Tag: Clubmobile

ARC in the French Mountains

In a Letter Home Flo tells of Clubmobilers’ Life

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 56

Page from Flo’s album

Searching through archives kept by my cousin Gail (our mothers were sisters), I was delighted to find two letters written by my mother, Flo, to her mother, Ruth–one in August, 1944 and the other dated February 1, 1945. These have helped to give a more personal perspective to the ARC women’s lives. Here Flo muses about death and war while describing everyday life of the clubmobilers in the French mountains. She reveals that the wedding rings her fiance Gene had ordered from home had arrived the day after he died.  

February 1, 1945

Dearest Ruth:

“Your letter of December 4 just reached me a few days ago – mail has had no priority and many of my Christmas greetings and cards arrived just now. However, packages came through well and I had all of yours from home in time. Thanks for the grand gifts, Ruthie – they were so appreciated. The sweatshirt was the envy of everyone (we wear them with our clubmobile uniforms) and I love the slip and underwear. Was down to “Rock bottom.” Your cake was eaten so quickly, all I can remember was that it was very good. 

(Flo admires pictures of Ruth’s three girls)

“Thanks for the sympathy and your philosophical comments. I’ve “recovered” if you can call it that, but it was a cruel shock, and I wouldn’t want to go through it again. We see friends “go” so often these days that death is close always, though it never ceases to be tragic and futile. Gene’s first sergeant, a fine, handsome boy, who has a lovely wife and darling three-year-old daughter, and who was always so good to me, has been killed in the last few days. That’s the way it goes – they leave one by one, particularly in a combat outfit like theirs and my division. The few who have survived almost 3 years of constant fighting, are very tired and should go home, but probably won’t until the war is over.

“Gene’s family write to me often and find it hard to believe he is gone. They are sending me the rings he bought and which arrived over here the day after he was killed and were returned to them. Somehow, I don’t want them, but they think I should have them.

“We are in the mountains and have had a lot of snow the last month but a very welcome chinook wind has melted much of it, which makes driving on these roads less hazardous. Evidently the French ski a great deal around here and there are some attractive ski places, as well as good slopes. I never seem to have time to try them out, but some of the boys did and had a fun time. 

Drawing by Liz Elliott needs no explanation

“Our infantry is “busy” as usual, and we are waiting to see them and feed them donuts again. It is always hard, after a session in the lines, to see them again and find friends are missing.

“After a brief session of gaiety in Strasbourg our social life has been reduced to practically nil. Contrary to many ideas, we do not indulge in much social activity; the men are pretty well occupied, you know, and it is only when they have a brief rest that we have a dance or two. 

“We continue moving frequently and just made another one today. Lately we have been living in French homes and are coming to know the natives quite well. I can’t speak much French, but can understand it quite well when they slow down to 50 mph instead of 90.

“Right now we have rather cramped quarters in a home which is filled with refugees who were burned out of their homes when the Germans left. Many of these people have lost everything and many, of course, being Alsatian, are torn between being Frenchmen or Germans.

“We’ve been “up front” a few times – within a few hundred yards and within firing range, but it looks no different from any other place, unless the towns have been shelled (and most of them have). There are no trenches, like the last war, And much of the time, it moves so fast, there are no foxholes either, though they “dig in” if they are holding a line. We were shelled in one of the villages the other day, though it happened so quickly, we didn’t have time or sense enough to be frightened. It isn’t fun, even if it seemed funny afterwards.

“There have been setbacks for the Americans in France, but we are happier about the situation now and the Russian drive is encouraging too. I doubt if I will be home for some time yet, but then, I certainly won’t be among the first to leave.

“My package – sent to Mom – with gifts for you all should have reached you by now. I hope they serve the purpose; it is difficult to find anything worthwhile here – their stores and supplies have been hard-hit.

“I like to hear about your kids and other news of the people at home. Betty doesn’t write very often, but mom is wonderfully faithful and takes care of me over here almost as well as she did at home.

“If there are any of my clothes – hats, shoes etc. that you can wear and want to, help yourself, because they will be out of style when I get home and I’d like to have you get some use out of them. Just go down and see what you can use. 

You had to be a mechanic too. Drawing by Liz

“Very seldom see a movie (last one was “A guy named Joe” which I saw with Gene and which he didn’t like; he was killed a few days later and the show haunted me).* They have very few good ones and very few period. Read seldom, too, and even more seldom hear a radio, so you see my mode of living and entertainment has changed considerably.” 

