Category: Third Infantry Division

A Sweet Love Poem to a Flyer

But who was Flo’s intended recipient?

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 101

This poem, written on a small slip of paper, fell out of Flo’s album, and I can’t be sure where she meant to place it. I believe she wrote it herself: she made a correction in the text, and I could find no reference to it anywhere else. The poem is addressed to a flyer, yet none of her Third Division friends–nor her fiancé–were flyers. So who was she writing to? I found one possible clue in a letter she wrote to her sister Ruth in August 1944:

“When I returned from Sorrento, Ruth, I found some tragic news awaiting me. A letter I had written Johnny on July 19 was returned to me and on the envelope in red ink was written “accidentally killed in training flight July 15, 1944 near NY.” I simply can’t believe he is dead – he was so alive and so anxious to get over here and do his part. He had had nothing but bad luck since getting into the air Corps. His last letter told me he was just recuperating from pneumonia – common due to flying in sub zero altitudes. It is easier to “take” over here than it would have been at home because you develop a different philosophy, but it is hard nevertheless. His poor mother – both sons killed in airplanes!”

The poem implies that Johnny was more than just a friend. But Flo never told me about him and I can find no other reference to him in her papers. The poem must have been enclosed in her returned letter.

Front Line Publishes Special Edition

3rd Division souvenir paper tells history of the division

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 100

Don’t throw this away! admonishes the Front Line newspaper of their post-war special edition. Flo didn’t throw it away. She saved it and tucked it into her album. The issue consists entirely of stories which appeared in the big and little dailies of the nation about the Third Division.

From the introduction: “During the rush of battle few men were able to get a hold of a newspaper published in the states, much less take time to read it thoroughly….Hence, this special edition. 

“We hope you hang on to your copy as the supply is limited to one per man. If you want to send it home, go ahead. All the material in it was censored by Sixth Army Group censors before it could appear in the home town papers.”

The Front Line is the official newspaper of the Third Infantry Division. In the interest of archiving, I’m posting the whole six-page paper. You can read it by pinching out the image.

Ch. 101: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/03/07/a-sweet-love-poem-to-a-flyer/

Christmas & New Year’s 1945

Gen. Schmidt’s New Year’s party celebrates Third Division

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 99

The card shows the route of the 3rd Division from Africa to Germany
Third Infantry Division New Year’s party
Flo captioned this “Blackmail material”
Flo didn’t ID these guys
General Schmidt hosted the party
Christmas ‘C’ company 30th Infantry

Ch. 100: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/03/03/front-line-publishes-special-edition/

Parachute Regiment Throws a Party

They celebrate Armistice Day in occupied Berlin

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 98

While they were in Berlin for the football game between the Third Division and the 82nd Airborne, Flo and her comrades were invited to a party hosted by the 504th Parachute Regiment. To celebrate Armistice Day in occupied Berlin must have been especially poignant so soon after the end of this second world war. 

Flo saved the wine list which listed no wine, but more cocktails than I knew existed. I recognize a few—Manhattan, Martini, Gin Fizz—but not most. I wonder if modern bartenders are still making any of these drinks. The list notes that champagne and beer are available, but there is no mention of wine, at least on this page. Maybe Americans were just not partial to wine in the year 1945.

Ch. 99: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/02/27/christmas-new-years-1945/

Images of War-Torn Berlin

Flo and comrades get a look at the German capital

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 97

By the end of World War II, Berlin was no longer a city so much as a vast field of ruins. After enduring 363 air raids and a final, catastrophic ground assault, the German capital lay shattered—famously described by its own residents as a heap of rubble. Street by street, block by block, the urban fabric had been torn apart, leaving behind a landscape of collapsed buildings, twisted steel, and drifting ash.

Flo at the Brandenburg Gate, built in 1791. It would soon be incorporated into the Berlin Wall, dividing the city into East and West sectors during the Cold War.

Nearly 80 percent of Berlin’s city center had been destroyed. Across the wider metropolis, some 600,000 apartments were reduced to dust and broken brick. Infrastructure collapsed alongside homes: in the final days of fighting, 128 of the city’s 226 bridges were blown apart, a quarter of the subway system was deliberately flooded, and running water, electricity, and rail transport virtually ceased to function. Iconic landmarks suffered the same fate as ordinary neighborhoods. The Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate were battered by artillery and close-quarters combat, while along the grand boulevard Unter den Linden, only 16 of its 64 buildings remained standing.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and the city center

The human cost was staggering. Civilian deaths from bombing raids alone are estimated at between 20,000 and 50,000. During the final Battle of Berlin, another 125,000 civilians are believed to have died amid the chaos of street fighting, shelling, and firestorms. At least 450,000 people were left homeless, and the city’s population collapsed from 4.3 million in 1939 to just 2.8 million by the war’s end—a mass exodus of refugees, evacuees, and the dead.

All photos from Flo’s album

Unlike many cities that later erased the physical traces of war, Berlin chose to preserve parts of its devastation as visible memory. Bullet holes and shrapnel scars still mark walls in districts like Mitte and Charlottenburg. The shattered spire of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church stands deliberately unrepaired, a permanent anti-war monument rising from the city center. Elsewhere, mountains of rubble were piled into artificial hills—Teufelsberg and Volkspark Humboldthain—turning the wreckage of war into silent landmarks.

