Letters Home from World War II: Unearthing St. Louis' Hidden Histories

Arnold00:00:00

Were you aware that Anheuser Busch produced diesel engines during World War II?How about, were you aware that the head of the New York Stock Exchange entered the army as a private, retired as a colonel, and ended up being the head of the Federal Reserve? What about the first Missourian killed at Pearl Harbor?

Gallery00:00:16

He's very significant.

Arnold00:00:17

And you will know his name. You can find out more about that on St. Louis and Tune. Welcome to St. Louis in Tune.And thank you for joining us for fresh perspectives on issues and events with experts, community leaders, and everyday people who make a difference in shaping our society and world. I'm Arnold Stricker along with co host Mark Langston.

Mark00:00:50

Hey, how.

Arnold00:00:51

Come on down, Mark.

Mark00:00:54

I know.

Mark00:00:54

I feel like it's a game show.

Arnold00:00:57

We do have those Jeopardy.

Mark00:00:59

Clips too, somewhere. We've got it right now you're looking for right now, but we're not gonna.

Arnold00:01:04

Don't push your button buzzers, please.

Gallery00:01:05

But please don't pop those buttons until an answer is exposed. No. Sorry. So you will receive some parting gifts from us. Thank you so very much. Okay.

Arnold00:01:13

Have them in a loop or something.

Mark00:01:14

I know.

Mark00:01:15

I. We just play as many as we can. I know. Okay. Welcome to the show, folks.

Arnold00:01:20

We're glad that you've joined us today. We want to thank our sponsor, Better.

Arnold00:01:23

Rate Mortgage, for their support.

Arnold00:01:25

You can listen to previous shows@stlintune.com please help us continue to grow by leaving a review on our website, Apple Podcast, or your preferred podcast platform. Our thought to ponder today is by Michelangelo.

Mark00:01:39

Oh, okay.

Arnold00:01:41

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

Mark00:01:50

Ooh, that's very wise.

Arnold00:01:53

It is very wise, yes.

Mark00:01:55

Michael.

Arnold00:01:55

Now, that can't be said of our guest today. He's always reaching for heights, and he achieves them and he sets new heights. Christopher Alan Gordon is an author.He's also an American historian, lecturer, and museum professional in St. Louis, where he serves as the Director of Library and Collections for the Missouri Historical Society.He's the recipient of the Mark Simmons Writing Award for his research on the history of the Santa Fe trail and his 2018 book, Fire, Pestilence and Death.St. Louis, 1849 won an award of excellence from the American association for State and Local History and a silver medal for regional nonfiction history by the Independent Book Publishers Association. He's in studio to talk about his newest book, Letters Home from World War II. St. Louis. Christopher, welcome to St. Louis in Tune.

Christopher00:02:45

Thank you for having me.

Arnold00:02:47

Wow. This book was. It's a great read, folks. And it's.I don't want to say it's a fast read, but it's a fast read because I'm so enthused with the topic and what you have brought out from these letters. I guess, what was the impetus for writing the book to begin with?

Christopher00:03:03

There were millions of pieces of mail that were created during World War II. We had something like 7 million servicemen. Right. Service people think of the volume of mail that they are creating.It's pretty common to have World War II collections in an archive.And I was having a conversation actually with Josh Stevens at Rady Press, and I was like, it would be really interesting to see what's out there and try to compile them in one place in one book. And the more I thought about it, I thought, that's a really good idea. And I bet there are some really great collections out there.I just started combing through the archives and not just at my own Missouri Historical Society, but various repositories around the region and found some great stuff.

Arnold00:03:48

You go back to the research area at the Missouri Historical Society, and is it like a letters section or is it. You have to go back to World War II section or how is it cataloged for you?

Christopher00:03:59

So archives are generally tasked with creating what's called a finding aid. So that finding aid is basically an index to a collection.And when most people donate a collection to an archive, that is, it becomes a collection that usually has their name or it has what that collection refers to. So like The World War II letters of Bob Smith's World War II letters or what have you. When you put all that together, you create like a guide.And most archives will have some kind of post it guide, so it's a little bit easier to find what you're looking for.

Arnold00:04:35

Okay.

Christopher00:04:36

So at the Missouri Historical Society, we have. That's what we have.We have an archives guide that breaks down our 3,800 collections, archival collections, and then you can like keyword search it and things like that. It's not always that easy, depending on the size of the archive. But luckily our place is organized like that, so it was a good launching point.Also places like the State Historical Society, Missouri, which is a separate organization.

Arnold00:05:01

And your president of that, correct?

Christopher00:05:03

No, the. I'm president of the Missouri association for Museums and Archives, which is an advocacy group.

Arnold00:05:09

Okay.

