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A Demon Enters My Body

His best friend dies: Murph loses his cool

Ch. 26 My Mother and Audie Murphy

D-Day in Southern France. August 15, 1944

They jump from the landing craft and wade through the swirling surf. From the hills above, German guns begin to crack. Shells burst among them. Medics move instantly, sleeves rolled, already tending to the fallen.

An explosion erupts on the left. When the smoke clears, the remains of a soldier lie scattered—he has stepped on a mine. A medic kneels beside him briefly, then signals to the litter bearers that there is nothing to carry.

Ahead lies a strip of scrub and tangled grass. The men advance toward it with cautious, deliberate steps, as though walking on eggshells. The entire beach is mined, every footstep a gamble.

Landing at Red Beach. Photo: Dogface soldiers collection

They reach the edge of a green meadow. Beyond it stretch vineyards and scattered farmhouses, each one potentially harboring an unseen gun crew. Murphy drops into a drainage ditch and pushes forward, mud sucking at his boots as he moves.

They kill two Germans and capture six.

The thin shell of resistance at the beachhead collapses quickly, and the company advances inland. Three wooded hills rise to their right. From the center hill, a concrete pillbox juts outward, its cannon angled toward the beach. Intelligence marks this hill as a major strongpoint, and Murphy’s company receives the order to neutralize it.

Under a punishing sun, the men climb in sweat-soaked uniforms. Murphy’s platoon leads, and he brings up the rear. Suddenly automatic fire sweeps down from the hill.

Murphy’s two comrades are killed. He is alone and the Germans have discovered his position.

Then Murphy engages in acts of heroism that earn him one of his many medals. He duels with the enemy until his ammunition is exhausted. Then he seizes a machine gun and rakes the foxholes. Still under fire, he is joined by a comrade, his best buddy in the squad.

The surviving Germans wave a white cloth in surrender. Murphy’s friend rises casually from cover, believing the danger has passed. A hidden machine gun opens at once. He topples backward into the hole, barely whispering Murphy’s name before dying. Murphy freezes in shock, caught between the bodies of his friend and the Germans he has killed.

He checks for a pulse. There is none. He calls for medics, but the hill roars with gunfire. No one can reach him.

Grief and disbelief overwhelm him. He refuses to accept the death. With quiet, deliberate care, he lifts his friend from the hole and lays him beneath a cork tree, as though fresh air alone might restore life. How he avoids being shot while doing this remains inexplicable.

A machine gun shifts toward him. Murphy reacts instantly, diving back into the hole, throwing a grenade, and then rushing forward. The grenade has done its work. Both German gunners are dead. Murphy takes their weapon, checks it, and begins climbing the hill again.

He wrote: “I remember the experience as I do a nightmare. A demon seems to have entered my body. My brain is coldly alert and logical. I do not think of the danger to myself. My whole being is concentrated on killing. Later the men pinned down in the vineyard tell me that I shout pleas and curses at them because they do not come up and join me.”

He reaches the gun crew responsible and kills them before they even know he is there. He keeps firing until their bodies stop moving.

Resistance on the hill collapses. The company advances and reorganizes on the crest. Murphy stands apart, trembling, stunned by the sudden weakness that overtakes him. When the company moves on, he returns alone to his friend’s body.

He gathers his personal effects, looks once more at the photograph of the little girl with pigtails, then places the pack beneath his friend’s head like a pillow. He sits beside him and weeps without restraint.

As time passes, the rage drains away. The enemy becomes again simply the enemy—not monsters, not personal. The war resumes its relentless form: a series of brutal tasks carried out by flesh and will. Murphy accepts this, as he has every day since the war began.

And he rises, wipes his face, and walks back over the hill to rejoin the company.

