Images and Quotes

 All photos were found in Tony Pritchard's trunk; all quotes are from his letters home

 

Tony Pritchard's parents and sister Elsa, in the back yard

 "So, trust me, have some faith in me, don’t worry unnecessarily, (you’ll do some of that I know, regardless of my pleadings to the contrary) and lay in a Helluva big supply of rye!"  - Letter from England, June 6, 1944

 
"Ever present, too, is the problem of writing to those who have no close contact with the war.  I have spoken often of this, I know, so often that you perhaps feel that I regard you as travelers so distant that you cannot comprehend anything of what goes on..." - Letter from Luxembourg, February 3, 1945    

A fellow soldier of Tony's battalion, France, 1944

. ..The chaplains say you should chat about the weather etc., but when you're pretty close to this stuff, it’s sorta stupid not to talk about it.  Maybe you don’t understand, - right now the war is my life, - even sitting down to write a letter seems like a crazy contradiction, a gay joke that’s between me and me... "- Letter from France, August 16, 1944

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Letter home, Bearing the Army Censor's Stamp

Location Unknown, Western Europe, 1944 or 1945

"I could give you lengthy details of the destruction I’ve seen, (TNT is a terrible destroyer, - but there is something monotonously similar about wrecked buildings) ...It’s most depressing to see an area so beat up, - everywhere everything is beat-up."  - Letter from France, July 27, 1944

Left to Right: Tony Pritchard, Jerry Cura, Albert Murphy

...A couple of the boys, Jerry Cura, - a Helluva good boy from Boston and a rough little Harp named Murphy (my driver) and I have shared a few experiences that I won’t forget for a long time...  I’ve been scared, really trembling scared, just once... -Letter from France, August 16, 1944


In the not too distant future you may be visited by a few of my very good friends.  Several men have left the Battery for a trip home and subsequent discharge.  [One} was a member of what I consider a pretty good forward observation crew (Cura, Murphy and I) a tough-looking little Irishman possessed of many guts and fine sense of duty... name of Murphy, who drove my jeep and carried a radio through more than one warm session.  They are good men, these, - I know that I don’t have to ask you to make them welcome - Letter from Germany, June 2, 1945, after the end of WWII in Europe. 

A  French Village Greets the U.S. Sixth Armored Division

"The demonstrations in the villages...bring mixed feelings.  Wildly cheering, flower-tossing crowds line the streets and if you dared stop they’d mob you and the whole column would have to stop.    ...But then you see an old couple standing by the road, waving a home made American flag that hasn’t got the proper number of stars on it, all choked up ...with tears streaming down their faces, and you ask yourself – What the Hell is the matter with people that they’ve got to act like animals? – Jesus Christ Almighty, or Somebody why is it?" -  Letter from France, August 16, 1944

Armaucourt, France, Autumn 1944

"...Well illustrating of the casual attitude that we cultivate toward destruction of all kinds is an incident that occurred at this O.P. [observation post] ... Seriously, I doubt that one of the gleeful “doughs” that witnessed the spectacle stopped to think that it was somebody’s home which was being ripped to Hell!..." -Letter from France, December 16, 1944

Near Bastogne, Belgium, December 1944 or January 1945

Tony (left) and His Battery Commander

"Never have I endured a session such as that we had at Bastogne..., -- great, heavy snows, almost paralyzing cold (9+10 above zero) so that day or night we never actually were warm, and which combined with combat excitement caused some of us to almost lose control of our kidneys... Thru this we fought, - and fought very hard.  Thru the endless woods of the Ardennes we crawled our way thru the hip-deep snow with all the heavy clothes and the impedimenta of 20^th century war-making.  

But, - and this is the only compensating factor, --- we kicked out the Goddamn Krauts!...Maybe that’s nothing very lofty to be proud about, -- but right now I’m a soldier, and about all I can be proud about is being a part of some good soldiering.  And, believe me, that was pretty good soldiering." - Letter from Germany, March 12, 1945

Location unknown, Europe 1944-45

"...the other side of the town provided the contrast.  Here were women and girls, their sweaty, singed hair plastered to their foreheads dodging between our pounding vehicles with an inadequate bucket of water to cool the inferno that used to be home, - to stop the crackle a little.  They’d look at you, frightened and animal-like, to see if they could read the answer to the question of whether you’d stop to let them pass with their pitiful pail, or whether, if they left the safety of the curb, they’d be run down..." - Letter from Germany, April 8, 1945

American-built Bridge over the Rhine, 1945

"We crossed that raging torrent [The Our River, which separates Germany from Luxembourg]  in assault boats ..My crew...going across with the first company.  So that now I hold the unique distinction.. of being the first person... to go onto German soil from this battalion.  The Colonel came down (he’s a son-of-a-bitch on this “first” stuff, -- a regular beaver!) after we had the bridgehead pretty well established and decided he’d go across on the foot-bridge that the engineers had put in, -- and thus hold the dubious distinction.  Stock, one of our observers with another company said to him, a little gloatingly I expect “You’re too late, Colonel, Pritchard’s been over there a Helluva while!” Letter from Germany, March 12, 1945. 

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