Finding Aid for the Laurence D. Perrine Second World War correspondence scrapbooks 2020.102.w.r
Immediate Source of Acquisition
- Series 1, Scrapbook volume 27
- Series 2, Scrapbook volume 28
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Series 1, Scrapbook volume 27 1945 February - 1945 May 12
- 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
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
Series 2, Scrapbook volume 28 1945 June 18 - 1945 December 28
Places (photos included of all):
- Strassburg (Strasbourg, France)
- Innsbruck
- Paris
- Le Havre
- Étretat
- Southampton
- Plymouth
- Penzance
- Newlyn
- Lands End
- Cornwall
- Bodmin Road
- Camelford
- Tintagel
- Clovelly
- London
- Devonshire
- Bideford
- Bath
- Birmingham
- Stratford-on-Avon
- Oxford
- Babenhausen
- Ingolstadt
- Salzburg
- Munich
- Innsbruck
June 18, 1945, Innsbruck, Austria
- To mother
- Describes daily account of trip to England
- May 24; went to HQ, drove all night
- May 25; spend mostly in Strasbourg sightseeing, left by train in the evening
- May 26; Paris, subways free for soldiers, stress of tourism, Red Cross Club, bus tour of Paris sights. Germans took most paintings at the Louvre and melted down all but fourteen statues in Paris, notably Abraham Lincoln and Victor Hugo had marble bases with no statue. Took a train to Le Havre at 11pm
- May 27-29; arrived at Le Havre, then train to Étretat, an American Army processing center or GBLC (Great Britain Leave Center). The beach was still mined, "still just as the Germans had fortified it against invasion...If the whole French coast was defended like this, it is easy to see how D-day [sic] must have been hell." Stayed in Étretat for two days preparing for leave, and on third day left for Le Havre and boarded a boat. Descriptions of the towns, and the fortifications, are provided.
June 18, 1945, Innsbruck, Austria
- To mother
- May 30; disembarked at Southampton, England and took train to Lands End in Cornwall. "I followed my nose in England, my fancy, and my whim. I didn't know anything about Lands End, except that it was the very tip of Cornwall, the south-westernmost corner of England, looking over the sea, and that the persons in a favorite poem of mine, by Margaret Widdemer, never got there because the Road to Downderry crossed their path first, and tempted them down it. But I'd always wanted to got there. So I decided to." Description of English countryside follows, comparison to mainland Europe. Reached Penzance.
- May 31-July 1; descriptions given of various English towns in Cornwall.
July 6, 1945, Innsbruck, Austria
- To mother
- Continued trip through England
- July 8 boarded boat in Southampton
- July 9 disembarked at Le Have, train to Étretat
- July 10 to Paris, explored a second time
- July 12-13 train to Strasbourg, truck to Innsbruck
July 22, 1945, Babenhausen, Germany
- First airplane ride, Piper Cub, to a clearin station 60 miles away
- Provides details about the plane, the flight, and the purpose of the trip
- On the following page there is a 9th Infantry Division patch taped to the page
- From Ruth in Cleveland to "Pern" in England
- Discusses low morale and drinking alcohol to cope
- Did not celebrate VJ Day; "Last week, on Tuesday, we were celebrating the fact that Rose's roommate was on vacation, and that Rose didn't have to go home to supper. This seemed sufficient cause for two drinks, but not enough for three. VJ day was so long in coming that that was no cause for celebration. We discussed it though, and said that if it were really VJ day we should, In Fact, we discussed the possibility of having the third drink in front of us on the table, just in case. But we didn't."
- Discusses the town's VJ Day celebrations as nice, gas rationing ended the next day.
- "That day and the next the streets were so different. There was such an air of leisure, and people strolling along, or washing their cars out in front. I hadn't realized before how much difference the war had made."
August 28, 1945, Ingolstadt, Germany
- To Robin; includes 9th Infantry patch cutout from paper, glued in top right corner
- Friends are transferring out: Msgt. Paul Adams, John Henley, Archie Roller
- Roller went to USFET (US Forces, European Theater) to play in the GI symphony
- Took a "Mozart pilgrimage" to Salzburg, Austria, through Munich, with Capt. Morrill, Archie Roller, Maj. Lottes and Sgt. Bradshaw from the Medical Battalion, and a few others
- Describes Munich and Salzburg as bombed out, but not too bad
- To mother
- Went to plays and operas and discusses the morality of their content
- Includes discussion of England; moved there either late August or early September for school at Shrivenham AMerican University
- Mentions Oxford and a Dr. Trevelyan, the room where Isaac Newton lived, and more
- Next page: British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) invite on November 22, 1945 to broadcast a quiz of American students versus British students. Sent to "Sgt. Terrine Lawrence." (obvious error)
- Next page: a list of "Plays, etc., seen during two months in England"
- Next page: a map of his furlough in England and trip to Cornwall
- To mother, Thanksgiving (November 22) trip to London
- Discusses a play he missed, the London fog
- Westminster Abbey for Thanksgiving services, saw Archbishop of Canterbury and a proclamation read by Ambassor to the United Kingdom [John Gilbert] Winant
- Turkey dinner at the Red Cross
- Viewed a session of Parliament; saw Anthony Eden and Herbert Morrison, neither Winston Churchill nor Ernest Bevin were there
- "I listened to the debate for two hours. The debate was on foreign affairs; and the problem of the atom bomb and the question of limiting national were up for discussion."
- Saw more plays, slept at the Red Cross, went to the famous Blackwell's Bookstore, participated in the BBC quiz broadcast, transferred to 14th Major Port Processing Center at Tidworth, England, near Southampton
- Two essays written as "term papers" for J. Frank Dobie, his English professor at Shrivenham American University in Berkshire
- "The Idea of Equality in Democracy"
- "Four Kinds of Prayer: With a Footnote on Democracy," written as a letter to "Timothy"
- From J. Frank Dobie, Professor of English, University of Texas, with the English Branch, Shrivenham American University
- Letter of recommendation for Perrine as faculty at the University of Texas, Austin
- Next Page: Christmas card from Perrine, 1945