During Fr. Ralph’s posting in the European Theater from his March 1944 arrival in England until his death in Germany in May 1945, he was a prolific author. He wrote frequently to not only his siblings, but also to various cousins, East Lovejoy acquaintances, and fellow priests from Buffalo. He wrote 52 letters to his sister Anna in three formats: V-Mail, typed letters, and on occasion, handwritten letters. His written letters make for very difficult reading. He did not inherit any penmanship gene – his four sisters got all that DNA. The following 50 plus pages contain all his correspondence to Anna.
For his first letter, which was in V-Mail format, I included a copy of the actual facsimile in real size to show what the reader actually received. The remaining letters are transcriptions of his written/typed words. To the extent possible, I preserved all his typos, jargon, punctuation, spacing, capitalization etc. The heading of each letter is what he typed either on the envelope or the actual letter itself (including date and location if he listed it). None of his letters to Anna were censored or redacted. In the few instances where his writing was totally illegible I used the following convention: xxxxx. I included very little commentary, (red italics at the bottom of the letter) his words speak for themselves. He always hand signed his letters often including a personal closing. For those typed letters, any hand written closures are preceded with /s/.
Ralph’s military career in Europe was always in the 196th Field Artillery Group. This was a HQ command unit supporting a number of artillery battalions on the front lines. After his arrival in England, the 196th was assigned to the 3rd Army (General George Patton) and entered France shortly after D-Day (June 1944). By October 1944, the 196th was transferred to the 9th Army. Ralph speaks to this, and you can see the change in mailing APO’s. There are plenty of sources available to research exactly where the 3rd and 9th Armies went and what they were doing from D-Day until the war’s end in May 1945.
My thanks to Claudia for leading the archival project; I’ll be looking forward to a trip to St. Bonaventure’s to view the exhibit. And a special thanks to Linda Anne for providing the inspiration to start reading and typing!
Lou DeBergalis
August 2018
Note: Each letter is password protected. Clicking on the Letter, Transcript or Envelope will open the piece in a new tab.
The V-Mail letters reflect the quality of the originals in our files. Enlarging the image will make the letter more readable.
|
1945 |
||
March 3 |
Transcript (V-Mail) |
January 1 |
|
March 10 |
Transcript (V-Mail) |
January 5 |
|
March 13 |
January 11 |
||
March 16 |
Transcript (V-Mail) |
January 19 |
|
March 20 |
Transcript (V-Mail) |
January 23 |
|
March 27 |
Transcript (V-Mail) |
February 6 |
|
April 10 |
Transcript (V-Mail) |
February 13 |
|
April 17 |
February 16 |
||
April 23 |
February 24 |
||
April 27 |
March 6 |
||
May 6 |
March 17 |
||
May 19 |
March 27 |
||
May 27 |
March 28 |
||
June 2 |
April 8 |
||
June 11 |
April 10 |
||
June 17 |
April 21 |
||
June 27 |
April 27 |
||
July 3 |
May 1 |
||
July 24 |
|||
July 31 |
|||
August 2 |
|||
August 13 |
|||
August 15 |
|||
August 24 |
|||
September 2 |
|||
September 11 |
|||
September 22 |
|||
October 9 |
|||
November 2 |
|||
November 7 |
|||
November 9 |
|||
November 18 |
|||
December 27 |
|||
December 30 |
|||