The Victory Mail or V-MAIL Program and World War II

The Victory Mail Program referred to as V-Mail was created by Kodak, Inc. and developed by Recordak, as a system of delivering mail to GIs via a micro film process. This process lightened the load of overseas mail by microfilm and allowed for a shorter delivery and response time between recipients. In a letter composed Dec. 7, 1942 by the Secretary of the Navy, Frank, Knox, he introduced the V-Mail system as follows:

1. Due to lack of transportation facilities and urgent war demands, the prompt delivery of air-mail and ordinary mail is becoming more difficult. Only fifteen percent of the total foreign personal air mail volume was transported by air during the month of November.

2. Extensive utilization of V-Mail service will solve this problem as it will mean that personal mail can be transported abroad by air instead of waiting for surface ships, as is now necessary in many cases. Also, it will relieve the heavy mail burden now carried by our ships, trains and planes in this country by reducing the weight material.

3. The use of V-Mail cuts down the carrying weight about 98 percent for overseas mail, and 40 percent for mail within the country. Encourage your friends to use V-Mail. It may be sent anywhere free by men in the Armed Forces, and for the usual three cent stamp, by civilians. The forms can be bought at any good stationary store or may be obtained at no cost through Government post offices or mail rooms of the Navy Department.

To send a V-Mail from home, a relative or friend would use the special V-Mail stationary. Then following the directions on the special stationary it would be folded and sealed then sent with a regular stamp to the serviceman’s military address. The address would either be in New York City or San Francisco, depending on the serviceman’s station. The letter would be forwarded to the Recordak section in a Kodak laboratory, where it was microfilmed along with hundreds of other letters from mothers, fathers, wives, sweethearts, etc. A total of 1700 letters were photographed on a 100 foot roll of Recordak film that weighed about seven ounces and could fit into a space slightly larger than the size of a cigarette pack. One plane of V-Mail microfilm rolls contained as many letters as 49 planes packed with regular air mail letters.

The foreign destination of the rolls was a strategically located V-Mail station. At this station, a reduced size paper print was made of the microfilmed letter and relayed to the serviceman’s unit. Usually, no more than two weeks elapsed between the day Mom wrote her letter and the time her son received it. When servicemen answered letters from home the procedure was just about the same, in a reverse direction. The only exception was that the servicemen’s letter would go through a censorship process before being released.

The Recordak process was developed by Charles Z. Case during the 1930s when he worked for Kodak as an assistant to Production Manager. His plan was put into operation in the Spring of 1941 by the Great Britain postal service and was referred to as the Airgraph Project. When it was adapted by the U. S. military Uncle Sam drafted much of the Recordak’s personel to get the project up and running in the Army, Navy and Marines. The Recordak personnel then trained servicemen on the equipment and process. Eventually V-Mail was sent to all theatres of the war were soldiers were stationed. V-Mailers island hopped right along with the combat units that pushed the Japanese out of the Southern Seas. Before the end of the war, V-Mail stations were strung out from Hawaii to Okinawa.

On the Atlantic Theatre, V-Mail stations were usually placed in strategic cities close to the front lines which included Casablanca, Algiers, Oran, Palermo, Naples, Marseilles, Paris and London. The stations were also located in Alaska, India, Greenland, Iceland and South America to accommodate all the servicemen who were stationed there. An estimated total of over 1 ½ billion letters were delivered by V-Mail during WWII.

The Good Oaks of Oldham County

In one of his famous essays from A Sand County Almanac, 20^th Century conservationist, Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), recalls historic events from the rings of a fallen oak tree that is 80 years old, as he chops the oak into smaller pieces for firewood. Each ring of the oak bears witness to seasonal events and changes throughout the years. As one travels the landscape of Oldham County there are still many trees that stand out as witness to the change over course of time. Some of the largest and oldest trees in the county include tulip poplars, cottonwoods, sycamores, water maples, and certainly, the oak trees.

A  Shumard Oak Tree in Pewee Valley held the state record in size until it was ousted in 2003 by a tree in Powell County. That Pewee Valley oak tree began its’ growth as author Annie Fellows Johnston was penning her Little Colonel series in the early 20^th century, based from the real lives of characters that lived in the small, southern community. Occasionally when driving through the county one may see a large bur oak standing in a field or perhaps on a nature walk find one of these large, prairie bur oaks hidden among a second growth forest.

The bur oak is a tree of savannas which are remnants of another era in Oldham County when the natural community consisted of an interglacial, drier time. These majestic trees would have been more prevalent when bison roamed the area. Many of these trees are 200 years or older- some reaching the stout old age of 400 years old! But 400 years seems infantile when compared to the 500-800 year life span of a great white oak.

The white oak is a very well-known and beautiful shade tree that has contributed significantly to Kentucky’s bourbon industry. The industry had its roots in the frontier wilderness when the Governor of Virginia offered pioneers sixty acres of land in Bourbon County (which later became most of Kentucky) to raise corn. Naturally, settlers quickly found the benefits of corn as a whiskey product particularly when produced with the limestone spring waters and aged in white oak barrels. Oldham County’s small pioneer communities, like most places in frontier Kentucky, became plentiful with small distilleries. It was bourbon that became a special form created, distilled and aged in Kentucky which today produces 95 percent of the world’s bourbon.

Recognized as America’s native spirit, Congress passed legislation in 1964 that no whiskey can call itself Bourbon unless it is manufactured within the United States according to the Bourbon formula. The formula states that bourbon whiskey must: be distilled at not higher than 160 degrees F, from a fermented mash of grain containing at least 51% corn and stored at not more than 125 proof in new, charred, white oak barrels. The oak wood is split into staves that are super heated and bent into barrel form. The barrel is then toasted and charred on the inside. This process caramelizes the sugar that is in the wood and imparts a vanilla, caramel flavor of the bourbon. White oaks are sometimes referred to as stave oaks because of their role in barrel making. In years past most distilleries had their own cooperages that produced the new barrels but today they have dwindled in number with the primary cooperage owned by Brown Forman in Louisville.

White oaks have many other uses than storing bourbon of course. It was the tree that pioneers depended upon for strong ship timbers, floors, panels and furniture.

But its’ value has more benefits than money. The white oak symbolizes tradition, longevity, vitality and beauty. It is a rugged tree that gives thousands of acorns each year benefiting animals such as deer, bear, squirrels, rabbits, various birds and insects. The acorns can be ground into flour which was often a staple during cold, pioneer winters. The lumbering giant oaks often stand alone in a field, providing shade and respite for cattle and horses and perhaps weary travelers in bygone years.

