“I’m the luckiest guy you can possibly envision,” says Henry Walter, a resident of North Hill, the retirement community in Needham. He is talking about his experiences as an army officer in World War II. About to turn 86, he looks back on his military service as a time that brought him lifelong benefits.
He has summarized the events of his life in a private memoir of some 150 pages that has been read by family members. Stirred by a recent “Growing Older” column focused on the wartime memoir of a Polish lawyer, he sent me a summary of his that covers six densely packed pages.
He was born in Vienna in 1916 and grew up in that city, though his father was a Czech citizen. Henry was a member of the Czech army when Hitler invaded and dissolved that force. Escaping across the border, Henry reached Poland and sailed from there to New York.
In 1941 he was drafted into the U. S. Army, eventually becoming an officer with the Tenth Mountain Division. Soon, however, he was transferred to s newly created army branch – Military Government. Taking part in the invasion of Normandy, he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day plus 1, wading to shore through waist-deep water. Once in France, he began functioning as a civil affairs officer, helping to evacuate French civilians from the areas in front of American battle lines.
After many other adventures, some of them extremely hazardous, Henry took part in the Battle of the Bulge, crossed the Rhine at Remagen, and eventually ended up in southern Bohemia as the war in Europe came to an end. He then served as chief military government official in a small county of Bavaria before returning to the U.S.
This brief summary leaves out many details that enrich Henry’s account of his wartime life and the period following VE Day. Most important among these events was his meeting Ruth Sumers, a former Navy officer, whom he met traveling in Europe and married in 1947.
Looking back at this period, Henry Walter most values his marriage and his rapid rise in military rank until he retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. This military experience made him eligible for the GI Bill covering his graduate studies at Harvard and setting him on his career path.
Asked about present-day Germany, Henry says: “It seems like quite a different country than it was in World War II.” But he is not surprised because he regards Germans as “very intelligent people.” And he feels proud about his role in Germany’s restoration: “We played a very important role in that.”
Though he has kept his uniform, he has never marched in a veterans’ parade. But he feels patriotic, especially valuing “knowledgeable and courageous people who speak up for justice.”
Another person who comes to mind, in the week when we celebrate Veterans’ Day, is the late Celia McLaughin. Her daughter, Pam McLaughlin, a resident of Somerville, has written about her mother’s wartime years in a small book published last July and entitled “Celia: Army Nurse and Mother Remembered.” Making abundant use of wartime letters from her mother, Pam McLaughlin shares the experiences of this army nurse who served in the North African campaign and later in Italy.
A native of Tamworth, New Hampshire, Celia trained as a nurse at Hale Hospital in Haverhill. Joining the Army in 1942, she was sent to North Africa where she endured difficult conditions, such as 140-degree temperatures. Later, based in the outskirts of Naples, she cared for sick and wounded soldiers in the Italian campaign. Of her work, she said in an understatement: “It’s not a bad record because we’ve cared for over 3,000 patients.”
In reflecting on her mother’s mentality at that time, Pam says: “Her thoughts were always of home, of the White Mountains, and of Lake Chocorus in which she used to swim.”
Not until the last ten years of Celia’s life did she talk with her daughter about her wartime experiences. Those conversations solidified her appreciation of her mother as a person: “I always remember her so strong, so solid, so faith-filled.”
By the 1970s, her daughter began to gather her letters because of their historical value. “This is a piece of American history,” she told herself, “and I just can’t let it go to waste.”
In a recent letter to me, Pam writes: “We must remember our veterans and what they sacrificed for our nation,” I agree and in that spirit have shared the stories of these two very different veterans of World War II. Pam also emphasizes that the veterans who have grown old and vulnerable deserve our best care and treatment.
Henry and Celia in their distinct ways show the devotion to duty that brought eventual victory over the forces of tyranny. Along with the millions of others who have served in America’s wars they deserve credit for bravery and commitment.
Richard Griffin