Quotes are from From Murphy’s autobiography To Hell and Back

Ch. 27: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/05/15/flo-and-her-crew-sail-to-france/

Ready to Leave Poor Italy

In a letter home, Flo writes of the strain of waiting

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 25

August 24, 1944. “We are in the process of waiting right now and it is very much of a strain, particularly since “our boys” are fighting and we worry so much about them. War is hell when you “sweat out” an invasion and it becomes pretty grim when you hear that someone you knew well and liked a great deal has been wounded or killed. We hope to be with them before too long.

“I have just started to comprehend Italian and will soon have to struggle with French, but I’m sure I’ll like it much better.

“I’ve gained at least 5 pounds, I am nut brown from outdoor life and feel excellent. The last two days I’ve had a sore throat and am now horse as a crow, but fine otherwise.

“Paris fell last evening. No word from Gene,” wrote Flo in her diary August 23.

“My “Love life” is taking time off, too, as the boyfriend is having a little argument with the Jerries right now. I hope he will “come back” but there is always the tragic possibility that he won’t, along with hundreds of others.

“The war advances are encouraging, though to us, not as encouraging as to the folks back home. I am afraid it will still be quite some time, but about that no one can tell for sure.

“It is as hot here as it must be at home in August. We didn’t mind it when we were in the country, but in the city it is very enervating and we notice it considerably.

“I love my job and I am fond of my coworkers, so I’ve never been sorry I came over. In fact, I feel as if I’ve really been doing something.

“Waiting around is hard, but we have even a bigger job ahead of us, as well as new scenes and new adventures.

“I will be just as glad to leave Italy – it has been fun here, but the people are very disillusioning– their whole standard of living is so far, far below what I expected and they seem to have no leaders, no particular ambition or initiative. Like much of Europe now, it is dirty and poor. We have very little to do with the natives and I am more often pitying them than not, but that is wearing. The poor children – there is no health standard and very little good food – the next generation will really suffer.

“Ruth (her sister), If you get a chance, please tell Mom to send me some combs – long ones. They have nothing but cheap short ones in the PX here and I’m destitute. Some Italian stole my two pair of dress shoes, so I’m completely dependent on those horrible black oxfords. Only one package has reached me from home as yet.”

Ch. 26: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/05/12/3rd-divisions-first-day-in-france/

Operation Dragoon: The Landing

Audie Murphy recalled landing on French soil

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 24

August 15, 1944. From Murphy’s autobiography To Hell and Back:

Audie Murphy later described the landing in southern France in his autobiography To Hell and Back. He recalled that, technically, the operation was considered perfect. The assault had been calculated to the smallest detail, every movement coordinated so that the effort unfolded with the smooth precision of a machine.

Compared to earlier invasions, resistance here was light. Weeks before, Allied forces had already broken out of Normandy and were cutting through northern France like a flood bursting through a levee. On the eastern front, the Russians were hammering the German armies. Overhead, American bombers were grinding German cities to rubble. Murphy likened Germany’s situation to that of a man hiding in a stolen house, frantically running between front and back doors as justice pounded from both sides—only to realize too late that another force was now rising up through the cellar. His regiment, Murphy observed, was that third force.

*Landing craft on D-Day August 15. More than 90,000 amphibious and 9,000 airborne troops participated in the initial two-day southern France landings. Photo: NARA*

Yet the men in the landing craft knew nothing of this sweeping strategic picture. They saw only the edge of the boat, the immediate shoreline, and the moment that lay before them. Their first objective was a narrow, harmless-looking strip of sand called “Yellow Beach.” It was early morning in mid-August; a thin mist hovered above the flat fields beyond the shore, and beyond that, quiet green hills rose inland.

The bay between St. Tropez and Cavalaire was crowded with the familiar pattern of an amphibious assault. Battleships had already given the coastline a thorough pounding and now drifted silently in the background. Rocket craft followed, launching volleys that hissed through the air like schools of strange metallic fish, exploding mines and shredding barbed wire while rattling the nerves of the Germans waiting on shore.

Under this barrage, scores of landing boats churned forward. Murphy stood in one of them, gripped again by that old, stomach-knotting fear that always came before action. Around him, his men crouched like miserable, soaked cats. Some were seasick; others sat glassy-eyed, lost in the kind of inward withdrawal that came just before battle.