These slow growing trees, can obtain a life span of potentially 500-800 years, obtain heights of 80 to 100 feet and girths of 10-15 feet, often spreading branches out to over 100 feet. As young trees the oak casts its roots into deep water tables and then spreads taproots outward as it ages. The tree grows in a wide range of temperatures and soil varieties.

As the glacial ice receded the northern banks of the Ohio River, the oak were scattering seedlings and thrusting up their trunks, becoming one of the most prominent of species of the mixed Mesophytic Forests of Kentucky. The mixed Mesophytic Forest is the forest type which gave rise to the plentiful and abundant forests that dominated the Eastern United States when first settled by Europeans and African Americans. When forests are cut and left abandoned, it is the white oak and it’s oak relatives that are often first to repair and re-grow the forest.

The great white oak trees are living legends that witnessed stories from Oldham County’s past- each branch transfigures the sky and is indicative of seasons past. White oaks are slow growing and do best when planted by acorns. Consider yourself lucky if you have one of these ancient neighbors nearby.

Dabney Clore is the 2011 recipient of the Lowry Watkins Jr. Summer Internship Award at the Oldham County History Center. Dabney is an art history major at the University of Louisville. As part of her internship this summer, she researched the claim that two of the portraits at the Oldham County History Center were painted by naturalist John James Audubon. Her findings are submitted in the following article for this week’s column.

Big Foot Billy and John James Audubon

Major William Berry Taylor, better known to his fellow pioneers as “Big Foot Billy”, was the largest landowner in the County. He was said to have “owned all the land he put his foot on”, hence the endearing nickname. His legacy endures to this day as a pioneer, a founding father of Oldham County, and as a portrait sitter for John James Audubon, the artist and naturalist that gave us Birds of America.

Major Taylor came from Virginia to Kentucky in 1796 with his wife, Susan Harrison Gibson to settle on the thousand acres he had purchased in Ballardsville. Visitors came for miles to see “Spring Hill”, the brick house considered so elegant and large by pioneer standards. After the turn of the century, Major Taylor successfully petitioned the “Crossroads” site as Oldham’s County seat, it being the “crossroads between Shelbyville and Westport, and New Castle and Louisville.” On May 21, 1827, he submitted a deed designating 50 acres of his land to the new site of the County’s seat. Oldham County residents today know the site by the name Taylor later gave it, LaGrange.

In the heart of newly settled LaGrange, on the corner of Second and Main where the firehouse stands today, stood the Old Kenyon Hotel. Major Taylor built the hotel, and it has long been told and retold that John James Audubon was once a guest there. That is the story behind the story, that a pair of unsigned portraits of the Major and his wife were painted by Audubon. The Taylors’ portraits are part of the Oldham County Historical Society’s collection, and one can’t help but wonder if we might have an authentic Audubon right under our noses.

It seemed this story was not as far-fetched as I thought when I first heard it. Audubon spent several years in Kentucky and the surrounding Ohio and Mississippi River regions, living a penniless and nomadic lifestyle in the pursuit of the completion of Birds of America. The early 1810’s place him in what was then the wilderness of Henderson, Kentucky; he owned a string of general stores that went under in the panic of 1819, and traveled to Louisville to file for bankruptcy. Although drawing birds would make him famous, it wasn’t until the 1830s that it would make him any income. Throughout his journey and work on Birds of America he held various odd jobs, and hired himself out to do quick charcoal portraits for $5 apiece.

The Philadelphia Institute of Fine Art is in possession of a pair of these portraits, depicting a Mr. and Mrs. Peter McClung. A Mr. Peter McClung was recorded living in Louisville with his wife in the Federal Census of 1820- this verifies both Audubon’s presence in the Ohio River Valley as well as his portraiture. Later that year, he made his way up the Ohio River to Cincinnati and worked for a while as a drawing teacher and a taxidermist. Then in 1821, left Cincinnati and his family behind and traveled down the Mississippi River in pursuit of his lifelong dream to create a catalogue of America’s ornithology. These earlier travels of 1820, before he headed south, more than likely brought him through Oldham County.

However, comparison of the McClung portraits to our Taylor portraits revealed outstanding differences. Major and Mrs. Taylor were painted in oil on fabric measuring 24 x 20”, unsigned and undated by their artist. In contrast, the McClung portraits were done in black chalk and pencil and measure roughly 8½ x 11¼ “. They are signed, “J.J. Audubon/ March 1820/ E. de David” in the mixture of French and English that was typical of Audubon’s writings. Our Taylor portraits are much larger, unsigned, and done in a very different medium than the confirmed McClung portraits. The signature on the McClung portraits even includes the claim Audubon often made that he was an élève (former student) of Jacques-Louis David, the Neoclassical French painter behind the masterpieces Oath of the Haratii and Death of Marat.

Both his contemporaries and present scholars noted this habit of embellishment. Audubon’s accounts in his journal entries and letters are so theatrically told that they read like fiction. Even his beloved Birds are less his than he would have liked us to believe. Joseph Mason, a 13-year-old drawing student who studied under him in Cincinnati, accompanied Audubon from Cincinnati to New Orleans. Mason was chosen not just for companionship, but also for his skill in drawing. He would be asked to create the botanical backgrounds that surround the birds, although Audubon soon asked Mason to do the “feet, legs, eyes, and beaks” of the birds as well. All Audubon can truly claim as his own work, is the bodies of the birds. Mason signed the drawings in pencil and was promised that his signature would appear on the engravings when they were published. Shamelessly, these pencil signatures were removed before the engravings were cut. Audubon’s own signature, conveniently done in Indian ink, is the only one that appears in the published product.

By 1826, Audubon and Mason had drawn their way from Cincinnati to New Orleans, and Birds of America was complete. Audubon took his portfolio to a publisher in London, since the States did not yet have an engraver or print shop capable of printing the life size color plates requested. Though his earlier business ventures had flopped, Audubon personally oversaw the printing, distribution, promotion, and sales of his Birds. He returned to America in 1831, famous and wealthy. He purchased property along the Hudson River in Upper Manhattan, now Audubon Park, and lived there with his family until his death in 1851.

Unfortunately for those hopeful to discover that Oldham County possesses its only little slice of the Audubon’s fame and glory, this places him out of the country in 1830, when the Taylor portraits are dated. Supposing that 1830 is an approximate date, we still cannot attribute them to Audubon. If they were painted later than 1830 after his return, we cannot place Audubon near LaGrange. Furthermore, it would be highly unlikely that he would paint portraits; he lived quite comfortably from the sales of Birds and traveled leisurely to create his subsequent catalogues.

