Category: Uncategorized

The Evolution of PTSD

The Brass Didn’t Buy It

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 60

Everyone knew about General George Patton’s infamous “slapping incidents,” when he physically attacked two soldiers under his command at hospital evacuation centers in August 1943. The episodes became international news — two among several erratic outbursts that may have led to his eventual removal as commander of the Seventh Army in Europe.

A woman sifts through the rubble of her home in Steinach. In the first half of April, 1945, the allies moved quickly through German towns, many already destroyed by bombing. photos: Dogface Soldier.

The men Patton slapped had been diagnosed with “exhaustion” and “psychoneurosis,” terms then used for what we now recognize as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). During the First World War, it was called “shell shock.”

Patton didn’t believe in shell shock.

Steinach saw a fierce battle on April 7 before the Nazis retreated. Photo: Dogface Soldier collection

In a directive issued to his commanders, he explicitly forbade “battle fatigue” in the Seventh Army:

It has come to my attention that a very small number of soldiers are going to the hospital on the pretext that they are nervously incapable of combat. Such men are cowards and bring discredit on the army and disgrace to their comrades, whom they heartlessly leave to endure the dangers of battle while they, themselves, use the hospital as a means of escape. You will take measures to see that such cases are not sent to the hospital but dealt with in their units. Those who are not willing to fight will be tried by court-martial for cowardice in the face of the enemy.
— Patton directive to the Seventh Army, August 5, 1943

At the time, the Army Medical Department was beginning to study what would later be classified as PTSD, but most of the officer corps still regarded it as cowardice.

The devastation in Lohr was mostly caused by American artillery. Photo: Dogface Soldier collection

Audie Murphy, who saw more front-line combat than almost any other American soldier, witnessed many such breakdowns. As the war dragged on and he watched more men “crack up,” his own understanding and empathy evolved. The first episode he describes in To Hell and Back is met with derision from his men — and from himself:

“Olsen is the first to crack up. He throws his arms around the company commander, crying hysterically, ‘I can’t take any more.’ The harassed captain tries to calm him, but Olsen will not stop bawling. So he is sent to the rear, and we watch him go with hatred in our eyes.
‘If I ever throw a whingding like that, shoot me,’ says Kerrigan.
‘Gladly,’ I reply. ‘In North Africa I thought he was one tough boy.’
‘Yeah, he threw his weight around plenty.’
‘He seemed to be everything the War Department was looking for. He was my idea of a real soldier. Then one night that little Italian, Corrego, came in drunk; and Olsen beat him up.’
‘He should have been shot right then.’”

Lohr saw heavy fighting as allies advanced on April 3. Photo: Dogface Soldier collection.

Later, Murphy watches another man lose his senses and die as a result:

“Staggering with weariness and snarling like wolves, we meet the Germans again… We slip within 200 yards of their lines before they turn the full force of their weapons upon us. Obviously, they intend our complete annihilation.
Under the furious punishment, a man a few yards from me cracks up. He begins with a weeping jag; then, yelling insanely, he rises to his feet and charges straight toward the German lines. A sniper drills him through the head; and a burp gun slashes his body as he falls.”

Poppenlaur displayed flags made from any white fabric that could be found. Photo: Dogface Soldier.

Near the end of the war, Murphy’s tone shifts. He shows compassion and understanding when a soldier named Anders returns to the front, determined to stay with his comrades despite his shattered nerves:

“Before we have had time to regroup for instructions, the shells fall into our midst. Eight men are knocked out; and Anders cracks up. It is not his fault. He has courage to spare, but body and nerves have taken all they can stand. He has heard one explosion too many; seen one too many die.
As we check the dead and wounded, his voice goes thick. I grab him by the shoulder. He shudders and begins to shake violently.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’ve gone all to pieces.’
‘Stay here and wait for the medics. You shouldn’t have come back up.’
‘N-n-no. No. No.’
‘You’re no good in that shape.’
‘I’ll come out of it.’
‘The hell you will. You can’t let the men see you in that condition.’
‘I’ll be quiet. I won’t say anything.’
‘You’re going to tell it to the doctor.’
‘If you think so, maybe I should. Maybe I should.’
He rejoins us the next day. I curse him heartily, but he only grins. When we come under heavy artillery fire, that grin is quickly erased. His nerves collapse again… Whether or not he knows or wants it, he is through. Finished. This time when I send him to the rear, I also send the colonel word to keep him there.”

