June 10, 2013

FINEST HOUR 134, SPRING 2007

BY ROBERT S. PETTENGILL

Mr. Pettengill ([email protected]) is a retired financial executive who served in General Motors’ international operations. He lives near Detroit, Michigan.

ABSTRACT
THE UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY of a soldier’s letters home led his son to track his father’s experiences in World War II—which, like most veterans, he never spoke of. They include a then-classified encounter with Churchill in the field…

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Until just a few years ago I knew nothing of my father’s military experience. I knew only that he was in the U.S. Army in World War II and was stationed in England.

My parents were divorced shortly before the war, when I was three years old. I saw my father only occasionally over the years as I was growing up, and like many veterans, he never mentioned the war and his service.

When my Dad became ill and died, just as I was becoming an adult, I resigned myself never to learning about his early life and his military experience. My discovery just a few years ago of his letters to his mother—263 in all, totaling about 600 pages—and my own research have filled in that major blank.

Wartime censorship of letters home prohibited discussion of sensitive subjects. Anything having to do with military activity in a specific area was banned. Indeed, while a soldier could mention the country where he was, he could not name the city or district. Fortunately my father kept contemporaneously a daily log of where he was and his movements. This was also found packed away with the letters, and matching dates between the two enabled me to determine exactly from where each letter was written. World War II histories and the Internet have enabled me further to determine what actions were going on around him. In the process I discovered a soldiers-eye view of Winston Churchill.

On 25 May 1945 my father, Joseph K. Pettengill, Jr., wrote to his mother from Paris to describe a ceremony he saw at the Arc de Triomphe, in which Field Marshal Montgomery and General Charles de Gaulle placed a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He added a really interesting anecdote which at the time it happened could not be told due to wartime censorship:

“In connection with Monty and de Gaulle, I can tell you a story that I have not been able to tell before. When I went to Northern Italy—to AAI Headquarters (Allied Armies in Italy, or 15th Army Group Hq.), which was General Alexander’s headquarters, Winston Churchill was there. He was on his way to the eastern part of the front. He was there to see the results of the plan of General Alexander to break through the German defenses.

“It was a well formed and executed plan. Thousands of troops and many tanks and all equipment that goes with them had been moved from the west to the east without the Germans finding it out. That was the time of the initial break-through, which was made on the line that then ran through Florence.

“We were introduced to Mr. Churchill and he said (through his cigar) that he was happy that we were there to study air-ground liaison work, and that the British were complimented that we wanted to learn the methods they had developed. He suggested to General Alexander that we be given free rein and that everything possible be put at our disposal. Ain’t I some punkins?”
Curious about his service in Northern Italy, and what “free rein” Churchill had suggested be given, I pursued further research. My father arrived in Italy, at “Purple Heart Valley,” on 13 August 1944. (Monte Cassino had been taken in May.) He was in Caserta and Siena from 24 August to 7 September, attached to AAI HQ—Advance Detachment G-3. He then departed for St. Tropez, France, landing by Higgins boat. (Operation Anvil, aka Operation Dragoon—the invasion of the south of France—had been launched on 15 August.) He was assigned to Sixth Army Group HQ G-3 Air Ground Liaison. A letter written 21 August mentions an “excursion” which he can’t write about owing to censorship.

According to the official biography, vol. VII (906-13) Churchill flew from Naples to Rome on 21 August, where he spent two nights at the British Embassy. On August 23rd he flew to Alexander’s headquarters near Siena. Sir Martin Gilbert, in The Second World War: A Complete History, writes: “Churchill was in Italy on August 23, when, near Siena, he visited the troops who, despite the considerable diversion of forces and weaponry to southern France, were planning a new offensive in three days’ time.”
Churchill spent August 24th visiting his old friend General Freyberg and the New Zealand Division, and the 25th working at Alexander’s headquarters. On the 26th Churchill accompanied Alexander to observe the start of his new offensive. From all this it would appear that my father’s meeting with Churchill occurred at Alexander’s headquarters on 23 August, or, at the outside, on the 25th, when he spent the day working there.

Churchill had noted in his comments, recorded by my father in his letter, that the American visitors were there to study the air-ground liaison work. A study of Air-Ground Support in World War II states: “The British air-ground system was the first successful Allied adoption of close air support for ground forces. As such it became the early model for the U.S. Army Air Force in World War II.”

The last chapter of the “Final Report, G-3 Section, Headquarters, 6th Army Group,” a sort of unit history dated 1 July 1945, discusses the maturing and effectiveness of air cooperation with ground forces:

“In use within the Army Group was an air-ground coordination system brought over from Italy, which initially was not the approved standard operating procedure of either Air or Ground Forces. Because it worked so smoothly and brought closer cooperation, however, details of the plan have since been incorporated in the approved regulations on the subject.”
One can reasonably surmise the system “brought over from Italy” for the Southern France campaign had its origins at that August meeting at General Alexander’s HQ, and that had the endorsement of Churchill.

The content of my father’s letters has been a revelation to me. The Internet has been a wonderful tool in my research, bringing to life his experiences. The 6th Army Group G-3 history was found during such a search. As it turns out, my father helped write this history, while stationed in Heidelberg just after VE Day. More specifically, he compiled the information and drew each of the forty-one maps included in the final report, the original of which is filed away in the United States Army Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Another result of my Internet research was the picture shown here: “August 1944, somewhere in Italy, reviewing plans, General Alexander.” This of course must have been taken at the time my father met Winston Churchill. WSC is studying something just outside a caravan; perhaps it was the breakthrough plan referred to in my father’s letter.

What about his time in England —one of the two facts I had been carrying around with me all these years? As it turned out, my father was there only waiting to be sent to the Pacific Theatre—or home. Two atomic bombs later, after more waiting, he boarded the Queen Mary on 9 December 1945, and returned home.