Audubon authorship is more probable if we suppose they had been painted ten years earlier than they are dated. Audubon was in the area and more than likely passed through Oldham County to reach Cincinnati from Louisville. But even then, the problem of their being done in oil paint can’t be fully answered. There is nothing to verify that Audubon ever used oil paints. He always painted his birds in watercolors, using chalk or pastel to heighten the colors.

How the story stuck is no mystery, it would seem only fitting one of history’s most interesting characters should paint another. And while the Taylor portraits are as charming and lifelike as any of Audubon’s birds, it would be too far a stretch to confirm Audubon authorship. Dates surrounding the story don’t quite line up with Audubon’s recorded whereabouts, and it’s difficult to link him to any oil paintings. Most likely, some other penniless unknown, who never quite found the critical acclaim that Audubon so desperately strove for, deserves the credit. So here’s to all the unknowns.

Sidney Dearinger, U.S. Army

Korean War: Pork Chop Hill

I was born August 1, 1932 in Davenport, Kentucky. I went to a one-room school house in Butler County. I was drafted when I was barely 20 years old on October the 2^nd, 1952. At Camp Pickett, Virginia, I took eight weeks of Infantry training and eight weeks of Medical training. I went to Korea and thought I was going to be a Medic and when I got there they said, “No, we don’t need Medics. We need riflemen, people in the Infantry.” So they put me in the Infantry and I carried an M-1 rifle all the time I was over there.

Well we landed in Pusan on the 5^th of April and we got on an old train and headed up towards the front and all along the way, I would see those big guns, and artillery shells stacked up fifty foot long and ten foot high all the way through there with camouflage netting over it. I knew right then that I was going to war. We got on a truck and they took us to Easy Company, 17^th Regiment: Pork Chop Hill. That was the only place we fought. We would go up to Pork Chop Hill for like three or four weeks and then we would come back to the rear about three miles and train and work and train. We had good leadership. Our Company Commander graduated from West Point. My platoon leader won a battlefield commission in WWII and the First Sergeant was a WWII veteran. The guys were young, a lot of 17, 18, 19 and 20 year olds. At night we had to stand all night in a bunker and stare out at No Man’s Land because we were always on high alert. They said, “If the Chinese get control of Pork Chop Hill they have a straight shot right at Seoul, Korea”, which was the capitol. So we had to stay awake at night and sleep a little bit when ever you could.

When we stayed up at night, we had to go on what they called a Listening Post. You couldn’t talk; you couldn’t smoke. If you had to talk to somebody, you whispered. Just before daybreak, we had to go back to the main line and some soldier is standing up there with a machine gun in a bunker and he is tired and he’s sleepy and you hope he doesn’t shoot you. So we always had a password and we would give him the password and he would say, “Come on in!” I was up on Pork Chop Hill one time and the Koreans had old men come up there to work on the bunkers and things, lay sand bags. I caught one of them with a compass. This is a South Korean, too, the friendly people. He was zeroing in on one of our bunkers. I snatched him out of there and my squad leader called the Company Commander and the Company Commander stuck a .45 in his back and told him to march. I don’t know what happened to him.

When we went back to the rear from the front line, we had to work. We dug trenches to lay communication wire where ever that needed to be done, and trained. We were firing weapons all the time. We would run a couple miles every morning to deep in condition because all those hills were just like straight up. It really took something out of you when you climbed all the way up them hills loaded down with supplies. On the 8^th of July one morning, we got on a truck and they took us to a staging area and the company Commander told us what to do and what not to do. One of the things he told us not to do was get in them bunkers when we got up there. “Don’t get in them bunkers because we are going to blow ‘em up!” So we were all there sitting there on the ground and three Chaplains came up there and they gave us something to eat and my squad leader said, “You better go to church.” That evening about one or two o’clock in the afternoon, our artillery really bombarded them. Half of the guys didn’t make it up the hill. My platoon leader was the First Lieutenant who had been in WWII, he got hit, got right back up and kept going and got hit again. The Medic ran over to take care of him and he said, “The Hell with me! Take cake care of my men!”

We got on the Hill – half of us got up the Hill– and they were standing on the front slope of the Hill throwing hand grenades and machine gun fire and all kinds of small arms fire at us. The battle raged like that just from eye ball to eye ball for two days. We finally got control of the Hill. The General of the 7^th Infantry Division said, “Hold the Hill at all costs!” We finally took the Hill but we paid a heavy price for it. In Korea because you were outnumbered ten-to-one, they said you had two choices: to either give ground or die. The Chinese would just attack in waves. The first wave would come and you would fight them off. The second wave would come and you would fight them off. Then the third wave would come and you would fight them off. Finally they would over run you position. They would get in the trenches with you and it was really hectic. I got a Bronze Star for helping a lot of men. I carried a lot of wounded men to the Medics and come back. I couldn’t stand to see men screaming. I just tried to help them.

The conditions were muddy and it was real hot. It was about 100 degrees and bodies laying everywhere on Pork Chop Hill. They say that was one of the biggest battles of the Korean War. I would say we started out with about 180 men or more. Only 16 of us walked off the Hill. Only a few came back from the hospital. I think only one officer from our outfit came back from the hospital. The Company Commander didn’t come back and only one officer and about ten men came back from the hospital. They signed a Cease Fire on July the 27^th, 1953, but after they signed the Cease Fire they told us to – on account of the Geneva Convention, they had rules that they were only allowed to have so much ammunition up there – and they told us to start firing your ammunition. (laughs). We still stayed up there at the front. They would let you sleep at night and [in the winter time] you had a warm sleeping bag filled with goose feathers. Korea was a lot colder than Kentucky, but it was a damp climate like Kentucky. I left Korea on April 16^th, 1954. The First Sergeant came in and said, “Dearinger, you are going home!” That was the happiest day of my life. I met the love of my life after I was discharged and we were married a year later August the 27^th, 1955.