Photo: Wikipedia

Murphy himself suffered from PTSD for the rest of his life. After the war, he spoke publicly about it and tried to alert the Army to its dangers — but at the time, the brass didn’t want to hear it.

Meanwhile, during the war, doctors at an airbase hospital in Arizona began recognizing and treating PTSD with compassion rather than punishment or electroshock. Their pioneering work inspired the 1963 film Captain Newman, M.D., starring Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis, Angie Dickinson, Bobby Darin, and other notables. Five stars from me.

Ch. 61: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/10/09/all-the-best-fields-in-germany/

Clubmobiling in Germany

The ARC crew finally gets its own truck

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 59

March 1945. The clubmobile was a two-and-a-half-ton GMC truck outfitted with coffee and donut-making equipment, and side windows that opened into a makeshift canteen—something like the taco trucks we see in cities today.

Scores of these trucks rolled onto Omaha Beach in July 1944, just weeks after the D-Day landings in France, each assigned to a crew of four American Red Cross (ARC) women. Their mission was to follow the troops, serving donuts, coffee, and good cheer to the men coming off the front lines.

The ARC crew finally gets its own clubmobile

The ARC women who landed in Italy, including my mother, Flo Wick, traveled with the armies north through southern France and all the way to the Rhine. But until they crossed into Germany, Flo’s crew had no clubmobile of their own. They improvised, scrounging whatever vehicles they could find to deliver donuts to soldiers.

Flo and Janet with TC loving their new truck

On this page of her album, Flo posted the first pictures of clubmobiling in Germany. Here, at last, they were issued their own truck—nearly a year into their service overseas.

The photos hint at a trade-off: the women may have had to endure some “good-natured” groping in exchange for their vehicle. Flo names “Lamour Harrigan” of the 7th Infantry Service Company as the man with his arms locked tightly around her. She is laughing in the photo, but the other women’s faces tell another story. Liz looks distinctly unhappy, while Fritzie, in trousers and an army jacket, seems to be sidestepping unwanted attention.

Dancing in the mud

Flo herself is captured dancing in the mud. On the back of the photo she wrote: “Markelsheim, Germany. Jitterbugging in the mud—March 1945. Note the big galoshes. Sad days.”

So she did learn to jitterbug after all. But the note carries a weight. There were plenty of reasons to feel sad—her fiancé, Gene, had been killed, and so many others were dying still. Yet she put on a brave face. Must smile.

A blurry picture of the town
Lt. Col Chris Chaney

Interestingly, on the same album page, Flo pasted a picture of her boyfriend, Lt. Col. Chris Chaney. Perhaps it was her way of making clear she wasn’t romantically tied to any of the men in those muddy, grinning snapshots.

Janet and the crew’s dog, TC. That’s Liz sitting on the Clubmobile’s hood.

The ARC crew’s adopted dog, TC, had been with them since they landed in France (TC is short for something, but I can’t remember what). They all doted on him, but from these pictures it appears he took to Janet more than the others. His presence offered moral and emotional support to both the women and soldiers.

The clubmobile crew: Flo, Janet, Liz, Fritzie

Ch. 60: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/10/05/the-evolution-of-ptsd/

Flo and Janet Shoot Guns

ARC Women the Only American Females to Shoot in WWII

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 54

The page from Flo’s album

American women were strictly forbidden from shooting guns during WWII or serving in any combat position. The WACs, the Women’s Army Corps, were disparaged because Americans thought they would be too close to war and women should be protected from war. The ARC women flew under the radar because they were referred to as volunteers (even though it was a paying job), and as “girls” and because they primarily worked as nurses. Their carefully crafted image was as noncombatant helpers of soldiers, humanitarian aid workers, not fighters.

the American Red Cross worked hard to establish these women as safe and non-threatening to the social norms of the time. In so doing, it allowed them to gain access to battle and combat to an extent no American women had before. 

The Allies and Germany had lost such extensive manpower during the First World War that women were allowed much more active military roles in the Second World War. Unlike American women, Soviet women were fighters on the front lines of the war.

