Routes of the soldier, February 1942 - September 1945, in the U.S.A., Africa, and Europe. Limits of Axis expansion in Europe, U.S.S.R. and N.African Theaters are marked.

The "folks back home," the mythic references of Home Front and War Front, have some relation to reality: here Jill, the faithful girl-friend, and Coonie, the faithful dog, who couldn't write but made up many a letter. Then the Dad and Mom, and the kid brothers, Ed on the left and Vic on the right, both to end up in uniforms that seemed far away from the back- yard this day. And the recruit with his marksman badge.

Also pictured are a barrage balloon and its crew, forever hoisting and lowering the beast at Camp Tyson. The archetypical gang hanging around the barracks stoop, waiting for chow call. (Our Man is on the second step.) And the KP's: the Soldier with his buddy, "Big Hank," peeling potatoes.


The Second Looey strides along a Hollywood road toward his wife holding the camera. The officers are the Lieutenants of Battery "A" of the 301st Automatic Weapons Battalion; the new C.O. was almost clipped out of the picture, no offense intended. The 40mm Bofors, firing manually, emplaced in minutes, somewhere on the vast Fort Sills (El Paso) maneuver grounds. The Lieutenant moving in front of several jutting specters of ancient catastrophes.

Near Camp Ritchie, Maryland, after this couple made love, she went splashing in the brook and he lay back on the sandy bank. The Soviet leaflet that was disseminated among the Germans on the Eastern Front and somehow found its way back to the American spy camp is superbly comical. It is hard to appreciate the horrible conditions under which it was drawn up, produced, distributed, received, and contemplated. No evidence came in as to its effect; rarely did such evidence come in anyhow; the problem practically defies scientific method.

The slinky crew at the Algiers OSS villa, doing nothing much except talking over the War and what they expected might be done when they got to Sicily. Left to right: U.S. Navy's Livingston Hartley, Brit. Pol. Intel. J. Barney, OSS John Whitaker, OWI's George Rehm, OSS Archimedes Patti, U.S. Army's de Grazia and Grigis. Below by the ancient Tunisian well, l. to r., 1st MRBC's Hans Habe, Al de Grazia, Martin Herz and Alfred Grigis. At bottom, a blustering gang of 1st MRBC technicians and their officers, a picture that promptly hit the cover of the widely circulated Printer's Ink in the States. To his credit, the Lieutenant felt silly at being induced into the scene.

The Forward Eighth Army Team poses at bivouac below Mt. Etna before going into Calabria. The officers are l. to r. Captain Robertson, Major Galsworthy, Captain Heycock, and Lt. de Grazia. Cpl. Laudando stands back of Galsworthy, Sgt. Guetta second to his right. Brown Roberts stoops at the left.


The Eighth Army News and Corriere di Siracusa, a single sheet back to back.Charlton made sure to have Monty filling up a quarter of his front page. Note that the British now referred to themselves in Italy as "a liberating army." This was before the moves of the Italian Grand Council to remove Mussolini and quit the War. Note, too, the warnings against looting and hoarding. The troops are warned much more gently. The newspaper was the first to be published in liberated country.


A rare picture given to Lt. de Grazia by the Committee of Liberation of the Bari Region in September: it portrays a conference of Italians in World War I called to discuss means of energizing the war effort, aided and abetted by none other than Major Fiorello La Guardia of the U.S. Army, front and center, on leave from Congress, later Mayor of New York.

The invasion of Italy, l943, including the moving
Fronts and the incursions of the Lieutenant.


The original leaflet shot into The Abbey of Montecassino to warn the several hundred civilians there to get out somehow, a tactic that was frustrated. (Alongside is a translation in English.)

The top picture shows the huge captured truck that Tom Crowell got hold of in Africa renamed the "Gutenberg Special" and transported to Salerno. He installed in it, as the bottom photograph shows, a complete print shop, in which leaflets were printed by the thousands near the front on short notice.

A typical special leaflet produced quickly upon the entrance of a German unit into the line to dispel any illusions and to demonstrate how much Allied intelligence knew of their movements. Not until the War was almost over did the Germans attempt this kind of propaganda, but by then they had few means.

The leaflet, with its translation, that was fired upon the German defenders of the Cassino area, announcing the Anzio landings, hoping to stir up some degree of panic and defeatism. The firing plan for the leaflet operation is reproduced, showing how and where the Cassino Front was littered. It had little chance to work an effect, since the Germans reorganized and counterattacked the Allied beachhead, such that, within several days, they could print their own contemptuous reply, and then a second leaflet for their own troops reassuring them, crowing, "Here is their bottleneck!".

Sidelights of Cassino. The Germans managed to distribute a small number of this leaflet among the Italian population, declaring "Here are the Liberators! The women of the South have come to know them." On the back are described cases of British soldiers committing murder and rape. In a different vein, an unhappy Sikh of the British forces is dreaming of a lovely maiden of India.

Kathryn Esther de Grazia, newly arrived, shows her pleasure at a world she does not know well just yet.

A French medic drew the picture and entitled it "Waiting for Nurses," before a party that the Fifth Army Combat Propaganda Team organized in their cellar at Vairano (as described, too, in the text). The blown-away wall permits this panoramic view of the interior. There can be recognized from l. to r. Nat Getlin, "visiting fireman," then Business Manager of the New York Post; Jim Clark, publisher, uniformed OWI officer and close friend of Lt. de Grazia. "Tiny," a huge New Zealand Captain next to a diminutive New Zealand Colonel. The others cannot be identified at this point in time. The nurses, cheerful and dumpy in their winter woolens, jackets, and boots will ultimately arrive and almost everyone will get drunk.
/a
The "3 Ways" and "Six Ways" messages proved themselves in Italy and then in France. Repeatedly delivered, with only slight modifications owing to the time, place and circumstances, the messages gain poignancy from their basic sense and logic. They are not flashy or sexy; no matter, the soldier has lots of time to think about them and ultimately to become obsessed.