Some monuments survived

These images of destruction are not only records of ruin. They are reminders of the scale of collapse, the human suffering beneath the debris, and the deliberate choice to remember, rather than forget, what war reduced Berlin to in 1945.

The grand boulevard of Unter den Linden
The Berlin Cathedral
Major Dan Wickersham in the US zone

Ch. 98: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/02/23/parachute-regiment-throws-a-party/

To Berlin for a Football Game

Mary McAuliffe Joins the ARC Crew

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 96

By command of Gen. Schmidt permission to attend a football game in Berlin
Love the car.
Mary McAuliffe, ARC; Gen. Schmidt; Flo Wick
Having a little snack before taking off. Flo and Mary
No fair getting photographed while eating!
Mary McAuliffe, Major Wickersham, Lt. Col. Ramsey
Gen. Schmidt saw them off.
The Third Division played the 82nd Airborne at Hitler’s Olympic stadium Nov. 11, 1945.
The brass section
Attention! The gigantic stadium, built for the 1936 Olympics, survived the bombings.

Ch. 97: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/02/19/images-of-war-torn-berlin/

English, Americans, Russians Party

The gathering took place in Kassel, Germany near the border between Soviet and U.S. occupation zones.

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 94

General Sexton with Russian general
Russian general
Lt. Col Rosson, Florence Wick, Russian regimental C.O. Col. Michael Paschchenko

Ch. 95: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/02/11/cagney-picks-up-murphy/

The US and USSR Sign a Peaceful Pact

The agreement marked a territorial change in the occupied zones

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 93

The meeting took place at the Russian and American liaison headquarters in Wanfried.

Flo attended the historic Russian–American conference in Wanfried, Germany, where the Wanfried Agreement was signed on September 17, 1945. The agreement was a post–World War II territorial exchange between U.S. and Soviet occupation authorities, finalized in English and Russian, to resolve a logistical problem along the Bebra–Göttingen railway. A roughly 2.7-mile stretch of this crucial rail line briefly crossed into the Soviet zone near Wanfried, disrupting traffic vital to U.S. connections between southern Germany and the American-controlled port of Bremerhaven. To secure uninterrupted U.S. control of the line, two villages in Soviet-occupied Thuringia were exchanged for five villages in American-occupied Hesse. The agreement, informally known as the “Whisky-Vodka Line,” stands out as a rare, peaceful, and highly localized negotiation between the two superpowers in the tense early months of the occupation.

Figuring out the new borders between occupations zones
Flo’s head sticks out on the left. It looks like there was one other female at the table. At least one participant wore a gun to lunch.
Flo sitting next to Russian regimental CO. Col. Michael Paschchenko. Flo told me she had a big crush on this handsome guy but neither spoke the other’s language.
Agreement signed! Russian general and Gen. Sexton toast.

Ch. 94: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/02/07/english-americans-russians-party/

Around Witzenhausen, Autumn 1945

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 92

Witzenhausen, Germany, lay within the American occupation zone near the border with the Soviet zone, making it strategically important for intelligence and personnel transfers. In 1945, U.S. forces used the town during Operation Paperclip to evacuate German rocket scientists, including Wernher von Braun, from Bleicherode to prevent their capture by advancing Soviet troops, underscoring Witzenhausen’s role in the emerging Cold War. The town became a U.S. Army garrison, with military bases integrated into local life, a pattern seen across West Germany. This long American presence left lasting marks on language, consumer culture, and infrastructure, making Witzenhausen a microcosm of the broader U.S. occupation experience.

Janet and Flo visited a beach house on Lake Edersee occupied by the 3rd Signal Co.
Janet Potts
Berlepsch castle
Janet and Jens Jenson in their living quarters at Witzenhausen Thanksgiving, 1945. They weren’t yet married, but apparently the Army and ARC no longer cared.
At Janet and Jens’s home with Lt. Gerry Mehuron 3rd Bn. 3oth Thanksgiving Day. New boyfriend?
With Major Wickersham, a friend from Flo’s hometown, Yakima, WA
Locating these places on Apple maps helps me. Lake Edersee on the left, Witzerhausen to the right of Kassel, Bad Wildungen where Flo was stationed is to the right of Lake Edersee. All were within the American occupation zone in Hesse.

Ch. 93: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/02/03/the-us-and-ussr-sign-a-peaceful-pact/

Flo Goes to a Football Game

Third Division vs. 29th

Ch. 91 My Mother and Audie Murphy

The football games were part of a sports program organized to occupy restless American and Canadian troops awaiting discharge. In August 1945, the U.S. Army had staged the “GI Olympics” in Nuremberg, with high-ranking Russian observers in attendance. Events included a baseball game played in the former Hitler Youth Stadium—an unmistakably symbolic reclaiming of Nazi space. That same day, news of Japan’s surrender crackled over the loudspeakers, unleashing a roar that seemed to lift the roof as GIs tossed caps, coats, and red-white-and-blue programs into the air, hugging, kissing, and celebrating the war’s end. The festivities continued into the night with performances by Hal McIntyre at the amphitheater and Bob Hope at the Opera House, drawing thousands of cheering troops in a city freshly transformed from fascist spectacle to victorious release.

Pretty sure Flo was rooting for the Third Division
Reserved for the brass.

Ch. 92: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/01/30/around-witzenhausen-autumn-1945/