'Linda is as mean and sweet as ever'

It’s been hot this summer, even by Las Vegas standards, so I’ve spent more time than usual at the computer, looking at WWII postcards on eBay and finding other ways to waste time. My indolence paid off with the discovery of a positively fascinating postcard.

The photo on the card, postmarked April 9, 1943, depicts Main Street in Pratt, Kansas.  Someone had written on the photo, “This is our room,” with an arrow pointing to a third-floor window in the Hotel Calbeck. The town of Pratt was the site of Pratt Army Airfield.

The return address on the card and the “Free” frank were written in one person’s handwriting, while the message and the recipient’s address were in a different hand. The return address was Private Albert C. Watts, and the card was addressed to Miss Elizabeth Uekman in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The message read:

“Dear Elizabeth: Well, here we are in this big city. Ha ha. It is rather nice though. We are moving into our apartment in about an hour. Linda is as mean and sweet as ever. Will write more when we are settled. Love, Ann, Watts, and Linda.” (Mr. Watts went by "Watts" at that time.)

In the hundreds of WWII postcards I’ve looked at, a handful were written by a soldier’s wife. I was intrigued by the reference to “Linda,” who was “as mean and sweet as ever.” Could Linda be the daughter of Private Watts and his wife, Ann? Is she still living? If so, could I find her in case she wants the postcard?

I started by searching the National Archives database of WWII enlistments for Albert C. Watts. There were five men by that name. One of them was from Arkansas and was married. I figured he was probably the one I was looking for. He was born in 1920.

I then searched the web for men named Albert C. Watts who were born in 1920. I found an obituary of Albert C. Watts, born 1920 and passed away in 2006 in Charleston, SC. The obituary said he was from Arkansas and moved to Charleston in 1956 as a store manager with S.H. Kress & Co. He was preceded in death by his wife, Ann, in 2003. Among his survivors was a daughter, Linda Watts Brown of Beaufort, SC. It seemed I had found the “mean and sweet” Linda.

After a good bit of searching and many dead ends, I finally found a phone number and called Linda. She’s a former math teacher, been married more than 50 years, and has 10 grandchildren. She was very sweet and not the least bit mean. When I read her the card, with the date and the recipient, she confirmed that the card was indeed written by her mother. We had a pleasant conversation, and she followed up with an email:

“I am so thankful to you for finding this. My daughter has bought it and it will be here Thursday and will be framed and put in a place of honor in my home. My dad was in the retail business with S.H. Kress. When the war started, they put him in charge of opening the PX even though he was only 22 years old. They later moved in with a family who owned a dairy. I think they had a one room apartment. All of this is flooding back into my memory of what they told me. I wish my dad was still here to share in this amazing story of the postcard. I don't know where it has been these many years.”

It turns out that the addressee, Elizabeth Uekman, was Ann Watts’ aunt. Linda has no idea how the card ended up being listed on eBay by a large-scale postcard dealer in Charleston. I suspect that the aunt gave the card back to Linda’s mother after the war, and when Linda’s parents passed away the card somehow got away from the family. (I’ve seen many cases where a family keepsake disappeared, including a postcard that was lost in a flood and reappeared 60 years later, and a Silver Star medal that was stolen by a caregiver.)

Albert Watts would have been among the early military personnel at Pratt Army Airfield. Construction on the base began in 1942, and the first prototype B-29s started arriving in the summer of ’43, right after Linda’s mom sent the postcard. The base was short-lived, closing in 1946.

I checked Google street view for a current image of Main Street in Pratt, Kansas, and was able to find almost the same view as was depicted from 1943 on the postcard. The Hotel Calbeck building is still there, but it’s no longer a hotel. You can see the window where Albert, Ann, and Linda stayed.

Pratt Main Street today. Hotel room is still there.

North Platte Canteen: 'It's a fine idea, I think'

One of the most inspiring home front stories of World War II is the North Platte Canteen. People from 125 communities around North Platte, Nebraska came together to fed six million soldiers who passed through their town on troop trains. It was the subject of an excellent book, Once Upon a Town, by Bob Greene.

I recently found a postcard on eBay that was written from the canteen by a Private W.H. Harris to his sister, Caroline Harris, in Tampa, Florida, on July 2, 1942.  In it, he writes: "Dearest Sister: We have just left North Platte, Neb. The ladies there gave us a big basket of cookies, magazines, candy, etc. They do that for all soldiers that come thru. It's a fine idea, I think."