*(This was a popular war movie starring Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne and Van Johnson about an American pilot who is killed when his plane goes down after bombing a German aircraft carrier. Then he is sent by “the general” back to earth to train a pilot in the South Pacific war. At the end he’s still dead. The Irene Dunne character gets to fly planes too. The screenwriters were Dalton Trumbo and Frederick Hazlitt Brennan.)

“We have the fellows at the 2.M. (not sure what this means) in quite a bit, toot around the country in our jeep whenever we can and manage to never be bored, which keeps us happy, I suspect. 

“I like the work and love the boys. Life gets very simple and fundamental, if you can understand that, and we share many of the same experiences, which makes everyone a friend. 

“Eve was fine but busy, and Paris is the same lovely lovely city, though they have food shortages, little fuel and all that. It didn’t seem too unusual to see Notre Dame Cathedral on Christmas morning, but in years to come it will be quite a recollection. Eve and Janet were very good to me and it was like home to see them. Janet’s husband was wounded tho not seriously and she was quite upset. I hope to go back in the spring– It would be even nicer there then in the lovely parks.

“Maybe my own luck will change one of these days; at least I can share sorrow and sincerely sympathize with others who are hit by the tragedy of war. It makes me even a worse “softie,” but there are many to share it with.“

Ch. 57: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/09/23/black-and-japanese-soldiers-in-wwii/

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/

Two New Women Join the Clubmobile Crew: Janet Potts and Fritzie Hoglund

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 40

October, 1944. The four-woman crew gets to work, Flo sees Gene before his company goes in the lines, clubmobilers get up near the front lines and they move to a new camp.

Flo’s diary (pinch out to read)

A note here about the challenge of research: In 1973, a fire at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) destroyed 16-18 million official military personnel files. Among them were the archived records of the Clubmobile program, making modern-day research into these women’s service difficult.

From Flo’s album

One helpful resource is The Clubmobile—The ARC in the Storm: A Personal History of and by the Clubmobilers in the European Theater of War During WWII, compiled by Marjorie Lee Morgan. The book includes interviews, diary entries, and photographs. But it focuses solely on the European Theater and omits those who served in the North African and Italian Theaters—even though many of those women, like my mother, also served in France, Germany, and Austria. And these women were the first to enter France and Europe. The book even includes a list of clubmobilers, but no names from the North African/Italian Theater appear, except Forence Wick on the inactive list.

With help from my brother Don, I was able to find some information on Janet Potts and even contacted her daughter. But so far, we’ve found nothing definitive about Fritzie Hoglund (or possibly Hoagland). A newspaper clipping pasted into Flo’s album says Fritzie was from Berkeley, California.

Janet Jenson (née Potts)


Born in New Rochelle, New York, Janet graduated from the Brearley School, attended Barnard and Columbia, and joined the Red Cross in 1944. An accomplished equestrian, she rode in a Third Division “rodeo” at the end of the war.

Janet was one of eight sisters—three of whom served in the Red Cross during the war. Janet was the only one who went to Europe, while the two others served in the South Pacific.

She married Lloyd Jenson in 1946 and had two daughters. Her daughter Susan Jenson told me that Janet often spoke of Flo and that her mother also made a wartime album, which she plans to go through. 

Janet’s daughter wrote, “I personally think there’s far too much focus on donuts in the way the clubmobilers’ work is remembered. These women were brave and generous souls who took on a difficult and emotionally demanding role, offering comfort to exhausted and traumatized troops. As my mother often said, the French sometimes mistook them for camp followers—a euphemism for prostitutes. They had no idea what these women were really doing. But for many soldiers, these were the last warm smiles they ever saw.

“Janet always had kind things to say about Flo. I can imagine the two of them together in a jeep, laughing. It was an adventure—but also full of heartbreak.”

Janet died in 2011, in Denver at age 96.

Liz, Flo, Fritzie and Janet (in clubmobile)

The new four-woman crew slept in the clubmobile. Flo wrote in her diary, “It was fun, but very crowded.” Later, they were issued a tent and new cots.

At one point, Flo’s fiance Gene came down from Docelles and surprised her. “Went out to a movie with him,” she wrote. She saw him again on October 19. Then on October 20: “Last night with Gene—co. going in lines. Sat in front of fireplace at Docelles.” The next day in a free afternoon, she drove back to Docelles maybe with the hope of seeing him one last time. She wrote: “Gene gone. Spent night at ‘home.’”

The following morning, Flo and the crew spent hours loading and moving supplies—the clubmobile was relocating to an area near Épinal.

Ch. 41: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/07/20/the-clubmobile-crew-goes-to-paris/