“Janet and our jeep”

As it turned out, the ARC clubmobilers may have been the only American women in the war who actually shot guns. They were closer to the front lines of the war than any other women.

They also experienced many close escapes during their tour of duty with the Third Division.

Flo and her comrades got the chance to shoot in the freezing winter of 1944-45, during some of the hardest fighting of the war. In the Colmar Pocket outside of Neuf-Brisach they volunteered to go on patrol on the Rhine with an artillery and mortar FO (field operations) party. They also visited the mortar OP (observation post) and threw a smoke screen from the sand-bagged position.

Because the clubmobilers saw the soldiers and worked with them daily, the women were seen as part of the team. The men wanted to show them what it was like on the front line and the women wanted to be part of the action. Their comrades showed the women how to shoot.

Photos of her from that day show she was wearing the ARC regulation uniform—a skirt—while lying in a trench aiming a rifle.

“Ostheim, Alsace”

I don’t know whether Flo had ever shot a gun, but she was part of a hunting and fishing culture in the Northwest, so she may have. I have a picture of her posing with a deer carcass and holding a rifle taken after the war.

Flo was quoted in a newspaper article: “We all had a case of scratched knees, mud casts, and aching muscles after that.”

Still another time after they had sweated out the ride to the battalion CP (command post) the men refused to come out of their holes for donuts because of the heavy shelling.

It was during this trip while darting in and out of the smoke screen, that they went into a town that was ominously quiet. Recognizing the symptoms, they hastily left the place. That afternoon they found out the town had just fallen. It had been occupied by the Krauts during their visit.

When the Seventh Regiment was in Beblenheim, Alsace, the clubmobilers visited and fed a novel, so-called, “Doggie Rest Camp.” There two men at a time came in from their positions for a few minutes each to wash up, and put themselves in shape. 

“Colmar”

According to the newspaper report, “The quartet is not now up to combat strength as Miss “Fritzie” Haugland, Berkeley, Calif. is hospitalized, but her three running mates are doing a fine job…. They are just what their patch proclaims—part of the outfit.”

The letter from another admirer Flo pasted on this page

Letters from Third Division friends confirm that the clubmobilers’ exploits were dangerous and put them in the line of fire. 

On Jan 31, 1945, Lt. Col.Chaney wrote: Please don’t be as reckless as you have been, and stay out of range of shell fire.

Sincerely, Chaney

On March 5, 1945, Mel wrote: 

Yes, I can well imagine your time is not your own, particularly when the Div. is getting their well-earned respite from the 88’s. Your own “combat time” was hardly a surprise to me. To me, you were the type that would do such a thing, just for the hell of it! Stick to your donuts, honey, and let others do the OP shift—I’d hate to lose such a good letter writer so soon—believe me!

After the war Larry Lattimore wrote:

Oh yes, Agolsheim, did you know that was the second big attack in which I had acted in the capacity of C.O.? Golly! But after things finally quieted down, I enjoyed that little town. That was the first time we ever had any fun on the Rhine River. About that big white goose—we did cook it, we did eat it, and it was good! Do wish Col. Chaney had let you stay long enough to have some. Do you remember that little courtyard in front of my C.P.? About 15 minutes after you left, three 120 MM mortar shells landed in the center of that courtyard. Lucky no one was hurt but those shells sure shot hell out of our rations. I shudder to think what would have happened had those shells come in while you were still there. C’est la Guerre!

To return to Chapter 1: https://mollymartin.blog/2024/11/04/my-mother-and-audie-murphy/

Ch. 55: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/09/15/lt-david-waybur-honored/

FrontLine News Reaches the Front Lines

St. Dié-des-Vosges Captured

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 52

The only photo on this page, of the shelled St. Die, was presumably taken by Flo. There is also a copy of the Third Division FrontLine newspaper which tells the story of a soldier from Seattle who killed several Nazis in hand-to-hand combat. Probably Oscar Amundson was someone she knew from her home state of Washington.

Photo: Dogface Soldier Collection

The FrontLine newspaper was started in World War II. Published weekly, it is still the official periodical for the Third Infantry Division.

