all, really nothing at all.
June 17, 1944 – In the preceding column we told about the D-day wreckage among our machines of war that were expended in taking one of the Normandy beaches.
But there is another and more human litter. It extends in a thin little line, just like a high-water mark, for miles along the beach. This is the strewn personal gear, gear that will never be needed again, of those who fought and died to give us our entrance into Europe.
Here in a jumbled row for mile on mile are soldiers’ packs. Here are socks and shoe polish, sewing kits, diaries, Bibles and hand grenades. Here are the latest letters from home, with the address on each one neatly razored out – one of the security precautions enforced before the boys embarked.
Here are toothbrushes and razors, and snapshots of families back home staring up at you from the sand. Here are pocketbooks, metal mirrors, extra trousers, and bloody, abandoned shoes. Here are broken-handled shovels, and portable radios smashed almost beyond recognition, and mine detectors twisted and ruined.
Here are torn pistol belts and canvas water buckets, first-aid kits and jumbled heaps of lifebelts. I picked up a pocket Bible with a soldier’s name in it, and put it in my jacket. I carried it half a mile or so and then put it back down on the beach. I don’t know why I picked it up, or why I put it back down.
Soldiers carry strange things ashore with them. In every invasion you’ll find at least one soldier hitting the beach at H-hour with a banjo slung over his shoulder. The most ironic piece of equipment marking our beach – this beach of first despair, then victory – is a tennis racket that some soldier had brought along. It lies lonesomely on the sand, clamped in its rack, not a string broken.
Two of the most dominant items in the beach refuse are cigarets and writing paper. Each soldier was issued a carton of cigarets just before he started. Today these cartons by the thousand, water-soaked and spilled out, mark the line of our first savage blow.
Writing paper and air-mail envelopes come second. The boys had intended to do a lot of writing in France. Letters that would have filled those blank, abandoned pages.
Always there are dogs in every invasion. There is a dog still on the beach today, still pitifully looking for his masters.
He stays at the water’s edge, near a boat that lies twisted and half sunk at the water line. He barks appealingly to every soldier who approaches, trots eagerly along with him for a few feet, and then, sensing himself unwanted in all this haste, runs back to wait in vain for his own people at his own empty boat.
On June 1, 1943, British actor, Leslie Howard, was killed when his plane, traveling from Lisbon to England, was shot down by German aircraft over the Bay of Biscay. All 17 persons on board were killed.
Theories abound as to why the plane was attacked – ranging from mistaken identity (Howard’s traveling companion bore a resemblance to Winston Churchill and Howard to one of Churchill’s bodyguards, also Churchill was known to be traveling from North Africa during that same period), to intelligence or espionage connections (Lisbon was a hotbed of espionage and Howard was rumored to have ties to British intelligence), to a grudge by Goebbels against Howard (who was very active in British anti-Nazi propaganda campaigns).
Regardless of the cause, the loss of Howard at only the age of 50 was tragic. His talents as a stage and screen actor continue to live on in legendary roles in Gone with the Wind, Pygmalion, Of Human Bondage and many others.
As a footnote, Howard’s death was reported in the same edition of The London Times that included the death of Major William Martin, a man who never actually existed, but played a major role in Operation Mincemeat.
Dorothy Harrell, star shortstop for the Chicago Colleens (Photo Credit: Bettmann/CORBIS)
On May 30, 1943, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) made its debut, with the South Bend Blue Sox (Indiana) beating the Rockford Peaches (Illinois), 1-0 and the Kenosha Shamrocks (Wisconsin) beating the Racine Belles (Wisconsin), 8-6.
Women in Baseball
Women have been playing professional baseball since the 1940s, yet it wasn’t really a well know fact until the 1992 Penny Marshall movie, A League of Their Own, starring Tom Hanks, that put these women in the public eye.
In 1943, The United States was in full force fighting in World War II. P.K. Wrigley received word from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that the 1943 Major League baseball season might be suspended due to manpower shortage. He wanted Wrigley to do something to keep the baseball game going until the men got home from service.
In the midst of removing barriers for women to be able to work in the industry to help the war effort, Wrigley joined forces with Branch Rickey and several small town entrepreneurs to create the first professional baseball league for women. A new game was born. Using rules from the men’s game the game became a faster action game than softball. In 1943, when the league began, the girls were actually playing fast-pitch softball using an underhand pitching delivery, but with certain variations to make the game faster. Runners were allowed to lead off and steal, and the size of the diamond was larger than the field used in softball but smaller than a baseball diamond.
The women of the league were expected to act like ladies and had to abide to the rules of conduct and had to attend charm school to continue to act as a proper lady. Wrigley and his advertising agent promoted the new “Girls Baseball” as wholesome family entertainment for war workers.
