Collaborative writing project by Sinai Wood, Bethany Stewart, Elizabeth Rivera, Sylvia Hernandez, and Beth Farwell
This summer marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the pivotal moment in the Second World War when Allied forces launched their invasion on the beaches of Normandy and thus opened a crucial front in Western Europe which eventually allowed Allied troops to liberate occupied territories. D-Day was a turning point that ultimately led to the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Baylor University’s Texas Collection, Arts & Special Collections Research Center, Government Documents, and the Institute for Oral History have collaborated to highlight items from our unique collections centered around World War II. These diverse sources offer new insights into events like D-Day and the landing in Normandy, papers of key individuals who served, and cultural treasures offering perspectives from the home front.
Government Documents
The American Forces in Action Series (images below) prepared by the War Department’s Historical Division focused on casualty information and “information on the wounded men.” These government documents were written narratively, giving the reader an “at the Corp level and below” account of the invasion. The second image, Enemy Reinforcements is one of several maps in the same series. These facsimile reprints were distributed to federal depository libraries and are now digitized. Reports in this series can be viewed and downloaded at the U.S. Army Center of Military History.
Music at the Arts & Special Collections Research Center
The Arts Special Research Center’s Spencer Sheet Music Collection and Historic Sheet Music Collection hold hundreds of contemporary pieces of popular sheet music on topics related to the war. While there aren’t many songs in the collection detailing the intricacies of military campaigns, they instead serve to personalize the wartime human experience.
The songs express fear, anxiety, loneliness, and longing, especially missing loved ones back home. While much of the music served as patriotic propaganda—inspiring men to fight and folks back home to do their part for the war effort, other songs recalled and personalized otherwise murky experiences. For instance, a number of songs tell about the women’s reserve branches, like the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) of the Navy in “It’s Great to be a WAVE,” and the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) in “The WAC Hymn.” Others reflect on the realities of living with rations, like Carmen Lomabardo and John Jacob Loeb’s “There Won’t Be a Shortage of Love” (1942) which consoles the listener that though there may be “a shortage of sugar, of aluminum pots and such” and that they may “have to ration out rubber we were getting from the Dutch,” there are no shortages on moonlight, stars, or love. Not much convinced, apparently, was Henry B. Glover, the composer of “The Cigarettes Are Out Today” (1945), a song bemoaning that times are tough enough and “now a man can’t get a smoke.”
If we focus our attention on that last period of the war set off on D-Day, there are songs reflecting on the wartime experience and its end, celebrating victory and American military might, and (as we’ll focus on here) injecting some levity with songs considering what to do with military surplus.
Irving Berlin’s “What Are We Gonna Do With All the JEEPS?” (1944), muses:
The men who fight the war until it’s won
Are making plans for when the job is done
They all agree that it will be a task
But here are sev’ral questions that they ask.
What are we gonna do with all the jeeps?
Thinking about the jeeps gives us the creeps
What’ll the Army do with our old mess kits?
How will you squeeze your feet into a shoe that fits?
Where will we put the Army blankets when
Fellows begin to sleep in sheets again?
How will we use the flannels that we got thru Army channels
When the boys come home?
In Harold Rome’s “Little Surplus Me” (1946), a now out-of-work lunchroom server worries about what will happen to her since the once crowded lunchroom has become “a deserted dump”:
But here I stay, wasting away
Among the ham and eggs and cereal,
Look at me! And what do you see?
Another piece of surplus war material!
The Institute for Oral History
Baylor’s Institute for Oral History’s collection preserves the stories of individuals whose lives both shaped and were shaped by history, and now give important insight to the past. The Institute has collected over 7,000 interviews, 4,500 of these interview transcripts are available and fully searchable online, and about 85% of those have corresponding audio files available to stream online.
Among these extensive holdings is an interview with Herman “Hank” Josephs (access the transcript here), who landed on Omaha Beach and was also one of the first US soldiers inside Dachau.
His story is included alongside stories from sixteen other Texas veterans of the Second World War in Stephen Sloan, Lois Myers, and Michelle Holland’s book Tattooed on My Soul.
The Texas Collection
The Texas Collection holds many treasures telling the stories of Texas and its people. Included are those who served in wartime including the Civil War, World War I, Korea, and World War II. In other blogs you can read about Chaplain Robert Preston Taylor who survived the Bataan Death March, and even the 56th Evacuation Hospital Unit with ties to Baylor University. Here though, we are focusing on the Texas Women who served during World War II.
Isabella M. Henry was born in Waco, Texas enlisted in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp in 1942, but completed Officer Candidate School in January 1943 and was commissioned as 3rd Officer in the Women’s Army Corp. Henry received several commendations during her wartime service, and had much influence on her unit’s publications throughout the United States Continental Army Command. Isabella retired in 1946 as a 1st Lieutenant in the Corps, then reenlisted in 1949, and eventually retired as a Major in 1960, after 19 years of service. Henry’s papers include her personal military records, photographs, and certificates she earned while on active duty.
Grace Rosanky Putnam Jones , born in Waelder, Texas, was a Women’s Air Force Service Pilot (WASP) before she worked as a New York fashion model and then later as couture fashion store owner in Salado, Texas. Following the influence of her then husband Tom, according to an article in LOOK magazine, Grace left school and entered the Women Air Force Service Pilots training at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. While her collection is filled with clippings, photographs, and scrapbooks from all phases of her life, the collection provides evidence that being a WASP was very important to her throughout her life since she was an active member in a WASP reunion group.
Nora Elizabeth Potter Simms, born in Brandon, Texas, was an elementary education teacher by trade, but in 1943, she became an instructor at Amarillo Airbase where she began teaching pilots to repair electrical systems on B-17’s and B-29s. Simms’ collection includes diaries, photographs, teaching records, and personal papers documenting her time as an instructor and teacher.
Eleanor McLerran DeLancey, born in Milam County, Texas, was also in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). Earning her degree from Baylor University in 1938 with a double major in Spanish and journalism propelled her career after enlistment in 1944. Eleanor wrote for several Army publications which she subsequently kept as clippings in her scrapbook. The scrapbook also documents the time she served at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia, the Santa Maria Army Air Base, and the Riverside Army Marching Base. It includes her orders, liberty passes, souvenir matchbook covers, event programs, and other materials.
As early women members of the United States Armed Forces, these ladies carried their memories into latter parts of their lives. These collections demonstrate that their service was important to them and ensure that their contributions outlive the living memory so others can know how women have advanced the United States Armed Forces. The Texas Collection continues to ensure their legacy is honored, remembered, and studied.
Baylor Libraries’ collections offer significant resources for your WWII research. If you’d like to know more about titles listed in this blog or see what else might be waiting in the archive and in our stacks, please reach out, we’d love to hear from you! https://library.web.baylor.edu/discover/research-libraries-institutes-and-centers