Christopher00:05:09

No, the State Historical Society of Missouri is a state agency.

Arnold00:05:13

Okay.

Christopher00:05:14

Missouri historical site is actually privately chartered, but people get them confused all the time. But there's great places like the St. Charles Historical Society.A lot of people don't know that the St. Louis Public Library has a great manuscript collection as well. So it was just a matter of going through the weeds in all these places. Wow.

Arnold00:05:31

Now, this is a side question. It is related to the book, but it's not related to the book. Why do people decide to donate to a collection to the Historical Society?And what comprises a collection? Do you go, somebody says, I've got this stuff here. Maybe it's photographs or letters or books or whatever, or artwork or. What do you decide?No, that's not really what we need. You have certain, like, levels or standards that you want. And yes, you turn people away or you go, yeah, we'd really like that.

Christopher00:05:59

Yeah, all the above, actually. An archive and. Or a museum. They have what's called a collecting scope. So their mission identifies with that collecting scope.So the Missouri Historical Society, Primarily we collect St. Louis regional history or older Missouri history that is like the colonial period or pre Civil War, if it has to do with eastern Missouri primarily. So when you're looking at a new collection, that's the type of criteria you're first looking for. How does it fit our scope, our mission?Why do people donate this? Luckily, they do it to preserve history, do it to preserve their family history.Many people find it an honor to have this included and add to the story of our region. When we take this stuff in, it's not just available to, say, genealogists. It's available to scholars all over the world, really.And it's amazing what in some of these collections, what you find. Often you have people come in that say, I want to donate this because I know my kids have no interest in it. I hear that constantly.And I don't find it sad because we get good stuff in our collection. But I guess from a family standpoint, you might say it's been sitting on.

Arnold00:07:19

The shelves, been hollering around.

Christopher00:07:21

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The thing is that. And you see this all the time in the history world, whether it's archives or museums or what have you.Yeah, younger people generally don't have a lot of history interest in history until they reach about 40, and then they get the history bug. And sometimes you think if you could hang on to it for a little while longer, your kids probably will have an interest in it.But that's in a perfect world. But yeah, it certainly benefits organizations like my own, because then we're able to bring in these great collections and preserve them forever.Really, they're not at risk of being lost, thrown away, or getting eaten by bugs or what have you.

Arnold00:08:02

And especially on this, with this book, these letters really give varied insights into what people were thinking, their emotions during the war, being away from home, et cetera, like that. How did you cipher through these thousands of letters to come up with the ones that are in the book?

Christopher00:08:20

One of the things that people don't often realize with World War II letters, people watch documentaries like the Ken Burns Civil War or a lot of the great movies and documentaries about World War I, where you hear soldiers letters being written and they talk about, oh, I was on the battlefield at Manassas and I watched my buddies die and all this kind of stuff. When you get to World War II, that doesn't happen anymore. The military heavily censored every piece of mail.And so what would happen is that you would write a letter, you would address it, toss it in a bag, your battalion chief or whatever would collect all that. They'd throw it on a supply truck, it would go to a depot somewhere.Unfortunately, most of the time they'd take that sack off and they'd throw it in a warehouse and it would sit there for weeks or months because the military did not have a good postal or logistical plan for a long time.But anyway, at some point, a military censor, sometimes it was your, say, your CO or something, but a military censor would go through your letter and if they saw something that did not fit the criteria, they would either redact it, they'd put heavy black pen over it or whatever, or sometimes they would actually take an exacto knife and cut out the whole sentence.

Arnold00:09:43

Wow.

Christopher00:09:43

So I've seen letters that look like Swiss cheese because they're all these little boxes that are all cut out. But they. And then on state side, sometimes those same kind of rules actually applied to states home front as well.So say your mom wrote you a letter and she said, oh, your brother over at the aircraft factory, he's on strike. Well, they didn't want you to say stuff like that.

Arnold00:10:06

Yeah.

Christopher00:10:07

So they would send it back to your mom and say, rewrite this and take this out. Or sometimes they would redact those too.

Arnold00:10:14

Yeah, they opened all the letters, read them all. And yes, I know some of the letters they self. They put parentheses where they were. Yeah, they did it on their own.

Christopher00:10:22

They could say things. You had to keep it as general as possible if you were going to say where you were. So you could say, I'm somewhere in the Pacific. What does that mean?That's what, 200,000 mile or 200 million miles or whatever it is.You could say somewhere in the Pacific, you could say somewhere in Italy or somewhere in France after D Day or after the invasions and things like that. But yeah, they. And they didn't want you to talk about the weather.They were afraid that even mentioned, like rain, that the Germans or the Japanese or whatever could guess where you were based on the rain weather patterns. Again, you were not supposed to talk about any kind of movement or casualties or anything like that.So when I would go through and pick out these letters, I'm really looking for the letters where the writers were articulate enough, had the discretion to. They knew how to maneuver, and basically.