Thirty scouts were hired to start looking for outstanding softball players all over the United States and Canada. Four teams were formed and the league started its first season in 1943. In 1944, the All American Girls Professional Baseball League expanded to six teams. By 1946 eight teams were playing 110 games per season.
The schedule of 110-120 games per season consisted of playing single games six days a week plus double headers on Sundays. The only time off were rained out games and then they were made up by doubleheaders next time around. Traveling was done by bus between the different cities leaving right after the game and sometimes arriving just in time to play the next game in the new city.
The pay schedule was from $55.00 to $125.00 per week. In the 1940s and early 1950s that was not bad pay for playing a game that was fun. Expenses on the road were paid by the team including $2.25 per day for meals.
The league lasted from 1943 – 1954. In 1948, the league drew a record 910,000 fans for the 10 team league. The All American Girls Professional Baseball League memorabilia was enshrined in the Cooperstown, New York Hall of Fame on November 5, 1988. Over 550 names are on a plaque in the exhibit named Women in Baseball.
Posted by Lauren Handley, Education Program Coordinator.
All American Girls Professional Baseball League player Marg Callaghan sliding into home plate - April 22, 1948
In her book, Our Mothers’ War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II, Emily Yellin quotes one ordnance worker as saying,” There is no glamour in pressing a lever five thousand times a day.”
This sentiment was illustrated on the cover of the 1943 Memorial Day issue of the Saturday Evening Post. On 29 May 1943, Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter made her debut. Rockwell’s inspiration was a 1942 song written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb, and recorded by Kay Kyser. Rockwell often used his neighbors as models for his works and his Rosie was a 19-year old telephone operator from Arlington, Vermont, Mary Doyle.
Rockwell’s Rosie is a true multi-tasker. She balances a rivet gun in her lap, eats a sandwich, and nonchalantly steps on a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.Rockwell ultimately illustrated over 300 covers for the Saturday Evening Post with the “Rosie” issue becoming one of his most popular. The original painting would go on the auction block at Sotheby’s and would sell to a private collector for close to $5 million. Fan correspondence and images of Rockwell’s work can be seen here in the Collection Highlights from The Normal Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It” propaganda poster is the image that is most often associated with Rosie the Riveter—a little thinner and a little more made-up.
Whichever image of Rosie you prefer, the idea of Rosie the Riveter continues to inspire and also continues to adapt.
Make your own Rosie poster (J. Howard Miller’s version) in our Kid’s Corner!
1942 Agnes de Mille, Rodeo, American subject matter in ballet
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the symphonic premier of Aaron Copland’s Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo. Originally written as a ballet in five sections, Rodeo was pared down to a four movement symphonic work which was premiered by the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of Arthur Fiedler.
Aaron Copland (1900 – 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher and conductor. He is one of the pioneers of the “American style” of composition, and was often referred to as the “Dean of American Composers.” The son of Russian immigrants, Copland was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1900, and began writing music in his teens. Eventually, Copland traveled to France to study composition at the Fontainebleau School of Music under Nadia Boulanger, who also taught Philip Glass, Astor Piazolla and Quincy Jones. Copland is best known for his orchestral music, including Billy the Kid, Appalachian Spring and the Fanfare for the Common Man.
The ballet version of Rodeo was choreographed by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo was formed in 1938 by members of the original Ballet Russe. One of the founding members of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Rene Blum, was one of the first Jews to be arrested during the German occupation of France. In September 1942, just one month before the premier of the ballet Rodeo, he was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp where he was later killed.
The original version of Rodeo consisted of five dance scenes: “Buckaroo Holiday,” “Ranch House Party,” “Corral Nocturne” (partially composed by Leonard Bernstein), “Saturday Night Waltz” and “Hoe-Down.” For the symphonic version of Rodeo, Copland omitted the “Ranch House Party,” but left the remaining four movements intact.
Rodeo, like many of Copland’s other works, incorporates traditional American folk tunes (such as the use of the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts” for his Appalachian Spring). Some of the tunes include “Old Paint,” “Bonaparte’s Retreat” and “McLeod’s Reel.” Copland’s treatment of “Bonaparte’s Retreat” (in the “Hoe-Down” movement) has become one of the most famous moments of Rodeo, in part because of its use as the background music for a series of commercials by the American Beef Council. In fact, most people immediately recognize the end of “Hoe-Down” by imagining the voices of Robert Mitchum and Sam Elliot interrupting the music by saying “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner.”
Dr. Scott M. Kiser is a classical trumpet player who served 5 years in the US Navy, primarily with Navy Band New Orleans. During that time, Dr. Kiser was a regular performer at Museum events!
Although this blog series, Worker Wednesday, was conceived with the Higgins Industries employee publications (Eureka News Bulletin and The Higgins Worker) in mind, today we’ll look to the Northeast. On 22 May 1943, the SS Frederick Douglass was launched in Baltimore. The abolitionist Douglass had, himself, worked as a ship caulker in Baltimore before his escape from slavery. Frederick Douglass III, grandson of the ship’s namesake was among the guests at the ship’s launch.