Ch. 53: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/09/07/bloody-battle-at-colmar-pocket/

Photos of a German Town, 1940

Their Provenance a Mystery

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 51

The page in Flo’s album

I assumed these landscape photos were pictures of the lovely French Alsace town of Sainte-Marie-Aux-Mines. That is until I turned them over and read, or tried to read, the captions. They describe Markkleeberg, a town in the Saxony region of Germany near Leipzig. It’s now described as a suburb of Leipzig.

According to AI, the captions on the back are in German, written in an old-fashioned cursive handwriting, and the captions read: “General view, War memorial, Old gatehouse, and Richter and Sons in Markkleeberg, December 1940”.

Professionally made photos with numbers in the right lower corner, they could be postcards. I can’t imagine who might have taken them, who wrote the captions, or why Flo put them on a page headlined Sainte-Marie-Aux-Mines. The Third Division had not yet crossed the Rhine into Germany, although Audie Murphy wrote that a number of Allied units had entered Germany by January, 1945.

The other three photos on this page are captioned Marie of Ville France; Lt. Reardon, me, Janet, Lt. Nelson. Fraize, France; and Sgt. Holbrook, St. Die France ad center.

Ch. 52: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/09/03/frontline-news-reaches-the-front-lines/

To return to Chapter 1: https://mollymartin.blog/2024/11/04/my-mother-and-audie-murphy/

Sainte-Marie-Aux-Mines

Flo and crew attend officers party at Division Headquarters

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 50

In January, 1945, the Third Division headquarters moved to the town of Sainte-Marie-Aux-Mines, known for its iron mines from the time of Roman occupation. This region of Alsace-Lorraine has been passed back and forth like a football between empires for centuries and is still characterized by a blend of German and French influences. After the 1870-71 Franco Prussian war, Alsace was annexed by Germany and became a part of the unified German Empire as a formal Reichsland, or imperial territory. After World War I the victorious Allies detached it from Germany and the province became part of the Third French Republic. Occupied and annexed by Germany during World War II, it was returned to France by the Allies at the end of the war.

I don’t see Flo in these pictures, so perhaps she was the photographer. She wrote that she was using a captured German camera so she may have had it at this point. There’s Liz sitting next to Gen. Iron Mike O’Daniel, who is also pictured dancing with two different women I don’t recognize. The other clubmobilers must have been there but their backs are turned to us. 

Ch. 51: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/08/28/photos-of-a-german-town-1940/

Strasbourg Xmas Party and Tea

Allies Celebrate Before Plunging Back into War

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 47

Strasbourg, France was liberated by the French 2nd Armored Division supported by the U.S. 7th Army on November 23, 1944, during the Alsace campaign, ending the city’s occupation by the Nazis. 

Flo devoted a page in her album to a party and a “tea for the French” in Strasbourg. There was a little time for celebrating before all had to return to the continuing war.

The page from Flo’s album

On the back of a rare picture of the whole clubmobile crew, Flo indentified the ARC clubmobilers and the generals on either side. I could see that she spelled Fritzie’s last name Haugland, so that is likely correct. In the picture are Fritzie, Janet, Liz and Flo with Gen. Schwartz, commander of the 10th French military district and acting commanding Gen. Robert Young.

Gen. Schwartz, Fritzie, Janet, Liz and Flo and Gen. Robert Young at a tea for the French

The ARC clubmobilers 1944 Xmas card, made by Liz, is pasted on this page. Cleverly folded, its message reads: We can’t do this (hand out Xmas stockings to boys in foxholes as bombs blast) nor this (offer permanent passes to the USA) but we do wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Janet – Fritzie – Flo – Liz ARC.

ARC Xmas card made by Liz

The envelope contains a hand-written thank you letter from Gen. Iron Mike O’Daniel.

There’s also a picture of what looks like a nice party with wine and canapes. Are those pointed hats on the table? This might be a New Years party. Flo captioned it Strasbourg Dec. ’44. Her date for this evening was Lt. Col. John Heintges, who was romancing her just then.

Flo partying with Lt. Col. Heintger. On the right is Major Wallace

Flo saved two letters from him, written in December 1944, that show he definitely had a thing for her. And it seems like the thing was mutual, at least for a while, as she was writing to him too. 