Camera-shy officers of D-Section are snapped by the Lieutenant's little camera as they gather by his chambers overlooking Naples for a twilight whiskey: (l to r) Greenlees, Edmund Howard, Robertson, Hadfield, and Denham.


The only picture here from Sardinia is of three old gentlemen of the town of Ozieri.

More immediate is the photo of the "juvenile delinquents" who have taken over the Home Front, according to the American police authorities and press, echoed by the German propaganda to American troops; Vic is a soda jerk (see backdrop), who, however, in a later letter (below) announces that he has transferred his labor to the "Vic" (sic) cinema. Between them is the eternal pregnant "war widow," by now the mother, of course. Ed soon afterwards joins the Air Corps pilot training program and sends his picture to Brother Al to prove it.The Home Front scene and plot are being replicated in a thousand American communities and by the press.

Here a leaflet that the Germans thought might alienate the French Goumes, who were now chasing them over the mountains above Gaeta. (One wonders why they bothered with translating it into French, since the French superiors were to be damaged by the message.)

The cartoon is a spoof from Bill Mauldin's pen, published in Stars and Stripes on the last dismal day of 1943 -- the vain dream of the magic propaganda bullet to end the war.

At bottom are the two sides of a risqué German leaflet, whose doggeral would appear to have been brought home by a disgruntled German worker some time before or coaxed out of a willing prisoner; that is, it was circulating rarely, and has most likely a true underground folklore origin.

Lightning News, disseminated early in November but in small numbers and poorly. Pasted upon the newspaper is most of the bomb-converting crew in their cave-like shelter, including the men detached from their ammunition company and very happy for that fact. (Rear, l-r, then front, l-r: Galloway, Scott, Becker, de Grazia, Andrews, Glade, Austin, Wagner. Photo by Stubbs.)


A sentimental German leaflet on "How America treats its War Heroes," documentation most likely true and reproduced on reverse. The more matter-of-fact American propaganda drums into the German troops over and over how to stay alive and how to get home.

Palermo Civitavecchia

Captain de Grazia issues a leaflet operations order, one of the several forms he drafted to help systematize Seventh Army operations. The Holiday Greeting Card from G-2 to its own components as the Year 1944 ended illustrates their character. From left to right, the arms are photo reconnaissance and interpretation, translation, documents analysis, psychological warfare and political intelligence, censorship, signals intelligence, OSS "cloak and dagger" ops, counterintelligence, prisoner interrogation, and combat intelligence.



The smaller map shows several details of the German New Year's Offensive on the Seventh Army Front. The larger map complements the earlier map on the Provence Campaign and carries the Allies into Germany. A special line is drawn for the Captain's meandering.

The heaps of bodies of prisoners killed or led to die accumulated in the last days of Dachau before the Camp was come upon by the renowned American Nisei Battalion. They are covered with lime. The Captain will find the picture useful in discussions with persons denying the concentration camps. The freed prisoners have found a camera and are taking photographs of the "Class of 1945 at Dachau."

Looking upon undamaged Heidelberg from its anciently ruined hilltop, April, 1945. From his jeep, as he comes into Bolzano, the Captain snaps a picture of an advancing column of German troops. No need to take cover. From one moment to the next, a large and dangerous army becomes a passive nuisance. Next, one of the first jet-propelled fighter- bomber planes, a Messerschmidt, lacking some essential spare parts, inspected near Innsbruck. The Captain had heard and seen them but never on the ground. They would have made a difference if they had been produced in larger numbers at the time of the invasion of France, for the Allies had no machine so advanced.

The Zones dividing Germany among the occupying powers. The scheme fell into the hands of German leaders before most Allied forces had knowledge of it. Upper right, the note from Ley, much reduced in size. Below, two photos of Goering as he surrendered and was taken away. Hans Wallenberg, soon to edit the Allied German newspaper in Berlin, is the scowling one, front right.

At Schloss Strassberg, the last time the Captain (lolling against the half-track grill) oversees payday. Lt. Constantine is paymaster. A man receives his pay and helps himself to a stein of beer from the barrel. First Sergeant Taubert stands far right puffing the cigarette and talking. Slumped on the chair next to him is the prize fuck-up Private Cook. Sgt. Langedorf is end- man on left of bottom group of four. Maintenance Master Sergeant Adams is sitting addressing the man holding up the umbrella. Mess Sergeant Williams is at extreme lower corner. Sgt. Henschel is being paid. And so they go. The picture is taken from a lower floor of the Castle.
The two small shots are of the Castle and its tower. The last convoy is seen as it moves, front and rear, along the deserted autobahn going North from Augsburg.
Back in Chicago, Jill shows the latest in conveyances for babies and shopping.

The chow line during a meal stop of the troop train from Thionville to Marseilles. The line took three hours to pass the measly kitchen bar.
Kathy and the Captain come to know each other on the day after his return to Chicago.

Looking upon undamaged Heidelberg from its anciently ruined hilltop, April, 1945.
Palermo
Civitavecchia

Jill and Kathy, who is now old enough
to be suspicious of the world, but too
young ever to remember the War, and will
have to study it from maps like these.
The ultimate Surrender Pass, whose history began in World War I and was reinvented in WWII, starting as a crudely printed leaflet and ending up with this fancy document, designed to reassure the wavering German soldier and signed by Eisenhower as Supreme Commander. Millions were shot or dropped; some were used.



A friendly, helpful leaflet fired in air bursts over the town of Forbach, near the German border, where people were in the typical frightening trap of liberation by battle. The Order of February 17 calls for immediate fire by the 80th USID. The leaflet is written in both French and German.