And then, in the midst of dread, Murphy felt the absurdity of the moment. Here they were—small, cold, wet men—thrust into a riddle vast as the sky. He laughed, as he often did when confronted with the enormity of life and death.

As the boats drew nearer, Murphy tried to rally his men by urging them to sing. They weren’t interested. But singing had long been a way soldiers kept fear in check, anger in rhythm, and marching in step. The Third Division even had its own song—Dogface Soldier—written in 1942 by two of its own, Sgt. Bert Gold and Lt. Ken Hart, both from Long Beach, New York. The division commander, Lucian Truscott, liked it so much he made it official. Third Division soldiers sang it, marched to it, and danced to it.

Years later, in 1955, when Murphy played himself in the film To Hell and Back, the song made its public debut. It became one of the most well-known songs of the war, celebrating not heroes of legend, but the ordinary infantryman—the “dogface” soldier who carried the rifle, slogged the mud, and shouldered the daily weight of the war.

The lyrics—simple, proud, and rough-edged—captured exactly who they were:

I Wouldn’t Give A Bean
To Be A Fancy Pants Marine
I’d Rather Be A
Dog Face Soldier Like I Am

I Wouldn’t Trade My Old OD’s
For All The Navy’s Dungarees
For I’m The Walking Pride
Of Uncle Sam

On Army Posters That I Read
It Says “Be All That You Can”
So They’re Tearing Me Down
To Build Me Over Again

I’m just a Dogface Soldier,
With a rifle on my shoulder,
And I eat a Kraut for breakfast every day.

So Feed Me Ammunition
Keep Me In the Third Division
Your DogFace Soldier’s A-Okay

Ch. 25: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/05/07/ready-to-leave-poor-italy/

On Leave: Sorrento and Capri

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 23

After Goodbyes, Four Days of Bliss

August 1944 was a month of waiting. The men Flo and her friends had waved off were now at sea, sailing toward the battlefields of Southern France. Their D-Day, scheduled for August 15, loomed heavy in the minds of the Red Cross women left behind. It might be weeks, they were warned, before the coast was clear enough for them to follow. On August 8, the women moved from the camp at Pozzuoli to a residence next to headquarters in Naples.

After days of stifling heat and restless worry in Naples, the women were granted leave. Flo, Dottie, and Isabella fled to Sorrento, trading the grit and noise of the city for something closer to paradise. Flo captured it all in a letter home:

*A page from Flo’s album. Which one of these guys is the cute French officer?* *She didn’t save the letters that were in the envelopes. What did he write?* *Pinch out to look more closely.*

“We have been resting for several days and spent four wonderful days at Sorrento in a lovely old hotel, which is now an officers rest camp. It was peaceful and lovely down there after the hot, noisy, dirty city and seemed like a different world. We were in bathing suits and shorts most of the time, swimming and sailing. They not only have white sails on the boats, but red, Blue and terra-cotta. It is a picturesque site – the sailboats skimming along on that blue, blue water with veri-colored sails.

In her diary Flo wrote about her flirtation with a cute French officer in Sorrento. She called him a “very romantic boy.”

“Italy has its good points and they are nearly all scenery. We took the one-day boat excursion trip to Capri and it is as romantic and lovely as all the songs and posters say. It is out of this world and is surrounded by the clearest, bluest water I’ve seen. The island itself is quaint– abounding in all kinds of flowers, trees, lovely shrines and cathedrals, which date back to the 15th century.

“To make my few vacation days even more unusual and romantic, I met a cute French officer, who made a big hit with all – male and female – staying at the hotel. He spoke a very few words of English and I no French, but we got along beautifully and I took a great deal of kidding about it. Even in his broken English, he was quite a smoothie, and so sincere about it all. They are such sentimentalists, but confidentially I prefer them to the English.”

