Physical Description: 0.05 Linear Feet(1 folder)
Scope and Contents
This series contains the first in a series of two scrapbooks regarding the military service of MSgt. Laurence D. Perrine,
USA during the Second World War. Included in the information below are people and places mentioned as well as descriptions
of the correspondence contained within. Also included in this scrapbook are 99 pictures (photos, postcards, drawings, magazine
clippings) and some ephemera including play tickets, bank notes and a map. On the first page (inside cover) is one of Perrine's
dog tags.
People:
- Maj. Nieman
- Lt. Cavenaugh (later shown as captain)
- Lt. Radowski
- John Tesch
- Gen. Charles DeGaulle
- Gen. Patch
- Gen. Devers
- Gen LeClerc
- Stokes
- Scotty Nicol
- Jim O'Grady
- Jack McQuide (from Chicago)
- Capt. Thompson
- Gen. Patch
- George Baker
- Lt. Carpenter (combat lieutenant mentioned in testimony of Siegfried Line)
- Capt. Moore
- Saeger
Places (photos included of all):
- France
- Germany
- Austria
- Italy
- Saverne
- Geroldseck (Château du Grand-Geroldseck)
- Hoh-Barr (Château du Haut-Barr)
- Drachenbronn
- Klingenmünster
- Rhine River
- Gartenstadt (neighborhood of Mannheim)
- Ludwigshaven
- Mannheim
- Heidelburg
- Niederbronn-les-Bains
- Bensheim
- Zwingenberg
- Worms
- Frankfurt
- Murrhardt
- Kirchbaum (Kirchheim unter Teck; typo at top of page)
- Geisling (Geislingen; typo at top of page)
- Bad Wörishofen
- Oberammergau
- River Neckar
- River Main
- Walburg
- Stuttgart
- Ulm
- Bavaria
- Innsbruck
Letters:
February – March 1945, Saverne
- To Robin
- Describes artillery fire on their location, broken windows, etc. Then it happened again later on. Discovered by the end of
the letter that it was a railroad gun approximately 20 miles away. Photo included.
- Describes crusades era castle, Château du Haut-Barr, photos and postcards included
- Gen. Charles DeGaulle visited, held a parade with a Senegalese band and Moroccan, British and French soldiers. Photos included
- "It only takes a little experience like this to give you good insight into the psychology of fear and how the war-neuroses
(so-called shell shock cases) occur. You lie there in bed (if you have not fled to the cellar) waiting for the next one to
come, and consciously you are calm, and you say to yourself, 'Well, there's nothing I can do, and there's nothing to get excited
about, because either it will or it won't, and there's an end to it.'"
- "The combat-fatigue cases that come back to us have one complaint. They can't stand the shelling. Small-arms fire doesn't
bother them, but when those shells come over, they 'blow their top.'"
March 1945, Northern France (Saverne—Niederbronn)
- To Paul
- Describes a funeral procession
- Describes a trip in a sedan to Nancy, France. Photos included, described as "untouched"; La Place Stanislaus; photos included
- Casualties have been few, mostly diseases coming back; recreation; discussion (was given a class) on German treatment of natives
in Alsace-Lorraine; old Roman road – beautiful and fairytale-like; describes destruction along the roads as they move forward
once again; reading Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point
- Moving too fast to open a ward, merely a records and patching station
- "From time to time an ambulance draws up below and empties itself of its contents—a couple of men on litters, a wounded German
prisoner, several walking GI's carrying their medical tags, another GI on a litter, a young boy with his shoulders soaked
with blood. (War is not just for the soldiers. War is for everybody.) Meanwhile the church across the road is disgorging its
afternoon congregation. The weather is sunny and warm. And I am sitting on my balcony in the sunlight reading my book."
- ***"We are here just one day and then again move up. Half a day later, the hotel blew up. The Germans had left a time bomb
in it." Hotel in Niederbronn. Photos included on back of next page; before and after
March—April 1945, Drachenbronn, Klingenmünster, Gartenstadt, Ludwigshaven, Mannheim, Heidelburg [sic]
- To Paul
- Entered Germany; "thrill" to see German villages destroyed instead of French ones; discusses passing Maginot Line (photo included),
then back to Drachenbronn because US was attacking Siegfried Line (photo included)
- "…a task too bloody and terrifying to be imagined even when uou [sic] have heard 'Exhaustion' cases tell about it under intra-venous
sodium amytal."
- Stopped at an insane asylum, had German POWs to unload trucks
- "The Germans are surrendering in great numbers now; they are giving themselves up to everybody. A guard with a group of 50
of them in the morning will count his group in the evening and find he has 60 or 65."
- Soldiers riding stray horses (they're everywhere) and collecting German guns; pass the Siegfried Line and see white flags
on pill boxes; go to Gardenstadt [sic] (photo included); hitch-hiked to the Rhine River, Mannheim, Ludwigshaven (photos included);
modern cities like in the States
- "Or, I should say 'they had' and 'they were.' [They] are cities that were. I have never before seen such complete and wide-spread
devastation. It is like something out of H.G. Wells, or like the prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem in the Bible.