Office of War Information photographer Roger Smith documented the construction at Bethlehem-Fairhope shipyards, which employed over 6,000 African American workers at the time. The entire series can be viewed at the Library of Congress. The SS Frederick Douglass would be sunk just four months later by the German submarine, U-238. The British recue ship Rathlin rescued all seventy aboard (forty merchant seamen, twenty-nine Armed Guard, and one female stowaway!).
May 27, 2013, marks the 70th anniversary of Executive Order #9346.If you don’t know this EO, you are not alone.While it is often overlooked by World War II historians, the Order is very important in civil rights history and reflects President Franklin Roosevelt’s concern over the morale of African Americans and their role in defense mobilization.
President Roosevelt issued EO #9346 to reconstitute and expand the power of the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC).This wartime agency was initially established in June 1941 after civil rights and labor leaders threatened to march on the White House to protest lack of training and employment opportunities for African Americans in U.S. defense industries. Executive Order #8802 issued June 25, 1941 established the FEPC as a commission to encourage defense industries to train and hire African Americans, but it really had no legal enforcement.Facing a backlash from conservatives and industry leaders in 1942, Roosevelt placed the FEPC under control of the War Manpower Commission, effectively taking away its independence and any strong agenda. The dire labor shortage of 1943, however, presented Roosevelt with a rationale for giving the FEPC more power.
EO #9346 issued in May 1943 gave the FEPC a renewed independence, and greatly enlarged its ability to promote fair hiring practices.The order created twelve new regional offices that were to implement operating agreements with all twelve War Manpower Commission offices.Field staff in each of these regions worked with local labor and civil rights leaders to document and resolve cases of discrimination in local war industries. Although the fair hiring campaign was technically voluntary, the FEPC staff used negotiations, pressure and appealed to the patriotism of business leaders to enforce fair employment from the summer of 1943 through the fall of 1945.
A segregated work gang at the Pennsylvania Shipyards in Beaumont, Texas. The FEPC documented cases of discrimination in US defense industries and appealed to defense companies to offer employment and training for African American workers. Photo by John Vachon. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
An Expanded FEPC
The expanded FEPC had a significant impact nationally in getting business to train, upgrade and hire African Americans. The FEPC’s efforts at the Consolidated-Vultee aircraft plant in New Orleans are one of its greatest achievements nationally.In this case, the FEPC pushed for greater employment opportunities at the plant on the New Orleans lakefront that manufactured PBY Catalina airplanes, used in multiple-roles and the most numerous of its kind during the war.The FEPC staff, local labor leaders and the New Orleans Urban League negotiated with War Manpower Commission and Consolidated-Vultee industrial relations personnel to successfully implement a training and hiring plan.
Throughout the last two years of the war, the Consolidated-Vultee plant in New Orleans worked with the FEPC in training and integrating black workers. In 1944 alone, the proportion of African American workers at the plant jumped from 2 to 18 percent, and job titles increased by 27 percent.Although entry wages were only fifty to sixty cents per hour, the opening of semi-skilled and skilled positions represented a gain for black New Orleanians, most of whom were women virtually shut out of most skilled trades in defense industries.
The hiring legacy of Higgins Industries is more well-known and celebrated than Consolidated-Vultee.Andrew Jackson Higgins was a man well-ahead of his time in his hiring philosophy.In 1942, Eleanor Roosevelt cited Higgins’ commitment to training and hiring black and white workers in New Orleans on a 50-50 basis.In recent years, Higgins has been praised for employing skilled black and Asian workers. However, the very conservative AFL trade union insured that Higgins Industries would only hire skilled black carpenters, and not in any metal trades, which the union reserved for white workers.So whereas Higgins had great vision for the potential for modern hiring practices, AFL leaders insured that segregation on the shop floor would be maintained with the exception of wood-working.
The record of American defense industries’ hiring practices during World War II is a story that presents both of examples of civil rights success and resistance from the status quo. As such, the history is like many other aspects of the war that are complex and sometimes not pretty.The United States was still a largely segregated society during the war, and today we praise the field staff of the FEPC and business leaders like Andrew Jackson Higgins that had the vision to promote equality and fairness in the workplace
Women riveting at the Consolidated-Vultee Plant in Nashville, August 1942. The Consolidated-Vultee Plant on the New Orleans lakefront increased its African American workforce during the war after careful negotiations with the Fair Employment Practice Committee during the summer of 1943. Photo by Jack Delano. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
The Legacy of EO #9346
The legacy of Executive Order #9346 is great, and its impact should not be overlooked. The expansion of the FEPC helped to build a strong network of civil rights leaders who were committed to insuring a more equal society well into the post-war period.Even though the FEPC was dismantled in 1945, these networks of FEPC staff, civil rights and labor activists, church leaders and military veterans served as a the foundation for modern civil rights leadership.The FEPC also set a precedent for the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission established under President John F. Kennedy to insure that non-whites and women had legal basis for fighting wage and hiring discrimination at a time when both were still prevalent.