Flo wrote about their trip to Sorrento and Capri in her diary

They sailed to Capri, where the sea was so blue it looked unreal, and the hillsides spilled over with flowers and ancient shrines. Flo met a young French officer, charming even in broken English, and spent a day with him swimming, sailing, and dancing under the southern sun.

In her diary, she noted the date — August 15 — and scribbled the words: “Hope 3rd Div. okey.” She took a drive along the Amalfi coast, marveling at the villages clinging to cliffs above the sea. For a moment, the war felt far away, almost unreal.

But when the four days ended, reality closed back around them. Returning to Naples, Flo and the others slipped once more into the long, anxious business of waiting — and worrying about the boys they had left behind. She wrote in her diary, “May be here for another two weeks. Invasion going well, but worry about boys and especially Gene. Hope he escapes.”

Ch. 24: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/05/02/operation-dragoon-the-landing/

Goodbye to the Boys

Chapter 22: My Mother and Audie Murphy

August, 1944. Operation Dragoon—the Allied invasion of Southern France—had been debated for months. Originally, it was supposed to launch alongside the more famous Operation Overlord, the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944. But the top brass couldn’t agree. Resources were stretched thin, and priorities clashed. Was it wise to open a second front in France? Could they even pull it off?

Part of the Operation Dragoon invasion fleet anchored off Naples. Photo: NARA

Meanwhile, thousands of young men trained on the sunbaked beaches near Naples, waiting for orders that never seemed to come. Tension hung heavy in the air. They practiced amphibious landings again and again, sand grinding into their boots and rifles, minds on the fight ahead—or trying not to think about it at all.

By August, the go-ahead finally came. Operation Dragoon would launch on August 15, with landings near St. Tropez. The plan: storm the beaches, push inland, liberate Marseille, and link up with the northern forces. It would be a massive undertaking, one that might finally break the German grip on Southern France.

In the ports around Naples, everything sprang into motion. Soldiers, tanks, trucks, jeeps, crates of ammunition and rations—all were loaded onto the towering LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank). The docks were a blur of noise and movement. Beneath the logistical precision, though, was something quieter, more personal: goodbye.

Loading the LSTs

The Red Cross women were there, as they always were—on the edges of history, offering comfort, coffee, and smiles to boys about to disappear into war.

On Monday, August 7, Flo wrote in her diary:

“Served 3rd Div. leaving from Baia. Said goodbye to Stonie, Rick & Miles & part of 36E. Last date with Gene. Went to beach. Hated to say goodbye. Love him in spite of resolve.”

The day before, Flo had written in her diary, “Decided I want to marry Gene.” He was now her fiancé, and they were parting ways, perhaps for the last time.

The next day, August 8, she wrote:

“On beach at Nisida. Mostly Infantry—7th & 30th. Saw Gus, Buzz and all the rest of 1st Bn. Hot & dirty. Worked from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.”

What a gigantic operation! Photo: NARA

Twelve-hour shifts, in the heat and dust, trying to give each man a sense that someone saw him, that someone cared. How do you say goodbye to that many young men, most of them barely more than boys? How do you smile through it, knowing many might never come back?

When the last ships pulled out, the docks were quiet. The women packed up their things, broke camp, and moved into Naples near headquarters. Flo wrote:

“Much baggage. Helped 45^th girls at Pozzuoli. Also 36^th Div. leaving there. Very hot, busy and tired. LST ensign gave me dozen eggs. Exhausted after days of saying goodbye to thousands of boys en route for invasion.”

Photo: NARA

Now they waited. The invasion was set for August 15. First, the troops would land. Then they’d have to fight their way inland, clear the Germans, secure the roads. Only then would Flo and the other ARC staff be allowed to follow, to bring comfort once again to the weary, wounded, and grieving.

In the silence of the following days, Flo thought of Gene. And of Stonie, Rick, and Miles. And of the thousands of names she never knew—just faces, voices, laughter fading down the gangplank.

