Liberty Lady

I do watch a lot of World War II movies:  my running list of the ones I’ve seen in the past year and a half, just since I started this project.

When I’m driving in my car I also listen to World War II audio books.  I get them from the Roswell Library, sometimes ordering them ahead from branches all over Fulton County.

The most recent was “Soldiers and Slaves” by Roger Cohen. Cohen tells two stories in meticulous detail, running side by side. The first was about the family of Mordecai Hauer who lived a good life in Hungary until the Nazis, i.e. Adolf Eichmann, came to town.

Eichmann had all the Jewish families gathered together and explained to them that they would be taken en masse to a wonderful resort-like camp where they would all be together. The Jews, on the most part, obediently went along. Of course, the armed guards were persuasive. Anyone who objected was marked for murder. Once they arrived at the concentration camp, most of Hauer’s family went to the left and he to the right. Hauer didn’t know it then, but “to the left” meant to be gassed immediately.

The second story told in parallel was of a group of American GI’s who were captured by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. Once they arrived at the Stalag, the boys who were Jewish, had Jewish names, or looked Jewish were separated out and sent to Berga, a small town in East Germany.

At Berga they were forced into slave labor in a dusty tunnel, slated to be built into an underground Nazi storage center. Their treatment was inhumane, from starvation to beatings. The goal was “Work to the death.” Our GI’s began to work alongside the Jews from the concentration camps, among them Hauer … those who still had enough strength (and will to live) left to work.

The GI’s were captured in December of 1944. The war was almost over, but not for them. Their worst experience, a Death March, ended with an American tank coming over the next hill. The Americans couldn’t believe these shrunken men were “ours.”

I was halfway through listening to this story when I flew to New England to interview Charlie Huntoon. At the airport, I bought “Hunting Eichmann” by Neal Bascomb. This was the account of Eichmann’s crimes and capture, years after the war, from his hiding place in Argentina.

So these are the images I have been wrestling with in the past month. I am aghast at how successful the German leadership was in passing down the license to their soldiers and guards to be brutal … so heartless.

Then comes “Inglourious Basterds,” the 2009 movie with Brad Pitt and directed by Quentin Tarantino. I’ve been looking forward to watching the movie because of its reported OSS connection.  It does not do justice to the OSS, as Charles Pinck, President of the OSS Society, wrote in the Washington Post.  Rather, it basterdizes their efforts.  All in the name of great cinema I suppose.

So discount the fact that Brad Pitt’s character mentions the OSS.  That’s not the point of the story.  It’s all about revenge. It’s all about killing Gnat-zee’s. 

You probably heard we ain’t in the prisoner-takin’ business; we in the killin’ Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin’. (Brad Pitt as Aldo Raine)

I started to watch “Inglourious Basterds” while I walked on the treadmill. After 15 minutes, I had to stop.  I was feeling too much anxiety, and besides that, I couldn’t read the English subtitles on my small  TV.

Even on my bigger television set, it was hard to read the small yellow subtitles so I watched the whole movie on the edge of a hassock right up front.

The suspense in Part I was masterfully created.  Christopher Waltz played the #1 most sickening and detestable Nazi in the entire movie.  He won an Oscar for his performance.

The rest of the story involved a plot to kill the Nazi elite… not a good word for any of them.  And though the ending was a fantasy … considering the mood I was in, it was glourious.

This is a follow-up story to my Lee Bean post on July 29th. My sister Barbara got busy on Google and found a story online titled “How to Grow a Mountain Man” written by Meredith Bean McMath. You can find it at www.storyroot.com/MountainMan.html.

Meredith, who is an accomplished author and playwright, had a grandfather from West Virginia whose name was Lorenzo Lee Bean. Yep, L.L. Bean.

When L.L. Bean got married, he and his wife Adelaide moved to Fort Meade, Florida and had three children. Their third, Lorenzo Lee Bean, Jr. was born in 1916. In 1924, the family moved to Lakeland, FL. After the depression hit, the family went back to Virginia.

L.L. Bean, Jr. was known as “Lee.” He entered college in 1933 and joined the football team.

Then the summer after his freshman year, Lee contracted polio. After two years of excruciating exercise, his arm muscle returned and Lee learned to walk with crutches and metal braces. During this period he kept up with his schoolwork and miraculously graduated with his class in 1937.

Next Lee entered law school at the University of Virginia and wound up tutoring none other than the son of President Roosevelt! Not an easy task so when FDR, Jr. graduated, his grateful Dad–the President–thanked Lee in person. That story itself is reason enough to read “Mountain Man.”

Lee took a job in Washington, D.C. as a lawyer with the Department of Agriculture. He lived at the Slaughter Guest House and became friends with Hedvig Johnson.  They often walked to work together. I’m sure Lee told Hedy about his growing up in Fort Meade and Lakeland.

Little did Hedy know that in just five years she would be married to Herman Allen and live only a few miles from there, in Bartow.

