The route of the 3rd Division during the war is posted at the HQ entrance: Morocco, Tunisia, Sicily, Naples-Foggia, Rome-Arno, So. France, Rhineland, Cent. Europe.
Ch. 86 My Mother and Audie Murphy
In July 1945, the Third Infantry Division moved its headquarters to the spa town of Bad Wildungen, Germany, and that’s where Flo was stationed during the Allied occupation.
Bad Wildungen was known as a significant storage site for looted German cultural treasures, with American forces discovering vast caches of art and artifacts in bunkers there in April 1945 as the war ended. The town itself remained relatively undamaged, becoming part of the American occupation zone.
Stratford-upon-Avon, as we all know, is the 16th-century birthplace and burial place of William Shakespeare. The medieval market town in England’s West Midlands is about 100 miles northwest of London. The Royal Shakespeare Company still performs his plays in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and adjacent Swan Theatre on the banks of the River Avon. Flo visited in mid-June, 1945.
She attended the Shakespeare FestivalStratford-on-Avon Red Cross club. Photos from Flo’s albumShakespeare’s houseFlo didn’t identify this woman, her host at the Red Cross clubSailing back to the Continent. Leaving England for Dieppe at the end of the week-long leave.
Stratford-upon-Avon had faced the threat and effects of the Blitz through scattered incidents and as a sanctuary, rather than being a central target for sustained bombing like larger industrial or military centers. During the war the town provided refuge, with people from heavily bombed areas like Birmingham coming to Stratford for quiet and respite from the relentless night raids.
Flo arrived in London in June, 1945 for a seven-day leave. In a postcard to her family Flo wrote:
“London is huge and interesting. Not as badly bombed as I had thought. Weather much like Seattle. Have walked holes in my feet. Everything terribly expensive.”
She ran into a friend from Seattle, Jim Quitslund, who was staying across the street from her billet.
With Jim Quitslund, the Army friend from Seattle, billeted across the street in London.
Big Ben. Photos by Flo WickParliamentTower of LondonTower of LondonSt. Paul’s CathedralThe wax museumGovernment buildings seen from across the Thames
The Blitz focused on London
Starting on September 7, 1940, London faced 57 straight nights of bombing by Nazi Germany, part of a concentrated eight-month campaign known as the Blitz.
Flo wrote that the bombing damage was not as bad as she had thought, but she may not have made it to the East End, which sustained the most bombing. The Luftwaffe raids were aimed at disrupting the British economy by targeting docks, warehouses, and industrial areas. The damage was devastating, characterized by massive fires, widespread destruction of working-class housing, and high civilian casualties there.
An estimated 18,688 civilians in London were killed during the war, 1.5 million were made homeless. 3.5 million homes and 9 million square feet of office space were destroyed or damaged.
In June Flo got a seven-day leave to travel to the UK. In a postcard dated June 11, 1945 she wrote her mother that she flew from Austria to Paris on a C-47. On the plane she photographed “kraut generals, fellow passengers en route to prison.”
Flo stopped in Paris for a couple of days to visit her sister Eve who was still working as a nurse at an army hospital there. Then she traveled to London by boat.
On the C-47, Flo captioned this picture “Kraut generals, fellow passengers en route to prison.”Flo’s postcard to her mother on her birthday. Bob is Flo’s sister Eve’s husband, also in the military and stationed in England.Flo’s sister, Eve, with the C.O. of the 203rd general hospital in Paris.Flo and her sister Eve who worked as a nurse at the 203rd general hospital in ParisLondon welcomes the US Armed ForcesFrom the postcard back: American Red Cross Rainbow Corner, whose doors never close (opened Nov. 11, 1942) welcomes and serves the American Forces with food, entertainment, information, tours and hospitality. Rainbow Corner is the meeting place of Americans in England.
Red Cross Service Clubs
During WWII in England, the American Red Cross ran numerous “Service Clubs” and “Aeroclubs,” like the famous Rainbow Corner Club in London, serving millions of GIs with food, lodging, and recreation, with numbers constantly changing as troops arrived and departed, but focusing on large operations near bases.