Arnold00:11:18

Say they self censored.

Christopher00:11:19

They self censored, but it still expressed their feelings or still talk about things, but in a very general, encoded way, cryptic way, whatever you want to say. And some people had that. Some people had that ability, others not so much. I read a lot of letters that were like, hi, mom, how are you? I am fine.How's Grandma? The end. Love, Bob. That's it.

Mark00:11:44

You must have gone through a lot of letters just for the book. How many are in the book?

Christopher00:11:48

There's 28 in the book.

Mark00:11:50

And how many did you go through to get to those 28?

Christopher00:11:52

Oh, gosh, I don't know. Hundreds, probably hundreds. Yeah.

Mark00:11:55

That sounds like a daunting task.

Christopher00:11:57

Yeah, but it's really very interesting. And. And I had the same situation happen when I was writing my first book, Fire, Pestilence and Death, about the cholera epidemic here in St. Louis.Is you find these collections and you start reading these stories and you develop an emotional connection to this person. And then it's horrible when you find out that they didn't make it or something like that. It's just. It's just as bad 80 years later. Yeah, but.But certainly interesting. And there's one kid in. In particular that I. His name was John Washington.He was an African American private and he was assigned to work in like an ammunitions depot over in Italy. He saw a lot of what was going on over there and he talked in.But he was writing these great letters home to his mother, trying to reassure her, I'm okay. Don't worry about me. He writes this, and this is included in the book. A great letter, just like a parody. It's hilarious. He's talking about the food.He said, oh, the cooks over here are very religious. They make burnt offerings every day. You know, things like that. It's great stuff.But he was madly in love with this Girl back home who wasn't giving him the time of day anymore. Apparently his friends had written to him, him and said, she has no interest in you anymore.So he had a little diary that we have in the archives at the Missouri Historical Society now. And he's pouring out his heart. Oh, I miss her so bad. And this kind of stuff, but I know she doesn't have any.Wants anything to do with me type of thing. So you read that kind of stuff, too. And it really. But he made it home and he eventually had a good career and he had a big family.So it had a happy ending. Yeah, it had a happy ending.

Arnold00:13:45

Did those diaries. Did other people have diaries to support the letters or give you a little bit more background information about what was going on?

Christopher00:13:52

On rare occasions, I would find those. Yeah. Another thing that you see in these letters is you get a hint of what's going to happen in the future with some of these individuals.And in particular, like, talk about how there was such a social movement, so many social movements that come out of the war. And one is definitely the woman's. The women's movement. And there's two collections in particular.One is Adela Schar, who was a service pilot, a ferry service pilot. And then Jean Schwarting. Gene Schwarting Anderson, later, she was a wave.And they're both talking about how they're as women, how they're experiencing a different war, basically different situation. Jean Schwarting was particularly funny because she is going through officer training in Massachusetts.And her letters talk about how they're just training these women to do things that we just, you know, we chuckle at now. It's like how to change a light bulb, because that was a man's duty.And these letters, oh, we had to get a ladder and climb up on the ladder and unscrew the light bulb. We laugh at that today, but that was considered a man's duty at home. But they were having them do much more challenging things.They had to climb up on the roof one day. It was like a fire drill type of thing. And I named the actual chapter after that line in the letter.She says, a lot of mothers would get gray if they could see their daughters flying around here in the Navy way. And that was that one particular letter about how they were climbing up on the ladder to get on the roof and stuff.And she said, yeah, the mothers knew that their daughters were doing all this, what would consider be manly things and so forth, that they would be having a heart attack.

Arnold00:15:45

Wow, it's crazy.

Christopher00:15:47

Oh, yeah.

Mark00:15:48

That's amazing.

Arnold00:15:48

This is Arnold Stricker with Mark Langston of St. Louis and Tomb. We're talking to Christopher Alan Gordon.He's the author of his new book, Letters Home From World War II, St. Louis, Messages of Hope and Heartbreak from the Front Lines.Christopher, something I think that I really appreciated about your book is the other research that you went in to describe a little bit about that maybe area that particular person was going to be in.The other thing that really stood out to me was when speaking about the women, when the women started the Rosie the Riveter started getting involved with work that was being done to produce airplanes or tanks or ammunition that also the disabled were involved. And then they were thought of, yeah, you really can do this.And so there was like, this, I don't want to say a great awakening, but there was this awakening with the. The military and with providers of things for the military that, wow, disabled people can really do some things in their wheelhouse.