Lee married a beautiful young woman named Maxine. He went on to become a successful and honorable Arlington lawyer. He even did a little side job for the CIA.

And for the rest of her years, Hedy talked about Lee Bean to her children and her grandchildren. That’s what kind of an impression this young man made on her. Because of his name (L.L. Bean, Jr.) she and all of us assumed that Lee was the son of the clothier from Maine, that other L.L.

As my brother Bill wrote after he heard the story and read about the “real” Lee Bean: “His story is most fascinating. He sounds like a wonderful person of real integrity. I’m more impressed with this person because of who he really is than some connection to the LL Bean family of Maine.”

When Lee’s daughter Meredith and I emailed back and forth, she knew exactly who I was.  Although her Dad passed away in 1989, her mother Maxine remembers Lee talking a lot about Hedy Johnson… and that he was very fond of her.

The feeling was mutual.

Slaughter Guest House in Washington, DC, 1942

For as along as our family can remember, during the time Hedy lived in Washington DC and worked for the OSS, she talked about one of her apartments … “Slaughter Guest House.”  She was friends with “Lee Bean,” and we always remembered her referring to him as “LL Bean, Jr.”

They often walked to work together. He used crutches, perhaps from polio, she told us.

Well, now that I’m searching for clues I have found that there is no LL Bean, Jr. from the Maine family of Beans. From my research in google and two library books, I have learned that Leon L. Bean had two sons:

1. Lester Carl Bean was born on July 17, 1900 in Freeport, Maine. He married Hazel Haskell on April 18, 1924 in Augusta, Maine. Lester died on October 4, 1967 in Portland, Maine.  I read that Carl, as he was called, and Hazel had no children.
2. Warren Bean was born in 1902. He and his wife had two girls, Linda and Diana. 

Lester Carl Bean became an executive with the company. I can’t find anything on Warren. 

Hedvig Johnson wrote on the back that this is where she knew "Lee Bean."

On the back of the picture of the Slaughter Boarding House, Hedy wrote “Lee Bean.” 

Leon Gorman, the son of LL Bean’s daughter Barbara, and for many years CEO of the company, would have been too young.  And his last name isn’t “Bean.”

I would love for someone who might have more information to comment and let us know who “Lee Bean” might have been.

Charles Huntoon in his working office, July 15, 2010.

On July 15th I had the pleasure of interviewing USAAF veteran Charles Huntoon in Portland, Maine.

1st Lt. Huntoon was the pilot of the B-24H Hoo-Jive that on the 25th of August 1944 left England for Wismar, Germany. Their target was an FW (Focke-Wulf) aircraft engine plant. The B-24 was hit by a burst of flak under the right wing and soon lost its #4 engine. Not long after that, the #3 engine also died. As they started back toward England, with a P-51 covering them, #2 engine started smoking.  Knowing their only other alternative was to ditch the plane in Germany, the crew decided to head toward Sweden. They threw everything in the plane that was not fastened down overboard.

Charlie made a perfect landing at Bulltofta, an airport near Malmö, and the crew was safe.

Initially Charlie went to the internment camp at Falun. Then because he had an engineering background, he was moved to Satenas, an airfield where quite a few of the bombers had been impounded and needed repair.

Charles Huntoon at Falun internment camp works on a canoe he is making for a local little boy. 1944.

After the 1st of the year, January 1945, Charlie was the only American officer on the base. When the internees were given a weekend pass to go into Stockholm, Charlie would debrief them when they returned to base. It was not unusual for the boys to be approached by “characters” asking seemingly casual questions about military details. If there was anything unusual to report, Charlie would take that information to Herman Allen who was stationed in Stockholm at the American Legation.

That is how Herman and Charlie became friends. Herman introduced him to Count Folke Bernadotte. One evening Charlie was invited to the Count’s apartment in Stockholm.  “It was dark with a lot of leather and old wood.” Charles and Count Bernadotte enjoyed an evening of political conversations.

On July 12, 1945, Charles Huntoon flew the same plane back to England that he had brought to Sweden the year before, now with four re-built engines.  His was the last interned plane to leave.

Sometimes I think the folks at home had it rougher than we did. They were so alone, while we were always with friends.

Paul J. Paterni in 1941

After the war ended he returned to the Secret Service.  Paterni was Deputy Chief of the Secret Service under President Kennedy and was very much involved in the investigations after the President was shot.

Leo Sager, Swedish diplomat, was the assistant to Count Folke Bernadotte and was in charge of several of the internment camps.

His wife, Vera Brunner Sager, worked closely with him in the interests of maintaining high morale among the internees. Many Americans were entertained at the lovely Sager home near Jönköping … southern Sweden, not far from the camp at Gränna.

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In 1928, Count Bernadotte married Estelle Manville, the daughter of Hiram Edward Manville, Chairman of the Board of the Johns-Manville Corp.  Her father’s company made asbestos as a fire resistant roofing material.