He wrote: “Anyone who writes as beautiful, sentimental and sensible as you is truly a lovely person. I enjoyed your little card very much and I must admit Flossie that more than once since I last saw you have I thought of you.”

In the next letter he addressed a bit of rivalry.

“Hello Flossie! I understand you did me dirt n’est ce-pas? I thought we were going to Paris together. I guess why not after the rough treatment I imposed on you.” 

I can’t imagine what this means but it might be the reason Flo decided to move on. 

He continued, “The fact that Chris Chaney went at the same time sort of makes me a little envious but then he’s not your type anyway—or am I wrong. No Flo I am not really jealous because in the first place I have no right to be and in the second I know where your duty lies.…. I guess I am not the number one man I thought I was.

His first letter is signed, “Sincerely, John”. The second ends with “Be good my little angel”.

The officers were fighting over her and that must have felt good. He is right that she chose Chris Chaney, although Chaney wasn’t able to get leave to join Flo in Paris. It seems like Flo went to Paris as often as she could.

By April, Lt. Col. Chaney was addressing Flo as darling:

1 April 45

Hello, Flo, darling,

I am sitting here peacefully in a beautiful CP drinking some captured German cognac, and thinking how nice it would be if you were to walk in, to serve donuts, of course. Oh well, can’t have everything I guess.

Really enjoyed your letter from Paris and wherever you were when you finished it. Wish I could have been there with you, and we really would have seen the town. I think your idea of seeing England is swell, together I mean.

I saw my close friend, Col. Heintgas, the other day, after I had taken one of his towns for him for which he thanked me, anyway, and asked him if he was getting any letters from my girl, and he said “Yes, lots,” So he gave me a drink of good whiskey!

Lots of love, CW Chaney

Tucked in the back of Flo’s album along with a lot of post-war ephemera was a newspaper clipping from 1965—a picture of Heintger, now a general, welcoming troops arriving at Pleiku, South Vietnam.

There’s no way to know why she broke up with Heintges (I found different spellings of his name, but this is from his Wikipedia page. Chaney mocked him with the spelling Heintgas), but perhaps the life of an army wife just didn’t appeal to Flo.

Ch. 48: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/08/20/murphy-back-in-the-lines/

Flo, Janet Jump from Exploding Jeep

1500 Donuts Burn, but Clubmobilers Not Hurt

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 46

Newspaper clipping posted in Flo’s album

WITH THE 7TH ARMY, FRANCE—

“Total damage: one volkswagon and 1500 donuts,” so read unit B’s report of accident. Back of the simple statement, however, was more than meets the eye.

Sent to serve an artillery unit of the infantry division to which they are attached, Florence Wick and Janet Potts took off for the assignment in their captured German jeep or volkswagon.

Liz and Flo with the captured VW jeep. Later it became The Thing

Down the road they went, bounding happily along in the mud. The car ran smoothly while the girls served their coffee and then things began to happen.

“After covering part of the battalion,” Miss Wick reports, “our car caught on fire from a short in the wiring system, and a few minutes after we had gone out the only door in front that worked, the gas tank exploded and threw gasoline across the highway and held up traffic for several minutes.”

Nothing daunted, the girls thumbed a ride back to their donut shop, a little shaky, then started out again with more donuts and covered the balance of their day’s assignment.

After the war, Flo still drove Volkswagens

Flo developed a hatred for Germans; they killed her fiancé and many of her friends. But she wasn’t one of those war survivors who refused to drive German-made cars after the war. She hated krauts, but she loved their cars.

At the start of their service the clubmobilers were told they would be issued a 2 ½ ton truck retrofitted with a kitchen and equipment for making coffee and donuts. But they travelled through Italy and France before they finally got their truck in Germany. Until then the women had to scrounge vehicles in which to carry their donuts to the troops. They used any vehicle they could get their hands on; for a while it was a recommissioned ambulance. Later they used a captured German Volkswagen. It seems this was not the vehicle that blew up. Flo notes that they left the Volks behind when they crossed the Rhine into Germany.