Christopher00:16:43

Yeah, that's probably was the most surprising, revealing thing for me. I had no idea. So you see the roots of the disability movement, and there's. There's this article in the.I think it was in the Globe Democrat here in St. Louis, and they're talking about there's such a need for labor, and they took a chance and they hired these individuals that probably wouldn't have a job otherwise. And they've really proven themselves they can do this work, and that's great for them.But it's also a great example of how it's a testament to the fact that when our servicemen come back and they may be missing an arm or a leg or whatever, that they can still be productive members of society. And so that was very revealing for me. I was like, wow, never had even considered that.But, yeah, that's again, one of those social movements that the women's movement and of course, the civil rights movement was already underway, but Certainly World War II gives it a big boost.These guys, like the Tuskegee Airmen and all these other various guys that are going through, like, officer training and are stationed throughout the world and demanding equal treatment, and when they come out, they're going to be involved in that civil rights movement going into the 50s and 60s.

Arnold00:18:02

And wasn't it a group of African American women who got the postal system altogether in England and got the backlog up to date and really was the movement for getting all the mail?

Christopher00:18:15

Yeah.So the six Triple eight Battalion, which nowadays is getting a lot of attention, luckily, happily, because for 80 years, basically 70, 80 years they've been ignored when they did a monumental job. As I. As I mentioned, you had all these servicemen mailing letters home.They were getting thrown in warehouses because the military just did not have the logistics to handle the mail. So the interesting thing about that, the irony of that is that the. During the whole.During the whole war, they understood the importance of the morale of mail. You'd think that they would have given more thought to postal battalions and getting all this process, but they did not.So there were warehouses in England, these old rickety warehouses, for the most part, where this mail was just accumulating by the millions bags and bags of it. So finally, they tasked the 688th Central Postal Directory Battalion, made up entirely of African American women.A number of them were from here in St. Louis. The battalion reached about. I think it was 854 women by the end of the end of the war.But they were trained here in the US and then they were sent to England and they were told to sort out this millions and millions of pieces of mail that had accumulated.And they get in there, and sadly, there was very little justice for these women because they were being treated crappily anyway because of who they were. But they get there and there's like, pigeon poop all over these bags and rats are eating it and all this kind of stuff. And they're like.The white officers are like, do something, basically.

Mark00:20:03

Sure.

Christopher00:20:04

So they had to start from scratch. There were something like 7,600 Robert Smiths that were serving in the military. And mom and dad would write, Robert Smith, U.S. army, England.And they. That was it.

Arnold00:20:20

Yeah.

Christopher00:20:21

So these ladies had to find what units these guys were in and where they were moving and all this kind of stuff. And Netflix came out couple years ago with. With a movie about this unit.

Arnold00:20:33

Really?

Christopher00:20:34

Yeah. It's on Netflix. You can watch it. It's called Six Triple Eight. Kerry Washington plays Charity Adams, who is the commander of the unit.And it goes into detail about how these women really thought. Put the thought into how they could maneuver and find all these guys.Anyway, they were given six months to process this mail, and they did it in three months.

Mark00:20:55

Good for them.

Christopher00:20:56

And it was something like 65,000 pieces of mail per shift. They were going through 24 hours a day to get this done. And by the end of the war, they had processed over 17 million pieces of mail. Wow.

Arnold00:21:10

That's incredible.

Christopher00:21:11

Yeah.

Arnold00:21:12

An unknown group of women who have not been acknowledged, and African American women to boot.

Mark00:21:19

Yeah. And morale. Oh, my goodness. I can't imagine being on the front and getting a letter from home. What that must have done.

Arnold00:21:27

Oh, yeah, that was mentioned in.One of the individuals that I mentioned at the front end of the show teasing people was this individual who was head of the New York Stock Exchange, was from St. Louis. He went in as a private and he saw, he knew systems, he developed systems.He was an executive and he was amazed at how the army was not prepared or morale at boot camp and was not good. And then he just not fell into it. But he had his own skill set which really promoted him.