Norman Mitchell, U. S. Army

Korean War

(Mitchel is pictured on the far left)

As a youngster, we had just come to Louisville from Trigg County. We moved down on Broadway when World War II broke out. I remember my father saying, “Son, we are at war.” I was about ten years old. I remember the stamps and how we had to get the scrap metal and the Savings Bonds. And I always wanted to be a soldier. So in July the 14^th of 1950, I became 18, the age to join and ten days later I was at the Post Office taking the test knowing full well in all probability I would go to Korea. That is what I wanted to do. The War began in June of ‘50 and I joined in July of ’50. I wanted to serve with General Douglas McArthur. He was one of my heroes at the time. I was a senior and left Male High School. We went across the street to the L&N Building. There we took a physical. Then going back to the Post Office I remember standing up and holding my hand up and saying, “I do.” And as soon as I said ‘I do’ I asked the person if I could go back home - I lived down on 945 Fifth Street about three blocks from the Post Office - and get some money and he said, “No! You’re in the Army now!”

We took the six-week’ Basic Training at Fort Knox then we had Advanced Infantry Training in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. My MOS was that of a machine gun. I was an expert on field stripping an M-1. After Advanced Training we were given a furlough for Christmas. After Christmas we went to the Greyhound bus station and headed for Massachusetts and were assigned to an outfit that was on call to go to Korea. From Worchester, Massachusetts at Fort Devens, I remember the long, long train ride to California by troop train. We went on the troop ship [U.S. General Black]. Sea sickness never bothered me. I can remember one night we hit a storm. I had to tie myself in the bunk to keep from falling out. I use to think, “How could you ever be somewhere and no matter which way you looked, you couldn’t see land?” - fourteen days and you don’t see land. We were based in Mt. Fujiyama to prepare us for the coldness that we would face in Korea. It was in January 1951.

There was one other Kentuckian from Prestonsburg, and Elwood Rollins was from – the first time I heard the term “West by God Virginia - West Virginia. Earl McDonahue was from Virginia. My best friend of all times was James Jenkins from Texas and Kenny. We were very close. During the cold, cold winter, there were nights that we just prayed to die. There is no coldness in this United States that could compare to the coldness in the first winter of Korea. It was cold. We had a two-man tent and the sleeping bag that had the little liner in it. We boarded an LST in route to Korea. Maybe about 30-40 minutes outside of Korea we heard, “Now hear this! Now hear this! You will now be issued ammunition. You will lock and load.” I had been issued an M-1 carbine, not automatic, just single shot and 15 rounds.

We landed in Puson and when we went through Seoul you could see the devastation. We were put into a convoy of deuce-and-a-halves with the canvas on them and the soldiers would set on the sides. We were just about to pull out of Seoul and all of a sudden I began hearing fire crackers, what I thought was fire crackers. You could hear the word coming back from the different vehicles, “Hit the dirt! Hit the dirt! Hit the dirt!” So we hit the dirt. That was the first time I had seen a rice patty. The rice patties are wet and cold. So we were lying on the rice patty on the bank and I said to a guy, “Who are we shooting at?” We were pinned down by snipers. You couldn’t see them so we were just shooting: pap-pap-pap-pap-pap.

We set up camp in the Chuncheon Mountains. Our job was to keep the front lines in communication. We laid the lines for them; some of them were set on little poles, little tooth picks. They are very hard to climb, especially up to 30 foot. But the First Sergeant got called on his telephone. I heard him say, “No, Sir. Yes, Sir.” And when he put the phone up, I’ll never forget the look on his face. He said, “Mitchell, the [North Koreans] have broken through the lines. We are surrounded and we’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got thirty minutes. We cannot hold it any longer. We better retreat. What you can’t take, you burn.” And there was only one way out and that was through the Chuncheon Mountains. It wasn’t a paved road like it is today. That is what Pierce and Campbell, Rollins and myself were riding in back of that truck; scared to death, the tom-toms were going off. We could hear them all day. We knew they were getting close. We were attached to the First Marines in the Third Division and we could see some of the casualties of the First Marines being hauled back. First time I saw people stacked up like cords of wood. As a matter of fact I couldn’t figure out why their boots were gone. The North Koreans, took them.

So that night we retreated to a little town called Yeoju, South Korea. We set up camps and the sun began to come up. When you began to get a little bit warm, you felt better about it. You thought, “Wait a minute, we have been hit today, but we’ve got MacArthur…‘We shall return’”, you know. I am proud that I served with him. The day that we got the word that Truman had pulled [MacArthur] out, it angered the G.I.’s. If I had had Truman in the sites of my M-1, I would have took him out.

We’d camp and would start again; we would move forward. The Chinese had pack animals. As we were going back up we could see the animals floating and bodies floating in the river. I remember saying, “Where do we get our drinking water?” I said, “My God, it stinks! Even the water in the Lister bags stinks. A Lister bag is a big double bag full of water - we put some kind of treatment in it so we could drink it. It was OK to drink but it tasted terrible. We ate C-rations. It was OK. Occasionally we would get to go to Seoul and get a good meal. We had some entertainment there, Bob Hope and Piper Laurie, I saw them. Occasionally we could get something on the radio. There was a song I remember hearing it for the first time. It was “Cry” by Johnny Ray, “If your sweetheart sends a letter…” Mostly we would sit around and talk and learn about other parts of the country. We were always near the front lines.

There were things that I saw that I tried to erase. The one thing I have never known in my life is hunger. I’ve been cold, but I’ve never known hunger. But I saw people hungry. The stuff we would throw away, the pile of debris, food, so on, to see the young kids, mamasans, papasans, digging through that for food. I can remember the hunger.

I remember we come across this little guy, his mother and father had been killed. The G.I.s would always give names to the Koreans; well we named this little boy Jimmy. He was our house boy. He could get into the villages and knew how to speak their language. He could take our clothes and get our clothes washed and do what ever you needed him to do. He was maybe ten. He was with us through the remainder of that winter.

Back home one morning, a guy said, “Hey Mitch, take me out to GE.” He said he was going to fill out an application. So while I was there, I filled out one and started work on August 13^th, 1953. At GE I ran for Trustee for the Union in 1968 and eventually became Chief Steward in 1971. I was elected three times.

Kate Mathews: Early 20th Century Photographer from Oldham County

An example of Kate’s romantic stylized photography is shown in this photograph.

Kate Mathews (1870-1956) was one of the first well-known female photographers in the country. During her lifetime, she printed hundreds of photographs, and her work was shown in galleries and museums around the country, New York’s Whitney Museum of Art and in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Kate spent most of her childhood and adult years in Pewee Valley, living in her family home known as Clovercroft. She was one of eight children born to Lucien and Charlotta Ann Mathews. Most of her photographs center on people and places of the Pewee Valley community; she befriended and photographed nearly everyone she ran across, including the town minstrel, Jim Felton, who often played for her.