Ultimately, EO #9346 represented a commitment to equality that makes the United States a great nation.Roosevelt upheld the Four Freedoms as an example of what was at stake in fighting this international conflict.When the all-out war mobilization effort guaranteed everyone a job from 1943-1945, EO #9346 attempted to insure that non-whites had a stake in building the arsenal of democracy. As we celebrate the accomplishments of America during World War II, let us not forget EO #9346 and the nation’s dedication to an equal society.
Negro Training Defense Center, Southern University, 1941. The FEPC helped initiate training programs in defense industries like this one here at Southern University. Courtesy of the National Archives
Released on May 21, 1943, The Ox-Bow Incident was not only one of Henry Fonda’s favorites of his films, it was also the last film he made before enlisting in the US Navy. The Ox-Bow Incident was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1944, an award taken home by Casablanca instead.
“Your Excellency,” begins Pope Pius XII’s letter to Franklin Roosevelt dated May 18, 1943. “Almost four years have now passed since, in the name of the God the Father of all and with the utmost earnestness at Our command, we appealed to the responsible leaders of peoples to hold back the threatening avalanche of international strife and to settle their differences in the calm, serene atmosphere of mutual understanding.”
The Pope’s August 1939 appeal for a serene atmosphere of mutual understanding could certainly not be established after Nazi boots crossed into Poland the very next month. In his May 1943 letter, Pope Pius relates, with bitter taste, the tidal wave of destruction, despair and disorder that was then washing over the world.
It is in the same letter, the leader of the Catholic faith prays that Roosevelt understands that a bombardment of Rome would undoubtedly dislodge from human civilization the “many treasured shrines of Religion and Art,” that were housed within the city.
This appeal to effectively make Rome an open city failed. Roosevelt was not deaf to the Pope’s question of Rome and the Vatican, reassuring the Pope that bombing efforts would be concentrated upon military targets: “[if] it should be found necessary for Allied planes to operate over Rome, our aviators are thoroughly informed as to the location of the Vatican and have been specifically instructed to prevent bombs from falling within Vatican City.
Rome was eventually declared an open city by her defenders in August of 1943, after the Allied bombing campaign had ceased. The city was captured by the Allies in June of 1944.
The copious correspondence between President and Pontiff would continue after the Allied bombings of Italy, ending with Roosevelt’s untimely death.
Members of the Canadian Royal 22e Regiment in audience with Pope Pius XII. Library and Archives Canada image.
Posted by Ryan Casalino, Interactive Content Intern.
Meet the Author – Robert Edsel presents “Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis”
Thursday, May 30, 2013 5:00 pm Reception | 6:00 pm Presentation | 7:00 pm Book Signing US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center
When Hitler’s armies occupied Italy in 1943, they also seized control of mankind’s greatest cultural treasures. As they had done throughout Europe, the Nazis could now plunder the masterpieces of the Renaissance, the treasures of the Vatican, and the antiquities of the Roman Empire.
On the eve of the Allied invasion, General Dwight Eisenhower empowered a new kind of soldier to protect these historic riches. In May 1944 two unlikely American heroes — artist Deane Keller and scholar Fred Hartt — embarked from Naples on the treasure hunt of a lifetime, tracking billions of dollars of missing art, including works by Michelangelo, Donatello, Titian, Caravaggio, and Botticelli.
With the German army retreating up the Italian peninsula, orders came from the highest levels of the Nazi government to transport truckloads of art north across the border into the Reich. Standing in the way was General Karl Wolff, a top-level Nazi officer. As German forces blew up the magnificent bridges of Florence, General Wolff commandeered the great collections of the Uffizi Gallery and Pitti Palace, later risking his life to negotiate a secret Nazi surrender with American spymaster Allen Dulles.
Saving Italy brings readers from Milan and the near destruction of The Last Supper to the inner sanctum of the Vatican and behind closed doors with the preeminent Allied and Axis leaders: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Churchill; Hitler, Göring, and Himmler.
Robert M. Edsel is the author of the non-fiction books, Rescuing Da Vinci and The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, as well as the forthcoming book Saving Italy, to be published in Spring 2013. He is the co-producer of the documentary film, The Rape of Europa, and Founder and President of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art. In January 2012 George Clooney announced he would write, direct and star in the film version of Mr. Edsel’s book, The Monuments Men.
June 12, 1944 – Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements, I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day, after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore.
Meet the Author – Robert Edsel presents “Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis”
