Dear Bess: January 21, 1919
Transcript
Welcome to the Dear Bess/ Dear Harry podcast for January 21, 2023, a service of Harry S Truman National Historic Site, a unit of the National Park Service.
Today we’d like to share with you a letter written by Captain Harry S Truman to his fiancée, Miss Bess Wallace. Captain Truman and his men were still in France, just over two months after the ceasing of hostilities in World War I. In this letter Truman makes reference to a photograph that he kept in his uniform shirt pocket, a photograph of Miss Wallace that she gave him just before he shipped to France. Truman considered that photograph a good luck charm. He eventually kept that photograph on his desk in the Oval Office from 1945-1953…and today that photograph sits on his desk in his office at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, where you can see it today!
Thanks for listening. Here’s the letter.
Camp La Beholle, near Verdun January 21, 1919
Dear Bess:
Your grand letter of Dec 26 came last night and of course I was as happy as a kid with a bonbon. I am so glad you had a happy white Christmas. It is a good omen I'm sure and I sincerely hope that the "flu" will be an unheard of ailment from this time forward. Your point is well taken regarding the furniture in my room at the Hotel Mediterranee (can't spell it). It would of course be essential to provide either a place to eat or a range. I am very sure that I shouldn't have overlooked a vital point like that even if I am blinded by Eros. My experiences to date have taught me most emphatically that it is very very essential that food be provided in plentiful quantities even if clothing has to be overlooked sometimes. Some of my men have been pretty close to nature at various times as to clothes but if there happened to be plenty of roast beef and baked beans it was a happy bunch. But leave off the eats for a meal or two and it made one "h---" of a mean war" to put it as they do. Therefore I won't overlook that end of it nor any other I hope. The stationary George and May gave you is simply grand and it makes me sorry to have to answer it on this kind but even this hand is at a high premium here. I think Mary's picture is pretty fine myself.
You know I have two breast pockets in my blouse. Naturally you can guess whose picture stays in the left-hand one. I keep Mary's and Mamma's in the other. Yours is the one you sent me at Doniphan and it has never left me from that day to this, nor will it ever. It's been through all the trials and tribulations and happy moments same as I have. I have looked at it many, many times and imagined that you were there in spirit, as I knew you were, and it's helped a lot-especially when things were blue and it would look as if I'd surely blow up if another thing went wrong. I've never blown up and my disposition isn't so very bad. That picture saved it. The biggest worry I've ever had was when I heard that the original of that picture had the flu and the happiest day was when that letter came saying you'd walked uptown. I am hoping that Nice will not be an impossibility to us and I don't believe it will. You did right to send your proxy to Boxley. He's to be trusted absolutely.
We are having another spasm of moving. There have been orders out twice to move up back to a dirty, little old French village but each time Gen. Berry has been able to get them canceled because we have better quarters here than we can possibly get in a town. I suppose though that we'll go this time. I heard a real good rumor the other day. To show you how they start I'll just trace this one for you. An ordanance sergeant (get that ordANance) who was overhauling F.Bty's guns told the Lt who went after them that his own commanding officer, a Lt. had been told by the Generals aide that our guns were being overhauled so that they could be turned in at LeMans on Jan 27 which happens to be the Kaiser's birthday (so he said) and then we'd all go home. Now the whole foundation for that nice tale was the definite order for us to move back to a little old village and be billeted not far from Bar-le-Duc and about 40 miles from here. It's my opinion that we'll stay there until Woodie gets his pet peace plans refused or okayed. For my part, and every A.E.F. man feels the same way, I don't give a whoop (to put it mildly) whether there's a League of Nations or whether Russia has a Red government or a Purple one, and if the President of the Czecho-Slovaks wants to pry the throne from under the King of Bohemia, let him pry but send us home. We came over here to help whip the Hun. We helped a little, the Hun yowled for peace, and he's getting it in large doses and if our most excellent ex-mayor of Cleveland wants to make a hit with us, he'll hire or buy some ships and put the Atlantic Ocean between us and the Vin Rouge Sea. For my part I've had enough vin rouge and frogeater victuals to last me a lifetime. And anyway it looks to me like the moonshine business is going to be pretty good in the land of Liberty loans and green trading stamps, and some of us want to get in on the ground floor. At least we want to get there in time to lay in a supply for future consumption. I think a quart of bourbon would last me about forty years.
I hope you have a most happy birthday and that you never see another one without me to help celebrate and then may they go on without end. Remember me to your mother and Fred and Frank and Natalie and George and May and just keep writing when you feel inclined, because I love you.
Always, Harry
This charming letter, written by Captain Harry S Truman in 1919, has a stunning paragraph about a photograph that Truman carried in his uniform shirt pocket. Has any other president (or future president) ever written a more sweet paragraph?
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/truman-papers/correspondence-harry-s-truman-bess-wallace-1910-1919/january-21-1919