London was the biggest city in the world
At the beginning of the war in 1939, London was the largest city in the world, with 8.2 million inhabitants. It was the capital not just for the United Kingdom, but for the entire British Empire. London was central to the British war effort.
On June 2, 1945, the Third Infantry Division assembled for a division-wide review in Salzburg, their ranks drawn up before their headquarters. Flo was there with her clubmobile crew, Liz Elliott and Janet Potts, watching as Seventh Army commander General Alexander Patch presented decorations and commendations. A Congressional delegation stood in review alongside Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, among them South Dakota Senator Chan Gurney, the first chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Forces.
June 2, 1945. This is the last picture of the three Red Cross clubmobilers together–Janet Potts, Flo Wick and Liz Elliott. Fritzie Hoaglund never returned to the crew after having been hospitalized.
That day, Lieutenant Audie Murphy of B Company, 15th Regiment, received the Medal of Honor and the Legion of Merit in front of his entire division. Five other Third Division soldiers were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star, their citations read aloud to the troops who had fought across Europe and now stood at attention in peacetime formation.
Gen. O’Daniel shakes the hand of 1st Lt. Audie Murphy of B Company, 15th Regiment, 3rd Division. Murphy received the Medal of Honor and the Legion of Merit on June 2, 1945 in front of his entire division in Salzburg, Austria. Photo: Dogface soldier collection
The ceremony took place at a site heavy with layered history. Built in 1700 as a Baroque summer residence for the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg, the palace later became a Nazi showpiece where Hitler hosted Axis leaders and stored looted art as the Reich collapsed. Captured by the U.S. Third Infantry Division in May 1945, it was repurposed as headquarters of the American Occupation Authority during the decade-long U.S. presence in Salzburg, before eventually becoming a casino.
Gen. J. W. O’Daniel 3rd Div. Commander; Flo Wick, ARC; Gen Alex Patch 7th Army commander. June 1945. Schloss Klessheim SalzburgA delegation of the US Congress witnessed the Audie Murphy ceremony. Chan Gurney, South Dakota, the first chairman of the US senate committee on Armed Services, is seen here with Flo.Letter from Sen. Gurney to Flo’s parents. He thought they were South Dakota constituents. Flo was born in Redfiled, SD, but the family hadn’t lived there since she was a baby. They lived in Yakima, WA. Her father had died in 1938.On June 2, 1945 the 3rd Division staged a grand review at Schloss Klessheim.Soldiers march past the reviewing stand. photos from Flo’s album
When Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, the U.S. Army in Europe suddenly had to shift from fighting to occupying a defeated nation. More than two million soldiers now had to be sorted into three paths: those who would stay in Germany as an occupation force, those who would be sent to the Pacific for the expected invasion of Japan, and those who would finally go home. Because the Army had more men than it needed for occupation and redeployment, it also had to begin discharging veterans fairly and quickly.
General George C. Marshall had foreseen this challenge. Drawing on hard lessons from the chaotic demobilization after World War I, he ordered the Special Planning Division in 1943 to craft a method that would release soldiers on an individual basis rather than by entire units. With divisions in Europe filled with late-war replacements, unit-based demobilization was impossible—and delay risked unrest among idle troops.
After gathering input from commanders worldwide, the army created the Adjusted Service Rating Score, universally known to GIs as the point system. It offered an objective way to determine who went home first. Points were awarded for time in service, time overseas, combat campaigns, decorations, wounds, and dependent children:
1 point per month in the Army
+1 point per month overseas
5 points per campaign
5 points per decoration for merit or valor
5 points per Purple Heart
12 points per dependent child (up to three)
This system became the backbone of America’s demobilization in Europe.
Janet and Flo hand out the last donuts to soldiers as they board the train for homeSalzburg train station. Photos from Flo’s album
Flo stayed on in Europe until March, 1946, and I had assumed she signed up to serve in the Red Cross during the occupation. But I think she was just as anxious to return home as all the other American soldiers and staff–she just couldn’t get out any sooner. It’s not clear whether Red Cross workers received points, or whether they even fell under the rating score system.