Christopher00:21:59

So William McChesney Martin ends up being the longest serving Federal Reserve chairman in American history. He served under something like five presidents. But yes, his beginnings were here in St. Louis.He's a young man, he's 30 years old and he's president of the New York Stock Exchange. He's living in New York city. And in 1940, the United States initiates the first peacetime draft.Because Roosevelt and everyone, they know something's gonna happen. And there's actually very little resistance to that.That was one of the other interesting things I found about when I did my research, is there was not a whole lot of pushback on that. People were willing to be conscripted and to serve anyway. His name is drawn and it was expected.A lot of these guys who had this level of power, I'm going to get a deferment or get out of this one way or another. And Martin said no. He said, I think that I should act as an example to all men and start like everybody else.And he went in as a private, went to Fort Dix, got assigned to be like a, some kind of flunky clerk in an office. And the letter that I use for Martin is there was a group that was formed around 1940-1934-1939-1940.They were very concerned about the state of American democracy and democracy in general in the world. They were watching Hitler and the Imperial Japanese and so forth.And this guy was friends with Martin and he writes to Martin, he says, what do you think? What's your assessment of the, the morale of the American serviceman? This was before the war. This was like 1940, 1941.And he writes this multi page report as a stockbroker or as a analyst would do. And he basically is talking about, I've talked with all these men, all my, all my fellow servicemen, and this is what I've seen.And he said, one of the things is they're willing to serve, but they have no idea what they're fighting for. They have very little concept of democracy. And he said on top of that, the military isn't doing a whole lot to encourage it.I don't see flags around here. I don't see military bands. There needs to be a whole mechanism in place to educate these guys.And so it's a fantastic insight into what the kind of mental state was at that time. But of course, December 7, 1941, the Pearl harbor attack, and people really, there was very few people that questioned serving.

Arnold00:24:47

Right.

Christopher00:24:47

And one of the stories I talk about in the book is over at a municipal auditorium there was a USO dance every Sunday night. And I was a little surprised that on the night of December 7th they went ahead and had that USO dance. And the global Democrat goes over.Reporter from the Democrat goes over and he's interviewing these guys that are already in the service and they're saying, we expected this to happen, but we got to get it done. We're here to serve and we got to get it done. And it's a job to do and we're going to do it.So, yeah, it's pretty interesting the how there was just very few people that were questioning serving at that time.

Arnold00:25:32

Right.

Christopher00:25:33

Yeah.

Arnold00:25:34

This is Arnold Stricker with Mark Langston of St. Louis in Tune. We are talking to Christopher Allen Gordon, author of his newest his latest book, Letters Home from World War II St. Louis.We're going to take a brief break and we'll be right back.

Christopher00:25:46

Don't go away.

Gallery00:26:00

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Arnold00:26:59

Welcome back to St. Louis in Tune.

Gallery00:27:00

This is Arnold's Tricker with Mark Langston.

Arnold00:27:02

Mark is spinning in his chair. He loves the music theme so much. Just moving around.Here we got Christopher Alan Gordon, author and director of the Libraries and Collections at the Missouri Historical Society, here in studio to talk about letters home from World War II. St. Louis. Messages of hope and heartbreak from the front line.Speaking of Pearl harbor goes to the first Missouri Missourian who was killed in the battle. And his name is widely known in Missouri, especially in western Missouri. And I'll let you take it from there.

Christopher00:27:34

Yeah.Anyone that is familiar with military bases in Missouri and has ever traveled down either Highway 70 or Highway 50 towards Kansas City will have passed Whiteman Air Force Base, which was originally called Sedalia Airfield, but it was renamed in the honor of George Whiteman, who was the first Missourian killed in Pearl Harbor.

Mark00:27:59

Never knew that.

Arnold00:28:00

Never knew that. Yeah, I didn't either.

Gallery00:28:01

These are the kind of things you.

Arnold00:28:03

Find out in the book. And also like Anheuser Busch was making. What did I say they were making?

Christopher00:28:08

The diesel engine.

Arnold00:28:09

Diesel engines.

Christopher00:28:10

Yeah.

Arnold00:28:10

On the sly.

Mark00:28:12

Missouri had St. Louis area. Do we make a lot of things for the war? I thought we did.

Christopher00:28:16

Oh, yeah. And I know even before the war.

Mark00:28:18

I know out of 70 and Goodfellow, there used to be an armory there. I think they just.

Arnold00:28:23

Ammunition plant.

Mark00:28:24

Yeah. That they just tore down. And that was, I believe, from World War II.

Arnold00:28:27

Right.

Christopher00:28:27

Yeah. Yeah. Those of you who remember your high school history, college history will remember the Lend Lease program, which was. There was a lot of pushback.People remembered World War I. They didn't really want the US to be involved in any aspect of the war, whether it was in Europe or Asia. They didn't really think.Honestly, they didn't really think too much of Asia at all. They were worried about Hitler. And then Roosevelt luckily realized that our allies like Britain were not going to hold out if we did nothing.And so he pushed Congress to pass the Lend Lease program, which was a way to get around that neutrality. You could send our allies arms and supplies and things like that, but we weren't directly involved in the conflict.In order to supply them with all that armor and defensive capabilities, you have to build it. And corporations like Curtiss Wright Aircraft and Douglas Aircraft and things like that, they begin upping production.And those plants were right here in St. Louis for Curtis Wright and then Douglas, and they're building transport planes and bombers before the war here and constantly adding on to these facilities, which was this huge economic boost for a city that had been hit by the Great Depression. Oh, yeah, you read These articles say 5,000 jobs will be produced by this and then we're adding on 8,000 more jobs will be produced and so forth.And even before the war, there's people are migrating to St. Louis to take these jobs, which of course will also have long term implications, but. And then they build Western Cartridge Company and then American Car and Foundry, which was. They made railroad cars.They would eventually, after the war began, they would switch to tank production and landing craft production and things like that. Wow. All these companies are expanding.They're switching over to defense contracts and creating just thousands of jobs all across the St. Louis region. American Car and Foundry had two plants, actually three plants, two in the city.They had one over in Granite City, Illinois, and then they had another in St. Charles. They would produce light tanks and later some heavy tanks.But all these landing craft that you see like in D day and Iwo Jima and things like that, a lot of those were produced right here.