She had whooping cough as a child that damaged her eyesight and rendered her fragile throughout her life. She could not attend public school, so she was tutored at home. Her father was a camera enthusiast, and Kate became interested in all phases of his photography. Her father, noting her interest, bought her first camera after a trip to New York City, for her at sixteen years of age. Kate’s niece, Lillian Fletcher Brackett, spoke at the Oldham County Historical Society on May 31, 1974 about her famous Aunt’s career and described Kate’s camera: “It was the finest professional camera Kate’s father could fine – a great big heavy box with a tripod and an extra fine lens and a case of glass plates ‘as big as a bread box’. And a yard square of black cloth that went over her head. The camera shut out the light and made it dark inside like a black tent while Kate focused on what she was taking by pulling a sort of accordion bellows in and out until she got the image clear on the ground glass- and to make it more difficult, the image was upside down. Throughout her life she used this camera, developing and printing her own pictures, long after paper film became available.”

Brackett goes on and recalls; “In the early Pewee Valley days she had a cart and pony to take her about and carry the load and we visiting children loved to go along to an old mill or watch her take story book pictures in a Fairytale glade [setting]. Sometimes we even acted as characters and always, there was a picnic basket tucked in somewhere. When we walked we had to help lug plates and tripod and once even a boat. It was hard work, but such honored work. Then we would go home and rest but for her, she would go into her dark room behind the red glass window pane where often horrid odors escaped.

The only chemical we knew by name was hypo, which was Aunt Kate’s pug dog’s name as well. After a long while she would emerge from this “witches den” with the developed plates and then later with sensitive paper in frames. She would clasp the frame to her heart as she ran to a window and then uncover the frame for a few seconds. Then she clasped it again against her chest and raced to the dark room Sometimes we found pictures floating in the bath tub, why we never knew but often when we wanted a bath, Aunt Kate’s pictures had gotten there first.”

The Louisville Courier-Journal often featured Mathew’s picture and sent feature writers to interview her. Brackett said “Once they sent a couple of photographers out to take her picture for a special article. They bought a whole battery of lights which they focused on her as she sat on a sofa in her library. Afterward she showed them her albums of pictures. One was of her sister Jay Joy seated on the same sofa. ‘This is beautifully lighted, Miss Mathews. How did you get this effect without spot lights?’ ‘I am very conscious of lights,’ she said. ‘I watch it from day to day and when it is where I need it, I use it.’

Mathew’s work is characterized by a romanticized scene, and she often had subjects poised and posed, many times reflecting earlier times. Kate’s subjects ranged from the people and places in her neighborhood to staged tableaus of author Annie Fellows Johnston’s storybook characters from the Little Colonel series. Johnston and Matthews were contemporaries who knew each other and their families. It was Matthews who produced the Little Colonel Postcards that are collectors’ items today. ‘As children’, stated Mathew’s niece, ‘we were suddenly called upon to wade in a creek or swing high in a swing. Iva Barbee was an instant goose girl driving a flock of gees down a creek bed. Mary Johnston became a nun with the Matthews icehouse as a lovely chapel in the background. . . Then there is her fine picture of ‘Miss Sara’ leaning over the gate to chat with a passerby completely unconscious of her own beauty but proud of her neat garden and cozy home. It is more than a picture, it is a poem, a true moment of life fixed forever by an artist in time.”

Ashbourne Farms: Going Green Lifestyles in Oldham County, a New Exhibit

On Saturday, March 19, 2011 the Oldham County History Center opened a new exhibit:  Ashbourne Farms: Going Green Lifestyles which explores the history of the farm as well as current sustainability activities that are ongoing at Ashbourne as well as other businesses and schools in Oldham County. The following gives a brief history of the farm.

Ashbourne Farms: Three Generations

Ashbourne Farms was founded in 1937 in Oldham County by W. L. Lyons Brown and his wife, Sara (Sally) Shallenberger Brown. Sally Brown’s grandfather, Ashton Cockayne Shallenberger, once Governor of Nebraska, gave the newlyweds a champion shorthorn bull. The name Ashbourne had long been associated with the breeding of Shorthorn beef cattle. Ashbourne of England was the home of a family famous in the furtherance of this breed. Then Gov. Shallenberger, whose mother was of this English family, gave the Ashbourne name to his Nebraska farm. When he died the name was brought to Kentucky by his granddaughter, Sally, and given to the Shorthorn breeding farm in Oldham County owned by her and her husband, W. L. Lyons Brown.

Lyons began to assemble the first herd of registered Shorthorn in the area. At one time the Ashbourne Farm operation was comprised of almost 5,000 acres. This included farmland along Sligo Road and Hwy. 42 and sections of Ashbourne were referred to as Faraway and Fox Den. Lyons became a premiere builder of the Shorthorn breed in the United States along with his brother, Garvin Brown. Garvin owned Sutherland Farms in Prospect and another farm owned by this family included the Brown-Forman Experimental Farm in Frankfort.

Champion bulls such as Sni-A-Bar Randolph, Prince William and Drummondreach won international acclaim and the Brown family held international Shorthorn auctions and shows at Ashbourne. When originally built, the cattle show and auction barn was the largest in the state. At the peak of production the Ashbourne herd consisted of 250 head of beef cattle and a hundred head of dairy stock. The farm also raised sheep and hogs and had a poultry operation from 1200-1600 birds.

Much of the food raised on the farm was used in the famous menus of Ashbourne Inn owned by Lyons and Sally Brown. This beautiful, limestone mansion was a destination spot for travellers and tourists along the Hwy. 42 corridor between Cincinnati and Louisville. Nancy Doty who worked there during the 1950s recalls the Inn’s ambience:

“I married in 1951; I was working over in Ashbourne Inn. Ashbourne Inn was wonderful. Chef Wilson an d Wallace Beaumont and Ann Winburn, that is where I learned to eat gologna and peanut butter because Chef said that was the best lunch that ever was and I b elieved him!!It was a restaurant in a beautiful building that had a formal dining room and a gift shop, carried Mary Alice Hadley potteries and really nice gift items. It was at the corner of Sligo Road and Hwy. 42 and later they built a six-room motel and they had a bridal suite in the motel. They gave little napkin rings that had bride and groom on them, and when I married, I had a pair of them in my suitcase.

Jim King worked for W. L. Lyons Brown; he was his aide and I was hired as Jim’s secretary. . . I loved being around Clara (Jim’s wife and so when Jim didn’t have anything for me to do I worked for Clara; she ran the inn.