After her death, in Flo’s jewelry box I found a bracelet made from a Combat Infantryman Badge. The badge is a U.S. Army decoration awarded to infantrymen and Special Forces soldiers, colonel rank and below, who fought in active ground combat after December, 1941. The same badge appears here on the dance invitation. I imagine it had been awarded to Flo’s fiancé, Gene Gustafson, and that she had it fashioned into a bracelet she could wear.
For almost ten weeks—from May 4 to July 13, 1945—the 3rd Division enjoyed a rare stretch of life without combat in and around Salzburg. To help soldiers shift from warfighting to occupation duty, the army quickly organized a full slate of sports and recreation. The Salzburg rodeo that Flo photographed was likely one of those morale-boosting events.
Clubmobiler Janet Potts, already an experienced equestrian with competition miles behind her, took part in the show. Even so, jumping with an unfamiliar horse must have been a challenge. And the horses themselves raise questions: where did they come from? Were they seized from a high-ranking Nazi officer? Whatever their origin, they were striking animals—well trained, elegant, and responsive. One photo even seems to show an American soldier riding a dressage horse, completing the unlikely tableau of a rodeo in postwar Salzburg.
Flo stood at the border and looked across the Alps into Austria
My Mother and Audie MurphyCh. 77
In May, 1945, just after the end of the war, Flo must have been excited to summit the Brenner Pass and see into Austria. Brenner Pass has long been a strategic gateway through the Alps, and its role intensified during World War II. After Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, the pass suddenly lay deep inside Hitler’s expanding Reich. Two years later, on 18 March 1940, Hitler and Mussolini met there to reaffirm their Pact of Steel.
When Italy signed an armistice with the Allies in 1943, Germany moved quickly to seize the pass and push the border with Mussolini’s new puppet regime far to the south. By 1945, American troops occupied the area, and the pass was returned to Italy once the war ended. In the chaotic aftermath, Brenner Pass also became one of the escape routes, part of the “ratlines” used by fleeing Nazi leaders. After the war, the pass once again marked the border between Italy and the newly independent Republic of Austria.
The sign shows the hard road from Salerno to AustriaSeen from the other sideGreat views from up there!
On June 25, 1945, Flo turned thirty-two, and her friends gathered to give her a proper birthday celebration. She spent the day with her clubmobile partner, Janet Potts, along with Janet’s boyfriend, Capt. Lloyd (Jens) Jenson, and Flo’s own boyfriend, Lt. Col. Chris Chaney. All four arrived in uniform as they wandered through the fortress castle that served as headquarters for the 15th Infantry above Salzburg. The women wore their Red Cross-issued dresses; the men their Army greens. They teased one another, snapped photographs in the grand corridors, and convinced Flo to pose in the old stocks for a laugh.
Later, they changed into civilian clothes and headed out for a picnic. Indoors, there was a birthday cake, and they captured more pictures—two couples who looked close, relaxed, and hopeful in the early summer after the war’s end.
These became the last images, and the last mention, of Flo’s relationship with Chris Chaney. The photographs made them seem comfortably paired, and although Janet and Jens eventually married, Flo and Chris did not stay together. She kept no letters from him after the war.
What became of him remained unclear. The two had talked about traveling to Paris and England, plans that never materialized. Most likely, he received an early chance to go home and took it. As a highly decorated officer with a Silver Star, he would have been near the front of the line for repatriation. Flo’s life moved forward, and whatever they had envisioned together faded with the summer.
Flo, Chris and JensJanet and JensRailroad tracks leading down from the fortressFlo posing in the ancient stocksFlo on her 32nd birthdayJanet and Jens at the picnicWhat did Chris do to deserve this?Or this?Celebrating war’s endThird Infantry Division buddiesHappy Birthday FloThere was even a birthday cake
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