Arnold00:31:03

Oh, that's crazy. How long did it take you to write this book? From inception of talking at Reedy and then boom, we're done.

Christopher00:31:15

Believe it or not, a year.

Arnold00:31:17

Wow, that's fast.

Christopher00:31:18

Yeah. The first book I wrote took much longer. Having one under my belt was a little bit. It made it a little bit easier. But yeah.Yeah, I had a year to crank.

Arnold00:31:27

It out and how many hours a day?

Christopher00:31:31

Oh, I don't know. Whenever I could squeeze it. I have a day job too. Yeah.

Arnold00:31:36

Come home from work and gonna work on the book. You just can't. You have to consistently do something. You just can't put it aside for a week or two. And where was I? What was I doing here?

Mark00:31:47

I think picking the letters that you wanted is what a challenge.

Arnold00:31:51

That tough thing.

Mark00:31:52

Yeah. Are you a speed reader?

Christopher00:31:54

Oh, no, I don't know. I'm not a slow reader. But I also have. I also have an advantage because being in the museum and archives fields, I have connection.I had people that were, you know.

Mark00:32:06

I could say this stack is a good stack.

Christopher00:32:08

Yeah. I can recommend this collection or that collection. So that certainly makes my job easier. And. And it's great when you're.Whether you're a professional historian like myself, or a genealogy or whatever, genealogist or whatever, to be able to actually talk to an archivist in one of these places. And that's where you get the most insight.

Mark00:32:29

I appreciate getting it all like the funnel effect where you get it all together and we get it into a wonderful book like this. Letters from Letters Home from World War II. I think that's great that you've done.

Arnold00:32:40

The hard work for us was the concept to print the letter, read the letter, talk about a little bit about where that person was, what they were going through, their connection to St. Louis. And also, I like that you followed up and told us what happened to that person.

Christopher00:32:56

Yeah, yeah, I would. Again, going back to the model of my first book, I love telling these stories from beginning to end. The other thing, there's three things I look for.One is using primary sources, like the history is best told through the eyes of the person who was actually witnessing it. Eye, Witnessing it, experiencing it. So you get that insight, you get that emotion. The second thing is putting everything in context.And that's what I wanted to do in this book too. I don't just talk about the letters. I'm talking about what's going on in St. Louis at that time. Because it's all one big story, right?For what's going on on the battlefield. And I am not a. First of all, I'm not a military historian and I am not a 20th century historian. I'm a 19th century guy.So this was a learning experience for me too. I saw, I grew up watching all those great World War II movies and I thought, yeah, I know all about World War II.

Mark00:33:49

Sure you do.

Christopher00:33:51

No, I don't know anything about it. When you really start digging into it, it's pretty fascinating and it's amazing. It's such.There are just volumes and volumes have written about World War II.And one of the interesting things someone was asking me about this is so much of it is from the perspective of the leaders, the generals like Winston Churchill and all that is certainly fascinating. But these are the guys that were actually fighting. The guys I'm talking about the letters home. They're the ones on the ground.And there are clear instances in this book where, where individuals were emotionally overwhelmed. That PTSD comes out of this for sure.I have a chapter about two brothers who certainly were suffering from PTSD and had very long term consequences for them. And so, yeah, it was a learning experience for me, but it was also. You really get the depth of it by looking at these letters.

Arnold00:34:51

And you've got some upcoming book signings. Last night you were at the U City Public Library.

Christopher00:34:55

Yeah, that was great.

Arnold00:34:56

And you've got. So write these down, folks. But we'll also, if you're driving, don't write it down. We'll put this on the podcast page.Saturday, November 8th at Barnes Noble, West County Mall. That's from 1 o' clock to 2 o' clock on Monday, November 10th, at the Pacific Branch Scenic Regional Library in Pacific, Missouri.That's 6 to 7pm and on November 15, Saturday from 1 to 3pm at the Belle Fountain or Bellefontaine Cemetery, however you want to say it, at Hotchkiss Chapel, November 19th in St. Charles at the Kathryn Linneman branch. And then you go all the way to May 26 at the Warrenton Branch library. Or if you're from Warrenton, it's Warrenton.And you can go out and get your book signed and listen to what Christopher has to say about the book.