Flo sent the photo to Wagen Wheels, the Volkswagen magazine, in 1973. She wrote to them:

“Leaning on their ‘donut delivery wagon’ are Liz Elliott of Manhattan, New York, and Flo Wick of Yakima, Washington, donut gals with the American Red Cross in World War II. They were attached to the famed Third Infantry Division which left from home base at Fort Lewis, Washington in 1942 for North Africa, thence to Sicily, Anzio, Rome, France and Germany, ending the war in Salzburg, Austria in 1945 and with more Congressional Medals of Honor than any other unit in World War II (a majority posthumous). Most famous Congressional Medal holder, Audie Murphy, later made his movie, “To Hell and Back” in the Yakima area.

“Their vehicle is an original People’s car (Volkswagen) which the German people bought, contributed to the Fatherland for the war with the promise that after the war (and victory, of course), their car would be returned to them.

“Fortunately, the American and British armies were able to spoil their plans and when this particular VW “German jeep” was captured in France in 1944 it was presented to the 3rd Division’s four Red Cross girls who converted it into a donut wagon in which they delivered Red Cross donuts to units of the combat division in all the best mountains and fields of France. Later, after crossing the Rhine into Germany and leaving the Volks behind, they had a more military vehicle in which to deliver donuts—a 2 ½ ton clubmobile truck.

“Flo Wick, Red Cross Clubmobile Captain, from Yakima, Washington is now Mrs. Carroll Martin of that city—mother of a daughter and three sons—daughter and eldest son college students. She is the happy owner of a VW Squareback in which she commutes from her home in Yakima’s West Valley to her office in Selah, some 15 miles, every day. There are two other VWs in the Martin family—one, another Squareback, used by the 19-year-old son, and the other, a red Beetle, operated by the youngest son, a junior in high school. None of these, however, can match the ugly little original for stamina and glamor. After all, not many VWs have “fought” on both sides of World War II!”

In 1944, while in France, the Third Division “liberated” one of the Wermacht’s famous Kubelwagens. A second incarnation was called The Thing.

Flo’s story was published in the 1973 Wagen Wheels magazine.

Ch 47: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/08/24/sainte-marie-aux-mines/

A Cold Rainy November

Third Infantry Division in the Vosges Mountains

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 45

Beachhead News November 11, 1944

Flo had written her mother after Gene’s death that she planned to go to Paris to visit her sister Eve who worked as an Army nurse in a hospital there. She may have done so but there is no record of it in her diary or album. Her final three diary entries note that she attended a dance in Epinal on Nov. 1. Then she visited with boys from Gene’s company Nov. 11 and 12. If she traveled to Paris in the meantime, it can’t have been a happy trip, but she would have been glad for comfort from Eve and her ARC friend Janet Tyson, who traveled with her.

The last three entries in Flo’s diary

November 1944 in the Vosges mountains was cold and rainy, presaging a bad winter. In a letter to her mother published in her hometown paper, Flo celebrated the dogface soldiers and chastised Americans and the media in the States for thinking the war was near its end.

Florence Wick Writes

Miss Florence Wick, who is with the American Red Cross in France, writes to her mother:

“Things have slowed down considerably now though, and the boys are having a tough fight. The weather is cold here, and winter looks discouraging in that respect. It rains a lot, which makes it miserable, but we get used to it, and to wading in mud. Every once in a while the sun will come out, and that’s wonderful. 

We are up quite far and are serving doughnuts every day, and keeping very busy. It is hard to see these boys come out of the lines dirty, cold, tired and old, but we do have a chance to spread a little cheer before they have to go back again. God bless the ‘dog faces’. They are winning this war mile by mile, and dying too. There is none like them. They are so sick of it all, but they are good soldiers, and everyone at home should appreciate what they are doing and pray for them all daily. They have a very hard fight ahead of them, and in winter, that’s tough. 

People at home shouldn’t take the papers too literally–the war is definitely not over yet, and they had better carry on as they have been doing and not relax any effort. I wish they could see their own boys for just one day during combat, or eat the C ration these kids eat, and they wouldn’t talk of an early end to the war.”