On August 18, 1928 Time Magazine published this milestone:
Engaged. Count Folke Bernadotte, nephew of King Gustaf of Sweden; to Estelle Romaine Manville, Manhattan debutante, descendant of Jeoffrey de Magnavil, ally of William the Conqueror; in Pleasantville, N. Y.

The beautiful Countess Bernadotte in 1944

The couple was married in the Episcopal Church of St. John in Pleasantville, New York.  This was quite an event as described here.  The day after the wedding they visited the White House and President and Mrs. Coolidge.  

The Countess “Estelle Bernadotte of Wisborg” (as she signed her name) with the Count had occasion to socialize, even at their home, with members of the American Legation in Stockholm including some of the American interness in 1944 and 1945. 

(My thanks to Marlene A Koenig and Royal Musings for the wedding information.)

1945 January 18. Harley L. Robertson, Robert L. Robb, and Count Folke Bernadotte

Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg was born in 1895. His father, Oscar Bernadotte, was the 2nd son of Oscar II, King of Sweden from 1872 until 1907 and of Norway from 1872 until 1905. Sweden and Noway were in union from 1814 to 1905.

According to Wikipedia, the title Count of Wisborg is borne by the male descendents of four princes of Sweden who married morganatically (i.e., married a person of unequal rank and without the consent of the King.) These four Swedish princes lost their Swedish titles and assumed the surname of Bernadotte.

Folke Bernadotte’s father, Oscar, was the first Count of Wisborg.  Thus his son’s title, Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg.  And then when the eldest son of King Oscar II, Gustav V, became King of Sweden in 1907: Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg, nephew to the King.

In 1928, in New York City, he married Estelle Manville, the daughter of a wealthy American businessman.

Drawn to humanitarian work, Count Bernadotte became head of the Swedish Boy Scouts in 1937.

In 1943, he became the Vice Chairman of the Swedish Red Cross, and because of this was responsible for the internment camps in Sweden. He had an excellent relationship with the American Legation and worked closely with the office of the Military Air Attaché.

And this is how Count Bernadotte met Herman Allen, USAAF internee.

(Much of my background information has come from “Last Days of the Reich: The Diary of Count Folke Bernadotte.” This book was first written by Count Bernadotte in 1945 and republished by his son in 2009.)

"Doc Potter" in Sweden 1944

Major Floyd. A. Potter, MD was with the American Air Attache’s Office in Stockholm. Major Potter was responsible for supervising the care of the hospitalized internees.

He is one of the four men making a toast in a photograph posted earlier.

On the American Legation roster, Hedy wrote that he was “my doctor from Ohio.” The doctor loved his fur hat!

The last address for I have for Doc Potter is in St. Petersburg, Florida. I would love to connect with any members of his family.  You can email me at pat@libertyladybook.com

Colonel Michael Steele and USAAF WWII veteran Monroe "Buddy" Stamps ~ two heroes

This is the thirteenth year that Roswell Rotary and the City of Roswell have jointly sponsored Roswell Remembers, a tribute to all our veterans and the men and women who are serving in our military today.

Our keynote speaker was Colonel Michael Steele.  A native of Georgia, he attended UGA and was an offensive guard for the Bulldogs. One of his world-wide deployments was as a Company Commander leading the Rangers during combat operations in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993. The book and movie “Black Hawk Down” was based on this mission.

Colonel Steele spoke with emotion about the war memorials in Washington, DC, in particular The Wall which he often visits at dawn, he explained, to reconnect, to remember, and to refocus. He quoted John Stuart Mill who in the 1800’s said: “… The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” Colonel Steele said that he is inspired by “better men.”

One of the most moving parts of the program is “From the Heart” when veterans come up to an open microphone to speak. Several of them, not without tears, spoke the names of their fallen friends.

So I would like to take this opportunity to name and to remember the two “better men” closest to me who died in their service to our country.

On 22 June 1967 Alvin Gene Hill of Bartow, Florida, was killed in action in Dak To (about 6 miles from the Laos, Cambodia & Vietnam border) in the Republic of Vietnam. Gene enlisted in the army the year we graduated from high school. Gene was awarded the Bronze Star, 2 Purple Hearts, the Military Merit Medal, and the Gallantry Cross with Palm. He is listed on the Wall, Plate 22E, Line 41.

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My high school class has stayed in close touch all these years. All through school, Gene was just one of those great guys … easy going, athletic, good.  His death hurt us all. The war became real.

Ace and his Mother, our Grandmother Emma 1945

And years earlier … on 9 August 1950 Second Lt. Ace Allen was killed in action in Korea. He was a World War II veteran, then went back to Washington State College where he was the top reserve officer training corps student in his class. A platoon leader, he went into active combat August 7th at Taegu. The army wrote to Ace’s mother, “The unit suffered heavy casualties, but accomplished its mission bravely and heroically.”

Ace was 25 years old. He was my uncle.

Two “better men.”