Mark00:35:46

Now you're going to be at a chapel at the cemetery. Is that what you said?

Christopher00:35:50

Yeah, yeah.

Mark00:35:51

That's different.

Christopher00:35:52

Yeah.

Mark00:35:52

Yeah.

Christopher00:35:53

Belle Fountain is a great place. And I actually the final resting place for at William McChesney Martin once again.

Arnold00:36:00

Oh, and lots of other famous St. Louis.

Christopher00:36:02

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Mark00:36:04

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. We could probably do a show on St. Louis cemeteries.

Christopher00:36:09

Oh, they're fascinating.

Mark00:36:10

Yeah.

Arnold00:36:10

I think there's. I think there's a Reedy press book out on.

Mark00:36:13

Is there?

Arnold00:36:13

Yeah, if there isn't, there will be.

Mark00:36:15

Yeah.

Christopher00:36:15

There actually is one.

Mark00:36:17

Yeah.

Christopher00:36:17

On Bell Fountain.

Mark00:36:18

Yeah. It's a fascinating.

Arnold00:36:19

So how's response been to the book?

Christopher00:36:21

Good. Very good. Selling books, which is always good.

Arnold00:36:26

I really enjoyed. I'm not all the way through. I've. I really enjoy what I've read so far.And you've got some pictures which for some of the folks who like to see some pictures about some of the individuals in there, which makes it a little more personal.There was a story in here I was mentioning to Christopher about a football coach here in St. Louis who was at McKinley and Roosevelt High School, who happened to be my father's football coach.

Mark00:36:49

Okay.

Arnold00:36:50

And was found out a little bit about him which I never knew. So that was interesting. So excellent job.

Mark00:36:55

I think the history of World War II is something we should preserve and be aware of. I think some of this gets lost, I'm afraid.

Arnold00:37:02

Absolutely.

Mark00:37:03

It shouldn't be. You should remember it. Yep. Give us a little pat for coming in.

Christopher00:37:08

Thank you. Great talking with you.

Arnold00:37:10

We've been talking to Christopher Allen Gordon, author. He's also director of library and collections for the Missouri Historical Society. And you want to get his book, folks?It's on Amazon or you can go to reedypress.com Letters home from World War II of St. Louis. Messages of hope and heartbreak from the front lines.

Mark00:37:29

All right.

Arnold00:37:30

Now you can stick around for a little bit. We'll have a couple things to do, and then we'll be done. If that's all right with you.

Christopher00:37:35

Yeah, sounds good.

Arnold00:37:36

You can participate in those things.

Christopher00:37:38

Excellent.

Mark00:37:39

We'll be right back.

Christopher00:37:40

Okay.

Gallery00:37:49

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Arnold00:38:31

Welcome back to St. Louis in Tune. This is Arnold Stricker with Mark Langston. And you want to get the book Letters Home from World War II St. Louis.It's by Christopher Allen Gordon, available at Reedy Press, or you can go to Amazon. Check the podcast page@stlintune.com when we post that and we'll have a link directing you to either of those sources.

Mark00:38:51

I like the tagline. Messages of hope and heartbreak from the front lines.

Arnold00:38:56

Yes.

Mark00:38:56

Yeah, that's what it is.

Arnold00:38:58

Both. Both were going on.

Mark00:38:59

Yep, they sure were.

Arnold00:39:01

So our mental floss for the day. Mark, this is very interesting, and it is St. Louis related.Did you know that the Rockettes, the Radio City Rockettes, were first started formed in St. Louis back in 1925, 100 years old, the Rockettes. And they started right here in the Gateway City or the Mound City.

Mark00:39:21

Oh, they don't look that old.

Arnold00:39:22

No. And I'm surprised, you know, that they're able to kick up in the air 160 times per show. Wow. Like, what in the world?They started with just 16 members. They're the longest running precision dance company in the United States.

Mark00:39:43

Wow. Good for them.

Christopher00:39:44

They were known as the Rockets.

Arnold00:39:45

What's that?

Christopher00:39:46

They were first known as the Rocket.

Arnold00:39:47

The Rockets.

Mark00:39:48

See, we have a historian here. He's gonna.

Arnold00:39:50

And they started with just 16 members.

Mark00:39:52

Back then, and now they have how many?

Arnold00:39:56

84 women have trained. So I don't know exactly how many they have on their little kicking crew.

Mark00:40:02

That's crazy. That's crazy.

Arnold00:40:03

Yeah.

Mark00:40:04

Yeah.

