(energetic music) - Hello, and welcome to The Bookmark.

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today, my guest is Phillip Smith, editor of "Mother of the Company", Sergeant Percy M Smith's World War II Reflections.

Phillip, thank you so much for being here today.

- Thanks for having me, appreciate it.

- I'm really excited to talk about this book as, hopefully, people can tell from the title and your name, this is a kind of collection of letters and reminisces from your father and his time in the War.

But I wanna start with that title because "Mother of the Company" is kind of an interesting and evocative phrase.

Can you tell us where that comes from?

- Why, sure, the title evolved, at first, we didn't have a title and someone who had read preliminary copies of this said that they'd noticed a lot of comforting going on among the men, and especially from my dad's role.

He was a first sergeant of a company, which meant he had particularly administrative roles and knew the men better than probably anyone else in a company which is about 200 men.

And at one point, a German soldier of the same rank had been captured, and the German soldier looked through the interpreter, said to my father, "I do the same thing as you do.

And in the German army, we're called (speaking in foreign language) company."

Our "Mother of the Company" it's a longer other title but that's what he said.

And my wife and I saw that and said, "You know, I think that's what's going on a lot here," and in fact, literally in the story, there is one account of a dying soldier who, in his illusions, thought my father was his mother and was speaking to him in those terms, and we just see that in a lot of the way he treated the men, how he recommended helper, encouragement, punishment.

He was playing that role a lot.

And just frankly too, knowing my Dad later, he was, I had a mom and dad, but Dad was probably the better mothering of the two if you know how that can be in a family.

- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, so as we've said, these books come out of your father's letters and later his recorded memories.

How did it get turned into a book, what was that process, that journey?

- Well, thanks for asking.

We'd had these letters in the family for a long time.

My mother saved Dad's letters home from the War.

Her letters to him didn't get saved.

Then decades after the War, my dad sat down and wrote some stories reflecting on his time.

And I found these about, oh, gosh, not long before he died, but it's been 30-some-odd years ago now.

Dad had never promoted them, never shared them.

Just a little bit with family.

So, I'd known these were around and I always thought these were very interesting accounts, insights into the actions.

The activities of soldiers who didn't have a big view of the war, from not quite the beginning of the invasion in Europe after that, onto the end, and then through a period of occupation.

And his letters were shorter during the action to my mother.

And then, when he had time later in rest ops and after the War, he would write and share more.

The stories that he wrote, some of them a little longer, looked back on that, remembered names, remembered events, and when I first read them, I thought, "Well, maybe he's making up some of this."

No, I verified everything, the names everybody, everything, and verified it with some of his veterans too.

So, those always intrigued me, but I never, as a family member, I always thought they're valuable to me and my family, but there's a lot of these things out there.

- Sure.

- And I've read some soldiers' accounts, memoirs, letters, and they're of real marginal value to me because they get pretty personal.

These have some, I think other angles to them, some broader picture, and Dad, for a high school graduate was a good writer, I think.

(chuckles) Anyway, at the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, National Public Radio was going to do some sort of feature for the War, and I sent samples of them to NPR in Washington.

And I didn't know who to, I just sent them in an envelope labeled "Bright Ideas Department, National Public Radio", and I got a call back in a month or so from Bob Molaskey who was the producer of the weekend shows, "We Saw and We Said".

And over a period of months, we developed a feature that was broadcast on the 50th anniversary of 1995.

And it was about 20 minutes, and they hired an actor to do the voice of Dad, and so.

And I thought, "Well, maybe, gosh, something's going on here," and I set 'em aside again, and, but here we are, and so, TAMU Press did have it peer reviewed and we moved to the book, so that's how it came to be.

And that NPR piece is still available online.

Just Google Sergeant Smith Letters, NPR.

And there you'll get it.

- I wanna highlight, I mean, you mentioned your dad's writing style, and I do wanna highlight because there is something about the way he writes that for someone who's not a professional writer, clearly, this is just maybe a natural aptitude he has because in his letters, first of all, he's noticing things and writing back to your mother about things that maybe not every young-man soldier would, you know, he's noticing the culture.

He's commenting on the layout of farms and what the work the women are doing when he's on leave in France.

He's mentioning the shoes people are wearing.