You have probably read and seen pictures of the destruction of Cologne. It could not be any more complete than that of Mannheim
and Ludwigshaven."
- Continues to describe the destruction in detail; people live underground, have adjusted to it since aerial bombings over a
year prior; the city surrendered only two days ago
- Went to see Heidelberg; "merrily" like "a group of American sight-seeing tourists." Castle (photos included); See Wikipedia;
Heidelberg professor discussing ruins with American soldier in his essay "The Phenomenology of the Kitsches"
Testimonies taken from N—P patients under intra-venous sodium amytal after attack on Siegfried Line
- They discuss fighting, casualties, killing surrendering Germans on accident, men dying, friendly-fire; almost direct transcription
of them talking; mildly incoherent
April 1945, Bensheim, Zwingenberg, Worms, Frankfurt
- To Ruth
- Whistling at German girls is "fraternization" and carries a $65 fine; staying in Bensheim (photos included); mentions Zwingenberg,
a similar town just down the road; organizes trips to interesting nearby places
- "We are still, for the present, occupation troops, and have leisure to act the American tourist."
- Expedition to Worms; mentions the church still standing "where Martin Luther defied the Pope at the famous Diet…" but the
rest of the town is in ruins, then a trip to Frankfurt, largest city visited yet; mostly in ruins
- "It was not so bad as Mannheim and Ludwigshaven, but it can be said that the job was thorough."
- Visited Auerbach Castle (photos included); "the most castle-ish old castle we have yet explored, and also the best preserved…And
at the top—well, from the top I could see all the way to Orlando, Florida."
April—May 1945, Murrhardt, Kirchbaum, Geisling, Bad Worishofen, Oberammergau
- To Ruth
- Committed to combat and moving forward again; "We will not stay long in any one place for awhile now. The frontis moving fast,
in what Time calls aptly 'fluid' warfare, and we have to keep humping to keep up with the infantry."
- Describes Kirchheim and Geislingen; "Geislingen is also a town thronged with DP's (Displaced Peoples)—which is something we
have been running into in ever-growing numbers lately—recently-liberated Russians, Poles, Hollanders, etc., who the Germans
had been using as forced labor. They live in 'camps'—in inns or in barracks or wherever a building can be found large enough
to hold them."
- Next big move is to Ulm; described as in ruins; "The devastation is appalling…The New World parts of the Old World…have been
bombed out of recognition…As for the Danube it is neither blue, as the song says, nor brown, as the realists say, but green,
at least here—like the Rhine but not so broad."
- Describes German military personnel, surrendered but freely walking around Bad Worishofen, a Bavarian health resort town
"…and the town is full of unarmed German soldiers in uniform, walking the streets, some of them with girls…American soldiers
and German soldiers pass each other on the street and stare at each other."
"On our second day there, many of the German soldiers are collected and marched off. We see column after column of them, going
through the streets, all mixed up, including girls and generals, led by American Pfc's [sic]."
"All afternoon we ride toward the Alps. We see them grow and grow and get larger. All afternoon, too, we pass long columns
of German prisoners, marching toward the rear. We even see Germans surrender and taken captive. Two of them walking across
a field are overtaken by a Grench soldier, who fires a shot above their heads; they raise their hands, turn, and follow him.
Two more come out of a woods and are hailed over to us, to give themselves up to our momentarily-parked convoy."
- Detailed description of the buildings, people, culture
- Travelling south toward Oberammergau, "home of the Passion Plays," encounter lots of snow on May 1, 1945.
-
"But even in religious picturesque Oberammergau, Naziism [sic] has left its trophies. Some of the backstage rooms at the Theater
had been used as schoolrooms, and in them we found several boxes of Nazi-version history, geography, and economics, including
vicious anti-Jewish propaganda, used to poison children's minds. Two or three of the rooms, also, had been used as a German
supply room, and we found a couple of machine guns set up, and an arsenal of rifles. And just outside of the village, under
a mountain, is a Messerschmidt factory, much camouglaged with netting, paint, and artificial trees on the roofs."
-
"I took a picture of the Alps from the same bacony on which a postcard I hve seen shows Hitler standing, being enthusiastically
applauded by the people below." (included)
- Postcard of Oberammergau was stamped in 1940, with some scribbles on it
- Postcard from Oberammergau with Hitler and Hotel Haus Wittelsbach
12 May, 1945, Innsbruck, Austria
- To Ruth, "Today I was in Italy!"
- Description of driving through the Alps
- In Innsbruck and the war is over in Europe
- Same as any other day, except Stokes and Nicol were in Paris on there way back from furlough in England and they "were almost
hugged and kissed to death…" Went up the mountain from Innsbruck for the view; visited Italy, a trip to the Brenner Pass
Map—103d Infantry Divisions Route
- "The Cactus Route"
- 11 Nov, 1945 – 4 May, 1945