Arnold00:40:04

So what days of the day do you have, Mark?

Mark00:40:06

This one is probably not nothing new for you, Arnold. National Men Make Dinner Day.

Arnold00:40:12

That's right.

Mark00:40:13

You make dinner.

Arnold00:40:14

I make dinner. Yes.

Mark00:40:14

I don't. My son Matthew, my youngest, he's making dinner now.

Arnold00:40:19

Good for him.

Mark00:40:19

Yeah, he's that kind of thing. National Nacho Day. Do you like nachos? Yeah. No, not bad. You like them, Christopher?

Christopher00:40:27

Oh, yeah.

Mark00:40:29

Let's see. International Stout Day. You need to go home and have a. Have some stout.

Arnold00:40:34

A stout beer or a stout Nachos.

Christopher00:40:36

That sounds pretty.

Arnold00:40:36

Chocolate stout cake.

Mark00:40:37

Yeah. With nachos. I'm not. National Basketball Day for those. Basketball's just getting started up. I guess they. They work this out. So when basketball starts.

Arnold00:40:50

Good idea, huh?

Mark00:40:51

Oh, National Saxophone Day.

Arnold00:40:54

Okay.

Mark00:40:54

Didn't you play the saxophone?

Arnold00:40:56

I did on this. I'm a clarinet player by trade, but yes, I played saxophone. Alto sax and tenor.

Mark00:41:01

Yeah. National Team Manager Day. That's for Christopher. It's a team manager. Let's see. I don't. Not much more actually going on here.

Arnold00:41:11

Okay.

Mark00:41:11

Yeah, that's about. That's enough. Maybe I could find more.

Arnold00:41:15

I'm sure for all of those of you who work in an office. And maybe there's one bathroom or maybe there's a couple. I just replaced the can of air freshener in the office bathroom with an air horn.And now we wait.

Mark00:41:32

Love it. That's a great idea. Isn't that a good idea?

Christopher00:41:37

I like that. Yeah, that's great.

Arnold00:41:38

Being cremated is my last hope for a smoking hot body.

Mark00:41:42

That's my wife's smoking hot.

Arnold00:41:46

Robin Hood was hospitalized recently. Doctors think he has a case of meningitis.

Mark00:41:53

Wow. It's dangerous. You're gonna start World War three is what you.

Christopher00:41:58

Yes.

Arnold00:41:59

You're old when you're entering your birth year online and have to spin that thing like you're on Wheel of Fortun.

Mark00:42:09

Oh, man.

Arnold00:42:11

I've not lost my mind. Half of it just wandered off and the other half went looking for it.And yesterday I helped my neighbor hang a 75 inch television that he bought from some guy on the street. When he turned it on, it was the menu from kfc.

Mark00:42:30

I like that. There it is.

Arnold00:42:37

Back to your co workers at work. You talked about the bathroom thing. Here are some nicknames for lazy co workers. Cordless only works for two hours. ET always wants to go home.KitKat always taking a break. Muffler always exhausted.

Christopher00:43:01

Wow. Wow.

Arnold00:43:04

Seaweed just floats around all day.

Mark00:43:06

Oh, yeah, I know that for sure.

Arnold00:43:09

I can't even. I can't see what I'm looking at right now. My eyes are squishing so much. Oh, my gosh. Gotta take my glasses off.

Gallery00:43:17

All right.

Mark00:43:18

Now you can't see.

Arnold00:43:19

Sensor light only works if someone walk walks past. And I love this one wheelbarrow only works when pushed. Maybe you know, some folks like that at work.

Christopher00:43:33

Folks?

Arnold00:43:34

Those are their names. Okay.

Mark00:43:36

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Arnold00:43:36

Goodness. And we'll close with this one.

Christopher00:43:38

What?

Mark00:43:39

There's more.

Arnold00:43:39

Oh. When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. The pain is felt by others. The same thing happens when you're stupid.

Mark00:43:47

Thank you. Take a bow for that one. That is absolutely.

Arnold00:43:50

Oh, mercy, folks. Mercy. So glad that you joined us today. That's all for this hour. Thank you for listening.If you've enjoyed this episode, wipe your eyes just like I am. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can listen to to additional shows@stluntune.com.consider leaving a review on our website, Apple Podcast, Podchaser, or your preferred podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners and continue to grow.Thanks to Bob Bertha Sell for our theme music, our sponsor, Better Rate Mortgage, our guest, Christopher Alan Gordon and co host, Mark Langston. And folks, we thank you for being a part of our community of curious minds.St Lucie in tune is a production of Motif Media Group and the US Radio Network. Remember, keep seeking, keep learning, walk worthy, and let your light shine for Saint Lucian Tune. I'm Arnold Stricker.

Mark00:45:01

Sam.