I mean, he, I think that does make it stand out a little bit is the details that he recorded in the moment.

And then, of course, his reflections later are also very strong.

- That's a good point.

That did stand out to me as well, and he would, in these letters that were just written to his wife, would never have thought that you, I, or anyone would ever read them.

They're very interesting, flowery comments.

There was one toward when he was in the occupation time.

And, oh, and by the way, in the book, many of the letters, and there were 213 letters, we had to edit them down for this.

But he would include a lot of affectionate comments.

And I thought, "We need to take those out because the public will get tired of that."

But in almost every case, he would make a little twist, a little turn to add something that was a little more sincere or specific.

In one of them, he said, toward the end, he said, "I think love must be like a web of spider weaves that crosses the ocean and connects us together."

And at the end, he said, "I hope it never breaks."

And I thought, "you know, just writing them to my mother."

So, things like that, he did have a twist.

- Oh, I'm glad you didn't edit that too much because I love, I did love that aspect.

I mean, there, it's not very often I get to read things for this show that have a romantic angle to them.

- Well, there's warfare things, there are action things.

But I think the other elements kind of overwhelm that in terms of just this person's perspective.

- Mm-hmm.

- Yeah, that's true.

So, it's an interesting mix.

- It adds a, you know, it adds a human, and it makes it easy for me to connect to them and to understand them.

- I'm glad to hear, because, again, World War II things, many people will say, "Well, for people who like that stuff," but I think it's could have a broader leadership.

- No, I think it does too.

I think this may be a good like gateway if you're not sure if you wanna read Military history, because it's written from every man's point of view, and it's approachable, it's storytelling.

It's not, then the battle moved here on this date and we did these things on this date, it's more personal.

More personable.

- Yeah, and lucky for me, his veterans association of the division that he served in, they met regularly, now, they're all gone now.

But someone there got a hold of the records, the Morning Reports and so forth, the behind-the-scenes documents that had originally been destroyed in a fire in the St. Louis Records Center for the Army.

But there were backup copies at the Army War College, and those were obtained, microfilmed, and now they're online, and so, I could have his... Every day, I could see the morning Report for where they were, map coordinates, movements of soldiers coming and going, replacements, wounded, KIA, and so forth.

A little summary of what they did, and the weather.

(chuckles) - Mm.

(chuckles) - And so, I could plot all that.

And we concluded a list at the back- - Yes.

- For someone who wants to get that kind of wanted but- - (chuckles) I was gonna ask too because you do have an extensive number of notes and footnotes in here to add those in information, add some context, add some extra history, what kind of research did you have to do?

- Well, the notes are important, right, it's not...

I'm a historian, and for me, footnotes would be a lot more than this but I found, I think, instances where it was important to add information.

And if you do read it, I think the notes will help.

- A few are just kind of location, but others are more expansive.

So, yes, the research process, well, it was lengthy.

I was just plotting through and verifying things, verifying what happened, where, who, what.

My mother and father were both gone, so I... My father died in 1985, so long gone.

And when I asked Mother once, even like, "Do you remember when Dad came home?

What was it like where were, how did, what did you wear?"

"I can't remember," she couldn't so.

(Christine chuckles) Dad could remember.

- Mm.

- He had that anyway, right.

So, the process of writing it was a little tricky because we had all these letters and then we had all these stories, and we decided with help of TAMU Editors to interleave the stories along with the timeline of the action, so there'll be letters, letters, letters, a story written later looking back, then letters, letters, and it goes back and forth like that.

So, the structure is, I don't know if it was a confusing to- - No, I thought it was actually how, I mean, I'm a sucker for an epistolary story, so I was hooked from the go.

- Yeah, yeah.

- But if you're not though, and especially as you mentioned, it's his letters at first are a little brief because he can't reveal me all the information about where he is or what he's doing.

So, it adds a lot of needed context and more background to what's going on.

- Yeah, that's interesting to just point I think that I had something I hadn't thought of.

The letters get better as you go on.

In the beginning, he's probably not knowing what to say except, "Here I am, I'm okay."

At one point though, he mentions in, as he's in the transit across the Ocean, then gets to England and France, he's doing some preparation, I think, on a firing range.