Ch. 23: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/04/27/on-leave-sorrento-and-capri/

She Liked Opera, They Liked Jazz

A decade older than the boys, Flo became a mother figure

Summer, 1944. My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 21

The soldiers were young—just boys, really—and by the end of that summer of 1944 at the training camp in Pozzuoli, they had become “her” boys. In the relative calm of the camp, Flo had served thousands of troops, gotten to know hundreds, and formed real friendships with many of them.

She and her clubmobile crew made regular visits to the army units, offering coffee, donuts, and a brief escape from the war. The women were allowed to join the men in some of their tasks—driving the amphibious DUKW boats, using the mine sweep, traveling to training areas, watching mock battles. Flo kept photos in her album—snapshots of the women posing with soldiers on tanks, jeeps, and trucks—memories of lighter moments amid the looming darkness.

*Flo and Dottie posing with 442nd Ack Ack*

To the young men, she became a maternal figure. At 30, Flo was a decade or more older than most of the infantrymen who would soon be fighting on the front lines. There was a natural generational divide—she had grown up with opera and classical music; they preferred jazz. She danced the waltz. They wanted to jitterbug.

Still, there was deep mutual respect. She told me often how much she cared for them, how proud she was of them—and how worried she became as the next invasion loomed. She feared many of them wouldn’t come back.

She always emphasized how respectful the soldiers were. Of course, they were under strict military discipline, and they lived with the constant awareness that any day could be their last. That shaped their behavior, certainly—but so did the bond they shared with her.

Photogrphers unknown, but probably 3rd Signal Co.

Ch. 22: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/04/21/goodbye-to-the-boys/

Dance with All, but Don’t Fall

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 20

They were told to dance with all the boys—but fall for none. Red Cross rules were clear: dating was fine, as long as the man wore officer’s stripes. Enlisted men were off-limits.

By day, the women drove from camp to camp serving donuts. By night, they danced—sometimes until midnight, then back on their feet by 3 a.m. when the troops came off the line. It was often exhausting, but it was the job.

Flo did her duty. She danced with everyone. Her diary mentions a rotating cast of names—Gus, Buzz, Captain Chaney, Pvt. Rotter, Rick, Stonie, Lt. Phillips, and a handful of Yakima boys. She even dined with Gen. O’Daniel. But her heart stayed untouched.

Until Gene.

She met him in June at the Third Division bivouac at Pozzuoli while serving the 36th Engineers. The first hint shows up in her diary on July 13:

“Date with Lt. Gustafson at 36E dinner and swimming at beach. Fun.”

From there, something shifted.

July 21:

“Too many parties tomorrow nite; am involved.”

She didn’t say his name, but by then, it was clear. She had a boyfriend.

Flo, once a secretary fluent in shorthand, sometimes switched to code in her diary. On July 23, in those secret curves and loops, she wrote:

“Gene asked me to marry him today.”

The next day:

“Gene down at 9:30. Looked at moon by the lake.”

The war made everything urgent. The ARC discouraged marriage, but love had its own rules. On July 28, she confessed:

“Hate to think of the new invasion. He wants to give me a ring.”

And then,

July 31: “Afraid I like him lots.”

August 6 in shorthand: “Decided I want to marry him.”

Gene Gustafson and Flo. She is wearing the armband used in the southern France invasion.

Flo had no shortage of admirers. She made friends easily, and turned down suitors gently. One woman joked that a soldier, refused by her, turned around and proposed to her friend—who accepted on the spot. It was that kind of war.

On August 7, as Gene prepared to ship out:

“Last date with Gene. Love him in spite of resolve.”

Flo captioned this picture “Gene’s home at Anzio.”

In a letter to her sister Ruth, she tried to make sense of it all:

“He’s big, very blonde, nice-looking, Swedish on both sides, and an engineer, as well as an Oregonian. It’s almost too perfect a set up and I don’t know just how it will materialize, but he wants to get married as soon as the army and Red Cross will let us. You would like this man and Mom especially, would approve. We’ve talked of going through Sweden before we come home but one never knows here.

