deployment to the front
So the inevitablity of deployment came upon Carl and Nila. Carl was a fully trained combat medic and with the ASTP program discontinued by the War Department, the urgency to provide replacements into the battlefield grew with each passing day.
Paris would soon be liberated and the drive toward Berlin by Allied forces initiated by the D-Day Invasion was proving to be extremely effective in pushing The Reich out of France. With the Nazi's beaten and in retreat from the frigid fronts of Russia, the tide of the war was turning. Victory for the Allies in the coming months was inevitable. But there was much fighting left to be done. The Axis were not going to give up without a fight.
The Maginot Line was holding to the German's advantage and they still held a fortified foothold in France at Metz on the Moselle. In the event the Maginot was breached, Hitler prepared for a grand stand at the border (later known as the Battle of the Ardennes, including the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of the Southern Shoulder) to prevent the invading armies from entering the Fatherland. His strategy was one where he had hoped to throw his crack Panzer units against a war wearied invasion force which stretched the full length of France. Hitler knew it was becoming more and more difficult to supply the forward elements of the Allied columns the further away from their supply lines they became. Patton's 3rd Army push during the summer proved this when his massive armored divisions literally stopped in their tracks because the needed gasoline was slow getting to the front of the column. Thanks to The Red Ball Express, the advance toward Germany continued but it was still vulerable to supply line breakdown.
Knowing it was a matter of time before being alerted for preparation and movement, the young couple moved to 936 5th Avenue South in La Crosse and in with Carl's father Al and younger sister, Shirley. This would be a safe place for Nila to be. She would be with family and the support they provided and the house was close to employment and other diversions. Nila settled in and became the classic Blue Star Wife, doing her part for the war effort. Continuing to live with rationing, scrap drives and the like, she kept up her writing campaign to her soldier husband. Nila would recall that Carl's cousin, Preston Wallace, who lived with Al's family in the 1920's and 1930's and who was already overseas in Europe, would deliver her letters to Carl as she didn't know where he was. Preston did. Sadly, none of those letter exist today.
The Razor's Edge is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. The book was first published in 1944. It tells the story of Larry Darrell, an American pilot traumatized by his experiences in World War I, who sets off in search of some transcendent meaning in his life.
Note the Blue Star Wife lapel pin on Nila's suit.
During World War II, a French ship finds five men drifting in a small boat. Once aboard, the men tell the ship's captain, Patain Malo (Victor Francen), that they are convicts who escaped prison, led by Jean Matrac (Humphrey Bogart), to fight in the war. As the ship nears its destination in Marseille, France surrenders to Germany, but Malo decides to hide the prisoners. When traitorous Major Duval (Sydney Greenstreet) tries to overtake the ship, Matrac and the others work to defeat him.
Many people have described their wartime experiences in letters home. But very few have chronicled war for the people doing the fighting. Bill Mauldin, World War II's most famous cartoonist, is one of them. In 1943, when he was 21, Mauldin's division shipped overseas to North Africa. Mauldin had been drawing cartoons since he was a boy, and he was quickly assigned to cover the war for the 45th Division News, and then for Stars and Stripes. His cartoons, featuring a scruffy pair of foot soldiers named Willie and Joe, scored an instant hit with the soldiers who saw them. Within two years, Mauldin won fame — and a Pulitzer Prize — for capturing foot soldiers' everyday experiences.
As Mauldin described his famous GIs, "they matured overseas during the stresses of shot, shell, and K-rations, and grew whiskers because shaving water was scarce in mountain foxholes." Enjoy this sampling of Mauldin's work, courtesy of his publisher, Presidio Press.