And it just occurs to him, he just says, "I can't believe this is happening to me."

And I thought, "Well, yeah, and that's what everybody probably thought here just pulled," because he was a average kind of guy.

Nothing particularly distinctive about him.

He served as an enlisted man the whole time, and he, (chuckles) he was small of stature.

He became First Sergeant because in training camp, he could type.

He was one of the few, and the job of the first, of their First Sergeant is really to keep the records and make the Commanding Officer look good.

So, he could help keep the records and get inspections going and that's how he became that.

So, but he's apparently, did the tough part just fine, Right, so.

(Christine chuckles) - Did your father tell you any of these stories while he was still alive?

- No.

- This was all, you learned this all from his writing.

- Correct, he never talked about the War as, and I've learned from those of you who know these things, usually, people who are actually in action say little.

They're still reflective and maybe was processing.

No.

I knew he was in the War.

We had a cedar chest with a few memento things and I would wear his little cap when I was a boy, things like that.

But, no, I only learned about it when he wrote and then later, he said to me once, "Phil, I've written a story and I thought maybe you, what do you think of this?"

And it was the one on that one date, January 21st, 1945, which is a long story about a day.

And I was overwhelmed.

- That must have been a very, as you say, this is the common thing.

A lot of veterans don't or can't speak about it, but it is interesting, I was looking at the dates that his later reflections were coming, and it's, it has to be many, many years later.

It's 20, 30, sometimes 40 years later, until they're ready to... And I think you mentioned in the preface that some of that writing might have just been therapy for him to get it out, to work it out, even if it had never been shared, it was important for him to talk about it, at least, for himself.

- Correct, I think that's true.

And I don't think he wrote anything with an idea that anyone would see it.

Maybe it was just going in a box.

He did, after the War, I do reveal, and there's a few here, the Saturday Evening Post asked veterans if they would send in articles, and he sent little one-page things in 1947, about a dozen to us, and they were all rejected.

(both chuckles) So, we've included a few of them in here.

- Mm-hmm.

- Right.

- Well, and maybe he needed that time, although I think they were all worthy of publishing but I imagine the post was getting a lot of that.

(chuckles) - That, and he would also say, "There were millions of GIs."

Everybody did the same thing or felt or, so whatever happened to him was not unusual.

But that's part of the beauty of the book here, because he gives you the details of these things that so many men saw that you, I don't, I... Another person, a friend who read it, said, "Never read anything like it."

He'd read World War II history, but nothing that gave that kind of fine-grain detail and unusual notices of, like you said, these odd things he would notice.

- Mm-hmm, it really, I mean, and you get the sense of this is a, and I, and a lot of soldiers have this experience.

They come from a small, maybe localized area in the US, and then they're plucked in down into villages in Germany and France and Luxembourg, and places they... And then the Swiss Alps, I mean places they maybe never even dreamed of.

And he's recording what it's like to see those things and experience those things, and I think he never really seen snow before, and then he certainly saw a lot of it.

- Right.

And he would say in the letters several times to my mother, "This is so pretty, beautiful here."

And then, the Austrian Alps will have to come here after the war.

They never did, he never, never returned.

And they never went to Europe, right, so.

- Well, I'm sorry to hear that because he say...

He certainly did say it was beautiful.

- Well, the Veterans Association for the Company of this division, and many others from both theaters of War, often organized trips for the elderly veterans, you know, in their older years, and they, many did go back to visit the places and cemeteries, and so.

And there are organizations in Luxembourg, for instance, that would foster those trips and help the veterans find their old locations.

And they knew a lot too but Dad never joined.

He just never did part with it.

Never with the Veterans Association.

He didn't really go to their meetings either.

- Wow.

- It was.

But they're boom, there's this book.

- (laughs) Sure, sure.

- And now the one, the children of those who know who were mentioned in here are really touched to have the book.

- We, unfortunately, we cannot get into his full story and journey through the War but can you briefly just touch on where he was and some of the things he did overseas.

He was drafted in 1943 from Jacksonville, Florida, his hometown, sent to Camp Shelby, Mississippi to train with another division, The 69th; was there for over a year, and then he was taken out as a replacement, as many men were, and sent in 1944 to Europe to be placed in an active division on the front lines.