“War does some peculiar things though, and we have no idea when we will get together again, or, of course, if he will survive this mess. The only thing I can do is borrow your philosophy that if it is to be, it will be!”

Ch. 21: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/04/17/she-liked-opera-they-liked-jazz/

A Sisterhood on the Front Lines

ARC women provided support to the men–and each other

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 19

Summer 1944. Surrounded by thousands of men, the women of the American Red Cross (ARC) held their own. They got along well with the soldiers—it was their job to lift spirits, provide comfort, and remind the men of home.

*Liz Elliott’s drawings are pasted throughout Flo’s album. The greatest mother was a found statue that lived outside their clubhouse tent.*

In this overwhelmingly male environment, having three other women in their squad of Clubmobilers offered not just companionship, but a deep sense of mutual recognition. Over time, they grew as close as sisters while serving alongside the Third Infantry Division.

Clubmobile women faced the strain and dangers of war with minimal training and little psychological preparation. Yet they were expected—and depended upon—to boost the morale of men fresh from the front. To endure these demands and perform their duties, they relied deeply on one another. Their camaraderie grew not only from shared experiences, but also from their unique position as noncombatants and women in a war zone.

They shared tents, washed their hair in army helmets, and leaned on each other in moments of grief—mourning the loss of friends and fiancés who died on the front lines. They were a sisterhood in every sense, traveling together during leave and supporting each other through the toughest of times.

The original squad of four included:

Florence “Flo” Wick

Dorothy “Dottie” Shands

Elizabeth “Liz” Elliott

Isabella “Jingles” Hughes

At 30, my mother, Florence Wick “Flo”, was the oldest of the group and served as the squad’s captain.

Elizabeth “Liz” Elliott was the one Clubmobiler who stayed with Flo from their early days in Naples all the way into Germany. Liz was the artist who drew pictures of the ARC women’s experience like the one above. Though she lived in New York City, she was originally born in New Mexico. Dottie and Jingles were later reassigned to different stations across Europe.

Dorothy “Dottie” Shands, born in Greenville, Mississippi, graduated from Baylor University in 1940. Her maternal grandmother had been the first woman legislator in her Mississippi county and a suffragist; her paternal grandfather served as Governor of Mississippi. After the war, Dottie worked as a secretary in Washington, D.C. for Representative Will Whittington. During the conflict, she served two and a half years with the Red Cross, beginning in North Africa and following the Third Division through Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany. She broke her leg in Sicily but remained with her team—a testament to her grit. Like Flo, she came from a small town, and her community followed her wartime service with great pride.

Isabella “Jingles” Hughes, from Baltimore, reached the front in North Africa in July 1943, following the troops into Sicily and then Italy. She was delivering donuts before Flo even set sail for Naples.

Though their lives were often at risk—and some ARC workers were killed during the war—these four survived to return home. The sisterhood they formed was essential to their physical and emotional survival.

Ch. 20: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/04/11/dance-with-all-but-dont-fall/

In the Tent City Near Pozzuoli Italy

My Mother and Audie Murphy ch. 18

Pozzuoli, Italy—In the sweltering summer of 1944, the 3rd Infantry Division assembled near this small resort town, joining the 36th and 45th Divisions in preparation for a high-stakes amphibious invasion of southern France. These battle-hardened troops, fresh from the grueling Anzio campaign and the march to Rome, were now under the Seventh Army’s command, sharpening their combat readiness for the next major offensive.

(L-R) Flo, Dottie and Jingles serve the 803rd Ordnance Co.

Isabelle Hughes serves soldiers on the docks returning from a training mission

Among them was an unassuming but vital group—Flo and her clubmobile squad—who arrived in June to serve the men a taste of home: fresh donuts and hot coffee. Stationed in a sprawling tent city, these women had to get creative without a clubmobile truck, the specially outfitted vehicle designed for donut-making on the go. Instead, they improvised, scrounging up transportation and setting up makeshift field canteens in the dusty camps where soldiers could grab a sweet treat before heading back to drills. They were assisted by “donut boys,” soldiers who manned the donut machine in a tent kitchen.