The photo on the card is a San Francisco street scene, which may indicate that Private Harris was traveling east from California.  I've been unable to identify Private Harris from military and census records. Hope he survived the war.

Read more about the North Platte Canteen here

'I often dreamed of seeing these places.' The WWII journey of Private Joseph P. Hudacs

One of the many effects of World War II was an unprecedented amount of mobility. Many young men and women who might otherwise have never ventured more than a few hundred miles from home traveled across the U.S. and to foreign lands. In some cases (like my parents) a spouse went with them for part of the journey.

One such soldier was Private (later to be Sergeant) Joseph P. Hudacs of Scranton, Pennsylvania. I learned about him through a postcard I recently found on eBay. Joe was born in 1922 and enlisted in the Army in March 1942, three months after Pearl Harbor. He was soon on a train, heading for California. Somewhere along the way he bought a postcard with a photo of an Indian chief (see attached image) and mailed it to his brother back home. It’s postmarked Holbrook, Arizona.

 

In the card he said he saw “some of these fellows and their reservation,” and added, “This sure is some trip. I wish you could see the scenery along the way.” Then he wrote something I think was typical of many soldiers:

 

“I often dreamed of seeing these place but I thought I would have to make a fortune before I could make a trip like this. But here I am and getting paid for making the trip.”

Two years later Joe saw Europe, but under very different circumstances. He took part in heavy combat, as recounted in his obituary when he died in February 2015:

“Born in Scranton, son of the late John and Mary Novak Hudacs, Joe was a veteran of World War II, leaving school before graduation to join the Army when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He was a sergeant with the Sixth Armored Division, was in the Normandy Invasion and the Battle of the Bulge with General Patton's Third Army and worked to free the dying people in the concentration camps in Czechoslovakia.”

The obituary also said, “Joe was a kind, generous, faith-filled man who lived a simple life.” He worked at Tobyhanna Army Depot and Pennsylvania Gas and Water Co. It appears Joe never married or had children, as his obituary does not mention a wife or children, only nieces and nephews.

Joe Hudacs is typical of the millions of American men of that era who did their duty, often under horrendous circumstances, and then returned home to a quiet and productive life.

His obituary can be found online at http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thetimes-tribune/obituary.aspx?pid=174217328

 

Remembering the sacrifice of Sergeant Henson H. Hailey

I'm seeing a trend of more and more "third party" WWII postcards showing up on eBay. By "third party" I mean correspondence a soldier sent to someone outside his or her immediate family, such as a person they met in the service or a distant relative. I suspect that the people who received the cards kept them in a box in the attic all these years. When they die, their children have no reason to keep a postcard from someone they don't know, so they put it in an estate sale and it ends up on eBay.


That appears to be the case with a postcard written in 1943 by Corporal Henson H. Hailey from Kentucky, who served with the 459th Bomb Group. The card is addressed to Mr. and Mrs. John Barker in Ft. Collins, Colorado. I was able to determine that Corporal Hailey (later promoted to Sergeant), died in Europe on June 3, 1945, about three weeks after V-E Day (May 8, 1945). I also found him listed in a family tree on Ancestry.com and contacted “Lynn,” the person who maintains the tree. She explained: "This story didn't have a happy ending. Sgt. Hailey was a crew member on a B24 Liberator. The day he died their plane crashed into the side of a mountain in Austria due to pilot error. He is buried in the American cemetery in Lorraine, France."

Photos of the postcard and Corporal Hailey's grave in France are below. Lynn doesn’t know who Mr. and Mrs. Barker were or why Corporal Hailey was writing to them. She did a cursory search of her family tree and found no connection. Mr. and Mrs. Barker were in their early 40s and had a six-year-old son, Keith. The 1940 census show Mr. Barker being a clerk in a grocery store. In the card, Corporal Hailey wrote, "Hoping to see you all again soon. Hello Keith." I believe one possibility is that Corporal Hailey met the Barkers while stationed somewhere in Colorado and stayed in touch with them by mail.

As often happens, this story led to another one. Lynn pointed me to an article about the sole survivor of that crash, Basil Ricci. A few minutes before the crash, he traded places with the tail gunner, a move that saved his life. He later wrote a personal letter to the mothers of each of the men killed in the crash. It’s an amazing story with too many twists and turns to be told here. You can find the full story of Basil Ricci at http://www.catholicplanet.com/articles/article38.htm