And he was assigned to this 80th division, which was part of the Third Army in early October.

They were in France getting close to the German border, still meeting a lot of resistance.

In fact, he was replacing the first sergeant who had been lost, as well as many of the men in the company.

So, they reorganized, and then they moved slowly in farther into the German areas when the Battle of the Bulge came.

And then, they were detained for, it was about a month to get that done in, mostly in Luxembourg.

And then, it was a pretty rapid movement across the Rhine, across Germany, almost to the Czech Fort Frontier.

Then, they went South, chasing what they thought was a residue of Nazi leaders who were going to try to create a redoubt in the Alps, in the Southern Alps.

They chased, chased, chased, and they just found prisoners and they didn't find any major resistance.

And he was in Austria when the War ended, and then was assigned to stay his division as occupation troops in Southern Germany, gosh, for another six months, at which time, they had a visit from the Great General Patton who was their commanding officer.

And Dad had met him twice in the War.

Once, you might remember earlier when the Jeep came out, announced his story, we'll save for readers.

- (chuckles) Yes, I was gonna allude to that though.

There are some run-ins with Patton.

- Yeah, but then, yes, that one Dad did get close to him to snap a photo, which is in here.

It's a one-of-a-kind picture.

Dad was about five feet from him at a formal activity.

And the General, when he heard the snap of the lens, he looked at the camera and looked at Dad up and down.

But Dad said in his letter to my mother, "I used to think he was old, but he is not old, but he has a nice fat ass, and it was all I could do to keep from kicking it as he by."

(Christine chuckles) Dad, and I think many of the men under Patton were upset that they thought they'd been pushed too hard, lost too many men, took too many risks and, but, and were in danger more than they needed to be.

But Dad also said he thought maybe that was the only way to really do it.

But it's a nice insight, (chuckles) especially, for aggies who tend to enjoy that "Patton Theme" that the band plays all the time.

That there is a soldier in his command who had that thought.

- Well, yeah, and he does have some dissenting, he voices his concerns or his disdain for how the Congress is handling the War.

I mean, and that's real, you know, with your boots on the ground like that, you're gonna have a different opinion than people far removed.

- Right, a common thing, and also you get the feeling of the ebb and flow for soldiers in a frontline situation.

They're in places of peril and then they can withdraw, and they have maybe a week of rest and regaining their strength and numbers, and then they move ahead again and back and forth.

Of course, the other side on the German, they had no such luxuries.

They were under constant pressure.

So, you do get a sense of the rhythm of how the thing went.

But he did say he had, I think, in the eight months he was on the front, or nine months, two baths.

- Mm-hmm.

- So, it was rough living.

- The realities of war are apparent, yes.

And he also seemed to have, he didn't necessarily liberate a concentration camp, but he came upon some people.

- They were at the outskirts of Buchenwald when they were near Weimar.

And Dad said that the Commanding Officer asked him and some others to go take a jeep and go up the road and see where these people in striped pajamas are coming from, obviously, they are...

So, they must have seen stragglers because Buchenwald had been a self-liberated camp.

The German soldier guards fled when the Americans came.

So, on April 12th it was a kind of an open situation, but Dad only went up to the gates.

And that's actually where Anne Frank had been only a month or two before, then she died in transit after.

So, yeah, they had that glance too.

- Mm-hmm.

- And as I read, when I, now I'll tell you say too about writing this and the research.

Another important thing, and I wish readers could get this, the handwriting, reading my father's handwriting on the actual letters and the paper that he had at the time, I still have all these.

As I was transcribing them, was breathtaking because I felt I was there.

It was really like time travel.

- Mm-hmm.

- And any historian will tell you when you have the real documents and the sources like that, it'll take you back and you see nuances in the words.

You could think about the words he chose, maybe he's scratched out something.

That doesn't show in print and that's, it's...

This is the dollar version, so.

- (chuckles) I also imagine you can see maybe cramped handwriting or if he's stressed in writing quickly, I mean that, the variations and handwriting you're probably very familiar with as he's writing.

- He had a pretty good hand though, I thought.

And the different papers he had right on captured things, this and that and the other, yeah.

- And there are a couple reproduced in here so we can get a sense of it.

- Little bit.