It was a destination point– people from Louisville would come. During Derby time and on Monday night they served turkey hash and waffles; they would flock out here for that; that was one of Chef’s specialty—he was African American. They served country ham and pompano; that was big, too. He would fix big pots of onion soup; he ran a really strict kitchen.”

Lyon’s love of the farm and farm livestock was nationally acclaimed and he served as President of the American Shorthorn Breeder’s Association. He also had many different and unusual breed of chickens, had ducks and peacocks and miniature crossback donkeys . Brown served on the Board of Directors for the National Board of Miniature Donkeys.

As Ashbourne’s reputation grew, Sally Brown became involved in wildlife conservation issues and during her lifetime, has become well known for raising funds and awareness for the Nature Conservancy and protection of national wildlife refuges. After Lyons’s death in 1973, Sally sold a large portion of the farm but retained the original 850 acres that included the cattle auction barn. She placed a conservation easement on the farm through the American Farmland Trust so the farmland would be protected in perpetuity. It was the largest agriculture easement in the state of Kentucky at the time.

In 1999, Brown sold the farm to her daughter, Ina Bond. In 2008 , 4,948 contiguous acres around and including Ashbourne Farm were approved by the Ky. Soil and Water Conservation Committee as Agricultural District #093-04. This district includes 21 landowners. Agricultural district programs allow farmers to form special areas where commercial agriculture is encouraged and protected.

Ina Bond’s son and daughter-in-law, Austin and Layla Musselman, purchased the farm from Bond and are now the third generation owners of Ashbourne. Under their watch they are focusing on sustainable agricultural practices that provide healthy soils and water for future generations. They currently raise animals outside on pasture without the use of hormones, antibiotics or steroids. Shorthorn and Black Angus mix are raised. Red Wattle hogs, a heritage breed are also part of the farm operation. The Musselman children are involved in raising chickens for eggs to sale. In addition the family has worked with various conservation programs in Fish and Wildlife and the Div. of Conservation to help protect the Harrods Creek watershed, a mile of which runs through the farm. Agricultural products can be purchased at Ashbourne by calling 502-222-0602.

The exhibit on Ashbourne Farm: Going Green Lifestyles in Oldham County will feature Ashbourne’s past but highlight the efforts of many in Oldham County who, like the Musselmans, are trying to invest in the future by preserving and conserving the natural and cultural history of our present. The exhibit will run through December 2011.

Grady Clay, WWII Veteran

U.S. Army, 746 Tank Battalion

(Part One)

I was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan when my father was in medical school November 5^th, 1916. I was in the U.S. Army. I enlisted at Fort Knox, Kentucky in 1942, I think it was, in the summer of ’42 after Pearl Harbor. I knew it was inevitable that I should and would be in the Army and I wanted to do it on my own terms, more or less.. I went to Fort Knox and enlisted. It turned out that I took Basic Training in what was called The Demonstration Regiment at the Armored School. At the end of Basic Training I got into the Officer’s Training School and was commissioned at Fort Knox and sent to Camp Chaffee, Arkansas.

[When Grady joined the army he had been working for the Courier-Journal.] First I was on a general assignment for the [Louisville] Times for two years. Then an opening came up for the Courier and I moved over to the Courier which was unusual in those days because it was a kind of closed enterprise. I became a Rotogravure Editor in the Sunday section and I did that for about a year before going into the Army.

I was assigned to the 14 in a light tank battalion. 786 Tank Battalion, in retrospect they were nothing but mobile coffins because even the front armor of those light tanks were an inch and a quarter which might turn a 50 caliber bullet but certainly not an explosive shell. But we were Gung Ho and these were complicated machines that had five Cadillac engines in the back. The reason was because the Cadillac factory could be converted to war.

M-5 light had 30 caliber machine guns, approximately 1 11/2 cannon. When we began to get reports back from North Africa, it was very disheartening because our cannon couldn’t even make a dent in the German tanks, while just one shot from a 90 MM German cannon would have just blown us to Hell and back. So we were learning all we could in a hurry and full of overconfidence in these little tanks, so I went off to Camp Chaffee and took my wife with me and we found a little house that we rented in a little town near Camp Chaffee and were there for about a year or a year and a half. Then one day I got a telegram from New York City saying, “Your name has been recommended for immediate overseas duty with “Yank”, the Army Weekly. Are you interested?” Well of course I was interested. I sent back a telegram, “Yes.” In due course the orders came through transferring me from tank to “Yank” and I was given a short leave to go home. Then I went to the National office of “Yank” Magazine in downtown New York in Manhattan and was indoctrinated in learning what “Yank” was and how it operated, what the chain of command was and what I was expected to do. My next job was assistant officer-in-charge of European Edition of “Yank”.

It was to be published in Italy which is where the action was then. This was in early ’44, the winter of ’43-’44. So I went to Naples where “Yank” had requisitioned an apartment formally owned by a fascist munitions maker, wealthy fascist. In fact before I got there they had taken the fancy furniture sheltered in the ball room and brought in army cots for us to live in. This was in towndown Naples, a downtown complex called Castello Umberto. It was right in the heart of the city and I will never forget the first night I was there, we were on the second of third floor, I heard some explosions so I rushed out onto the balcony. As I went out on the balcony, some one grabbed me and pulled me back inside and said, “Don’t be a goddamned fool!” About that time I heard a ‘shap-shap’ from heavy aircraft fire and shell fragments fall onto the roof making a big clatter on the tile roofs and down on the street. So I understood immediately why I was a damned fool and was trying to get out when there was an air raid going on. But that was the only excitement for quite a while. Then I was given the job of getting into Rome as the battalion campaign progressed.

The Allies had a good foothold in the southern part of Italy. So my job was to get into Rome ahead of the British and get control of the paper supplies of the Vatican because the “Yank” Magazine needed paper to publish and the Vatican had paper. They had a printing operation. They were publishing all of the religious documents for the whole world for Catholics. So they had a big operation and lots of paper. My job was to get hold of that paper. There may have been some paper left for the Vatican but that was not our concern. You pick up the attitude to accomplish. You get what you need. I think we took it all and arranged to have it shipped from Rome down to Naples where the presses were, whereupon it got lost in the freight. The freight system in Italy was all gummed up because of the War. A lot of the tracks were bombed so they would have to detour the shipments. This shipment got lost for several days. I finally found it in the little port city of Civitavecchia, Italy, about half way between Rome and Naples down on the coast. It was in three boxcars so somehow we managed to get it shipped on down to Naples. We found the Italian railroad system was back in operation, so we found an engine that would push these boxcars to Naples. So we finally got the paper supply to the press and got into publication.