Liz Elliott’s drawing illustrates a typical challenge for the clubmobile workers

Ch. 46: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/08/12/flo-janet-jump-from-exploding-jeep/

Born in Oregon, Buried in France

Remembering Eugene Gustafson

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 44

To return to the start of this series, My Mother and Audie Murphy: https://mollymartin.blog/2024/11/04/my-mother-and-audie-murphy/

Even as soldiers were dying all around them, the death of Flo’s fiancé, Gene, on October 28, 1944, came as a horrific shock. In a letter to her mother, Flo wished she could just go home. But she wasn’t a quitter, and she even stayed in Europe through the post-war occupation, returning to the U.S. in March, 1946, nearly a year after the war’s end.

Back home, making her album, she devoted a page to Gene with the obituary from his hometown newspaper, and the poem by Archibald MacLeish, The Young Dead Soldiers. He was buried in a military cemetery in Epinal, France.

A page in Flo’s album

Reading Gene’s obituary gave me a fuller picture of the man. I learned some things:

He was born in a “camp” in Oregon in 1920—probably a lumber camp. 

He had one brother serving in the Navy and four sisters back home. He was a jock, sure—but also the editor of his high school newspaper in Clatskanie, Oregon. 

Before the Army, Gene had been a union electrician with the Bonneville Power Administration–a working class guy. 

His military training was intense—taking him from Washington to Virginia, then on to Massachusetts, North Carolina, and back to Virginia again. He enlisted in October 1941 and was sent overseas in November 1942. A year of preparation for a war he would not return from.

I learned he was wounded during the Sicilian invasion and awarded a Purple Heart, and that official news of his death didn’t reach his family until two weeks later. 

Learning these things made Gene feel more real to me—not just as a name in someone else’s story, or a loss recorded in a diary, but as a whole person with a life that mattered. I wish I could’ve met him. In some small way, reading his obituary felt like I did.

Gene’s obituary published in his hometown paper

Local Captain Killed in Action

Eugene Gustafson Killed in France October 28, Says Telegram

“Eugene Gustafson killed in action in France 28 October 1944,” was the contents of a telegram received on November 13th by Mr. and Mrs. Broer Gustafson, concerning their eldest son, who was a captain in the United States army.

Sympathy was extended to the bereaved family over their loss and the toll of the war again strikes in this locality.

Eugene Royal Gustafson was born on March 15, 1920 at Benson Camp located at Firwood. He attended the local schools and graduated from Clatskanie high school with the class of 1938. He took an active part in the activities of the school, playing on the football, basketball and baseball teams of the school. He served on the student council and was editor of the Clatskanie Hi-Lites during his junior year and editor of the annual when a senior.

Entered service in October ‘41

Eugene went into the service on October 7th, 1941 when he reported at Fort Lewis (WA). After three weeks there he went to Fort Belvoir VA. He became a corporal in December and went to cadet school where he was commissioned as 2ndlieutenant on June 24th 1942. He was with the 36th Engineers. After short stays in camp Edwards MA, Fort Bragg NC and Camp Bradford, he was sent to Camp Pickett VA where he was for a few weeks and where he became 1st lieutenant a short while before going overseas in early November 1942. He had been over for two years….

Captain Gustafson received that commission in August at the time of the southern France invasion. He had been commanding officer of his company for 11 months in combat. He took part in the invasion of Casablanca, all the African campaign and was awarded the Purple Heart about one year ago when he was wounded in the Sicilian invasion. He was sent back to Africa and later went to southern France on D-Day in that area. He had been in combat constantly since landing in France, his letter stated.

A letter received from a Red Cross worker that followed his outfit told his parents how well liked Eugene was as commander of his company.

Much could be told of his activities at the war front from his letters and clippings sent home.

He joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Italy. He was a member of the electrical union which he joined while working for Bonneville before going into the service.

Among the relatives and a host of friends who grieve at the passing of his promising young man are his parents, four sisters, and one brother, Russell with the Navy at Pearl Harbor. His grandmother, Mrs. Selma Zimmerdahl also lives in Clatskanie.

Of course the “Red Cross worker that followed his outfit” referenced in the obit must have been Flo. I wonder how she felt about being described that way.

Gene’s regimental patch. The seahorse is a nod to their training in amphibious assault and support operations. The red and white colors of the shield represent the Corps of Engineer regimental colors. 


Ch. 45: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/08/06/a-cold-rainy-november/