- But, of course, it's not the complete- - Oh, and some of the, one reason the earlier letters are shorter sometimes too, is the soldiers often used a V-mail which was a microwave, (chuckles) microwave, microfiche document and the soldier would write a little message to it, to the family, and then it would be reduced and put in the mail.

So, they were encouraged to just write a little bit.

- Mm-hmm.

- So, there's some of those.

- Mm-hmm, and then, of course, as soon as the...

I almost seems like it's the minute the War ends and he's not maybe constrained by what he can write, his letters immediately get longer as of like May 8th.

It just, instantly, the tone changes.

- He can say more too through sensors.

- Mm-hmm.

- And on the day the War ended, interestingly, he just said, "We felt, you know, relief and a little exaltation, but almost immediately," didn't feel like celebrating because they were just thinking of all the people lost, he said on both sides.

So, he was very aware of that.

And the interaction with German and Austrian civilians is interesting, I think, how the soldiers would help in the villages and interact with the civilians.

And then, there's quite an interesting, I think, exchange with the Russian soldiers when they meet.

At a river in Austria, they met the Russians, and, ooh, fascinating.

- I found that to be, I haven't read a lot of narratives of people who stayed for long after, and he was there for like an extra six or so months it seemed like.

And his impressions of the Russians, and maybe he had a little foreshadowing and seeing the Cold War and our future difficulties there and his noticing how the Russians and the Germans interacted, I mean, he really took notice of the culture and wrote it down in a way that I hadn't seen reflected on.

- Right, he's got some descriptive abilities at that.

And Hungarian soldiers who happen to be caught in the middle who he didn't appreciate, because they, well, you...

If you read it, you'll see all the little fun details.

And when they met the Russians, for some reason the American commander didn't show up.

It was just Dad with the Sergeant stripes and a lieutenant to meet him, and he said, "Sometimes I think we're just making trouble with the... Why, what could be more important?

What are these people thinking of?"

But he said the Russians are very polite to them, but they would palaver they would talk, they would exchange sign language about what they're supposed to do and who's supposed to be where, and they would all smile and nod.

And then, when it was over, nobody did.

They just, nobody understood anything.

- (laughs) The language.

- But you get a sense of the chaos.

- Sure, yeah.

- The abrupt ending and then the language barrier, and it's kind of a mess, unfortunately.

- Right, right.

- So, we are, unfortunately, running short on time here.

So, in our final, about three minutes, what would you hope people remember or take away from this book and from your father's story?

- Well, it's a very personal story.

So, I hope that if someone reads it, they would pick it up with that in mind.

You wouldn't necessarily be looking for anything definitive about World War II, it's certainly not the only book anybody should have.

It is a companion, I think it's a guide.

And I think it opens up some new, surprising to me, some new avenues of reflection from someone who just had a, I guess you'd say a very common view of the whole thing.

But who was entangled in some of the hardest stuff.

What they had to share with their wife at the time.

And then, later, I believe the stories he wrote that are in here, and there's maybe six or seven of these longer stories, you should read it with an idea of he was working out these memories even, well, one of them is a piece of a letter he wrote to his father who was long dead, just to say, as if to say, it was on Father's Day.

He thought he would write a story to his Dad to say what I've done in my life, and he included some.

So, we have a little bit of that in here too, so.

And then, at the end, when I did start doing the research, I contacted other families whose loved ones are mentioned here, including some who died.

And that communication was significant to me.

And there's a little bit about that at the end.

We have an example.

- Mm-hmm.

- Yeah, so.

- Mm-hmm.

I think it's also an important lesson.

Save those letters, If you've got things that your parents or your grandparents have written.

Even if it doesn't go into a book, it is vital, it is important to save these reflections and these memories for our children or grandchildren to read about what it was like, what life was like.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

They're important documents for the future.

And, unfortunately, today there's not many.

Not much letter-writing today.

- Sure.

- But if you have 'em from earlier generations- - Hold on to them.

Well, thank you so much for coming.

I really enjoyed our conversation.

I love this book.

I highly recommend that everybody read it.

- Thank you very much.

- That is, unfortunately, all the time we have for today.

My guest was Phillip Smith, and the book was called "Mother of the Company".

Thank you so much for joining us, and I will see you again soon.

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