“Yank” had been set up there before I got there and they managed to requisition the Scout car which is a four-door version of the Jeep with a folded open top. That’s how we got around. So once that was established, once our printing was going on and distribution worked out, my next job was to get into Southern France and set up a distribution system. That took a bit of doing because the magazine would be printed in Naples – shipped by railroad to Rome and taken out to the airport [there they were] put on Army transport planes that had been bringing wounded soldiers back from France to the hospital in Rome - getting them on those empty planes and shipping them to France. My job was to arrange the shipment and then find what airport the shipments had landed at, getting to that airport, and getting the bundles of “Yank” and getting them up to the front. So it was a constant negotiation of hit and miss. Sometime it took a week or more to get transportation and get these bundles shipped. They were 50 to a bundle. They were heavy. I would usually have to get help to move the stuff. So that went on, this was in the summer of ’44. I do recall that I was in the press office in Naples when the news came of Normandy Landings and you never saw such gloom descend upon a place because everybody in the press office knew at once that they no longer had control of the news. The big news was up in France and Normandy and that is where all the correspondents were going to go. So it was a very depressing day in the news business that the big story was another country away.

Part Two continues in next week’s column

The World Beneath My Feet

Stories and Events that Shaped Oldham County’s History from the Oldham County History Center

The following story appeared in the Courier-Journal in two parts on Feb. 9 and Feb. 16, 2011 in the Oldham County Neighborhoods column of the Oldham County History Center’s weekly column  The World Beneath My Feet.

In 2001, The Oldham County History Center joined with the Library of Congress and the AARP to begin a series of oral histories collected from veterans in our area. The following oral history is of Jennings Watkins, radio operator for the US Army Air Corps, who was interviewed by Joseph Ward on June 9, 2003.  The tape was transcribed by Oldham County History Center educator Jan Jasper. Today Jennings lives in Louisville and is a member of the St. James Catholic Church. Please contact the history center at 502-222-0826 if you would like to participate or know of someone who would like to share their history as a veteran in the armed forces.  

Jennings F. Watkins, US Army Air Corps

World War II

I received my letter from the President and went down to the old Louisville Armory on April 3, 1942 and went through the physical. About 1 o’clock that day, I was sworn into the service. That night around 7 o’clock, we left from the old 7^th Street station to go to Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Indiana.  I was assigned to the Army Air Corps. and we went to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri for basic training.

After Basic Training I was to be sent to the Radio Operators School at Scott Field in Bellville, Illinois. [After completing Radio Operators School, Watkins was y assigned to the Pacific Theatre via Africa and the Middle East] We were stationed to a place called Chabua which is in Assam which is a province of Ithia. Now it is part of Bangladesh. Karachi is part of Pakistan. [In Chauba] you were waiting for your opportunity to be assigned to flight duty and begin to what we thought we were there for to fly the Hump. [Editor’s note: The Hump refers to the Himalayas which was the high mountain range that bordered the Burma Road in China- the Japanese controlled the road and cut-off supplies to China. The unit that Watkins was assigned to was to deliver supplies, medicine, and food.  If it was gasoline it went to General Chennault and his 14^th Air Force.] 

I made my first flight over the Hump July 25, 1943. We went to a place called Yunnan Yi and the whole purpose as far as a pilot or a crew member was concerned was to pile up hours over the Hump.

Watkins describes an incident where his plane crashed: Well about six o’clock in the evening an operations person comes up and I had the parachute. So I was taken out to the plane. There was a pilot and a co-pilot out there and the pilot was my friend with the balding hair line. His name was Jernigan.  The other pilot was named Gilmer.  We were going to take a mechanic with us name of Sisson. We took off and the reason that Jernigan was flying, they were both what you called First Pilots, and they had flipped a coin apparently and Jernigan was to fly it over and Gilmer was to bring it back. We had climbed all right and everything seemed to be running right. I noticed though that Sisson and Jernigan looked a little worried and kept looking out the left side of the cockpit. Suddenly you hear this noise. . . the left engine had quit and the propeller had what they called ‘run away’ so it was going around like that and making this odd noise. I put in a May Day and I recited part of the Casey at the Bat. You had to talk for about two minutes so they could spot you, or fix you and give you a heading. A few years later at one of the CBI meetings, some fellows there were looking at the map of the Hump and one of them said, “One night I was flying the Hump and some SOB was saying Casey at the Bat!” Of course I didn’t mention that I was that person..

Anyway I got the heading and told Jernigan the heading. In the mean time Sisson had already gone back and opened the door and had begun to throw out our cargo to make the plane lighter. Our cargo, as I mentioned, you flew almost anything you could think of over the Hump and it happened to be butter, cases of butter. Well Sisson had opened the door and he had his parachute on. And pilots sit on their parachutes; they are more or less buckled in. They are prepared. I didn’t put my chute on. It was up by the door, the cockpit door. So we are flying and we just threw out the last carton. We heard that noise again on the right engine and the prop ran away and it quit. Jernigan and Gilmer came tearing by me. I don’t even think they knew I was there. And they were shouting, “Bail out! Bail out!”  And all of a sudden they were gone. I had my chute on and I hurried back to the door and Sisson was standing in the door so I waved him out. He went out. When I went out the door I was turned to my left and I hit the side of the fuselage and fell away from it. I think maybe I got up to three maybe four when I pulled the parachute and it opened and I looked down and I could see the other three chutes below me and about that time I heard a voice saying, “Pilot”, then another voice saying, “Co-pilot.” Another voice said, “Mechanic.” So I hollered out, “Radio.”

About that time I looked over at my right and I see this big flash of flame shoot up and it was the plane. It hit the ground and as soon as it hit the ground you had this big flash and it went out immediately. It was a very thick jungle. The interesting thing about that plane, which I didn’t mention and it should have given me pause, the call letters of the plane were 666, which is not a good number. Anyway that was sort of a bad luck omen. After awhile, after a few seconds really, I didn’t see the chutes any more. I thought well I will make it float a little more but I didn’t play around with it much. About that time, I hit the trees. Everything happens very, very quick. I hit the trees.