Isabella, Flo and Dottie serving at bivouac

Flo meticulously recorded her daily work in a diary that read like a military log, listing the units she and her team served, often during the darkest hours of the night. Her notes mentioned names that would later be etched in history: the 1st Battalion of the 30th Infantry Regiment, the 441^st Co. A+B, the 9th Field Artillery, the 36th Combat Engineers. On one occasion, on July 16, she may have even handed a donut to a young soldier named Audie Murphy—the future war hero and Hollywood star—though she dryly noted the day as “quite dull.” Murphy, in his autobiography, recalled the 1^st Bn. 15^th completing amphibious training earlier in the year, which likely explains their limited encounters at Pozzuoli.

One entry stood out: service to the 442nd Ack Ack (Anti-Aircraft Battalion), part of the legendary segregated Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team. These soldiers, despite facing discrimination at home, were training for a mission that would cement their reputation as one of the most decorated units in U.S. military history.

Flo’s diary (pinch out to read)

Photographs from this period, many taken by the 3rd Signal Company, capture Flo and her fellow workers hard at work. These combat photographers, who had joined the division at Anzio, developed and printed their images in a darkroom trailer, documenting the war in vivid, unfiltered detail. Their images offer a rare glimpse into the everyday moments behind the front lines. For more see dogfacesoldier.org, a website dedicated to their photos and the 3^rd Division.

Ch. 19: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/04/05/a-sisterhood-on-the-front-lines/

Irving Berlin’s show Tours the World

June, 1944. Flo saw This is the Army at the Royal Opera House in Rome

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 17

Drag, blackface, racial integration, “too many Jews”—they’re all part of the complicated legacy of Irving Berlin’s wartime musical revue, This Is the Army.

Berlin conceived the show in 1941, even before the U.S. entered WWII. It was a follow-up to a production he had staged during WWI in 1917.

This Is the Army premiered on Broadway in 1942, featuring a cast of 300—enlisted men who could sing and dance. The show then toured the U.S. before traveling to military bases worldwide, running until October 1945.

Berlin originally planned to open the show with a minstrel number, as he had in 1917, but director Ezra Stone pushed back. “Mr. Berlin,” he said, “I know the heritage of the minstrel show. Those days are gone. People don’t do that anymore.” Berlin eventually agreed to cut blackface from the stage production, though the number remained in the 1943 film adaptation.

Members of the *This Is the Army* unit rehearse “That’s What the Well-Dressed Man in Harlem Will Wear.” (NARA, 111-SC-140528)

Yet Berlin also made a bold move for the era: he insisted on integrating the show. At a time when the U.S. military remained segregated, This Is the Army became the only integrated unit in uniform. He even wrote a song specifically for Black performers.

Not all of Berlin’s decisions were as progressive. During the tour, he stunned cast members by complaining that there were “too many Jews in the show and too many of Ezra Stone’s friends.” The remark shocked those present—was the son of a cantor really saying this? For the soldier-performers, the fear was immediate: any cuts to the cast meant reassignment to the front lines.

The show’s use of drag also drew criticism. Warner Brothers, which produced the film version, worried that the female impersonators would limit its international release. “Female impersonators do not exist in Latin America,” claimed one misinformed studio memo. The studio also feared that images of U.S. soldiers in dresses would become enemy propaganda. In response, the film drastically reduced the female impersonators’ roles.

On June 4, 1944, Allied troops took Rome. Just six days behind them, This Is the Army rolled into the city on trucks. Later that month, the company took up residence at the Royal Opera House, performing twice daily.

The show was a global phenomenon, raising millions for the Army Emergency Relief Fund and leaving a lasting legacy.

Playbill from This Is the Army

The playbook is from Flo’s WWII album

Ch. 18: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/03/31/in-the-tent-city-near-pozzuoli-italy/

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