I went through the branches and leaves and so on and I am hanging on this branch holding on with one hand. I can’t get the other hand up to help myself pull up or anything like that. So after a few seconds, I let go. I fell to the ground. The next morning I looked up and the trees out there are usually quite a distance between the bottom of the tree and the first limb. I always guesstimated that I fell about thirty feet. It was a fair distance and I landed on my chest. I had on a rather heavy flight jacket and I had put my glasses in the flight jacket inside. I wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t stunned or anything like that. I was immediately able to gather up the parachute, get up against the trunk of the tree and I checked my glasses. My left glass was broken; the other one was all right. I was all by myself under this trunk and you hear all sorts of weird noised out there. It sounded like voices like someone was shouting out commands and so on. This was at night around 10:30. You hear these weird noises.

The next morning as soon as it got light, I gathered up the chute and heard the other fellows. They were shouting out. They had landed pretty close together and had spent the night in the trees. I was the only one that was on the ground. Well they began to shout and I answered. There was a big clearing. I guess the spot we landed on was the foothills they called them that were about 8900 to 9,000 feet high. We all got together and checked what we had. They didn’t have anything. The pilots used shoulder holsters and if you bail out, you lost that; it came out. The crew chief didn’t have any weapons to begin with. The only one who had a weapon I had a .45, which was strapped around my waist in a holster. I gave Jernigan the commanding officer, I gave him the gun. You are supposed to have a survivor’s kit. They said there wasn’t anything in their kit, but their chutes were still up in the trees, so they didn’t have anything. In my kit I had a half pound bar of condensed chocolate; a couple of tea tablets and a machete and I had a string and hooks. You might try to fish. I had a water proof match container full of matches, so all of that went into the hands of Jernigan.

Then we began to walk down the mountain. We were walking down an elephant path. It took us all day long. We got down to this river which later on we figured out it was the Tarung River. It was at the low stage so we stayed down there over night. We ate some of the condensed chocolate. The next morning we finished it. During the night we were able to build a fire because we had those matches. Jernigan and Gilmer were somewhat of country boys. They could build a fire much easier that Sisson and I could, who were more city-bred. We had built a fire.

We were in Burma. The Tarung River is in Burma. We walked day after day, back and forth. There was on day when the water was above shoulder high. I always stayed in the back because the other fellows had good eye sight. I stayed in the back so I wouldn’t trip or hinder them in any way. We were walking about shoulder high and I apparently stepped in a hole. I was swept away. I was sailing along in a current and I reached out and I grabbed this rock. Of course the Lord was with me and I grabbed this rock and I was able to hold on to it and I was able to stand up in this water that was fairly deep. A couple of days after that we were walking along the rocky shore line and all of us saw it at the same time. We see this fish glistening and still flopping. It looked a little like a bass. We found it and that was the only food since we had the condensed chocolate bar, the fish that somehow got thrown up on the shore, still fresh and so on.It probably weighed four pounds. It was like a bass fish.

We had the matches. We could always build a fire. We had the tea tablets. We made a little tea in a bamboo. We cut it and it is hollow inside and we put some water in it. Jernigan cooked the fish and divided it up. I got the tail end which is true. It was an awfully good tasting fish.

About two days after that we began to hear noises. It was the explosions on what they called the Ledo Road or the Stillwell Road that they were building. And we saw this raft. So we thought we would take the raft and get on it and float. It was made of little branches and so forth. It was well made, tied together with vines. We left a little note there and told them we had taken the raft. We got on the raft and began to float down the river. We came to some rapids. Fortunately they were very mild. We kind of went up and down a little bit and came out in a very calm spot in the river and we could hear hammering. There was what looked like a stockade and the hammering coming from that. So we maneuvered the raft into the shore and got off and went through the entrance of the stockade and for some reason Jernigan took the .45 and fired it into the air. Well there was a man and two women in there working. Of course that sort of scared them, but he only wanted to get their attention.

Anyway they were calm after they saw who it was. They recognized that we were the sort of people they had seen before. They were Kachins and during the war in the OSS, the Kachins were used as guerrilla fighters by the OSS. I guess possible as many as a thousand of them may have fought with the US troops in guerilla warfare against the Japanese. Anyway we were taken into the Kachin village and when we got there the village looked somewhat like seeing a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby movie in all the tropics, a big open spot, there was a man out there trying to spear fish. We were taken in there and we met the chief who was a young man. His name was Joe. He was about 30 years old maybe. We had curry chicken that night and we had the bananas that you put in the fire and sort of bake. That was very good. During the evening Joe could speak a little bit of English. Anyway we taught him just for something to do I guess we taught him the alphabet. He learned the alphabet in about twenty minutes. He was a very bright young man.

The next day when we got up we had to walk again. They had to lead us through Naga country. They had to get clearance from the Naga chief. The Nagas were head hunters. We went to their village which was up on tall poles. Underneath it were scrawny little pigs. We made our courtesy call on the chief. All around the room were heads and they told us three of them were human. The rest were animal heads of various types. Anyway, we had some tea or some sort of drink and continued on. Pretty soon we came to this little lake and we could hear the noises again of building. Up at the top of the hill we could see a tent. It was a Mess Hall. The mess sergeant wanted to know if we wanted some C-rations and he had some raisin pie. I ate a little of the C-ration and a little raisin pie which was quite good. I went outside and we waited for a truck. We were out sixteen days. We rode into the hospital in Ledo and we brought Joe and several of his tribesmen with him where they were to get a reward, I am pretty sure. We gave them my .45 and we gave them my jacket which was a heavy jacket. I had only begun to fly the Hump [when our plane caught fire]. Eighty-five percent of my time over the Hump was spent afterwards. [The Hump refers to the Himalaya Mountain Range]

Watkins was released from the service in 1945.

The following was published in our weekly column with the Courier Journal on Jan. 5, 2011-  this story is a part of our Oral History Veteran’s Project with the Library of Congress

The World Beneath My Feet

Stories and Events that Shaped Oldham County’s History from the Oldham County History Center

In 2001, The Oldham County History Center joined with the Library of Congress and the AARP to begin a series of oral histories collected from veterans in our area. The following oral history is of Elmer Joe Lovitt who was interviewed by Joseph Ward on May 5, 2003. The tape was transcribed by Oldham County History Center educator Jan Jasper. Please contact the history center at 502-222-0826 if you would like to participate or know of someone who would like to share their history as a veteran in the armed forces. 

Elmer Joe Lovitt, Lance Corporal

1st Marine Division, 5^th Regiment,

2^nd Battalion Weapons Company.

Korean War Veteran

U. S. Marine Corp

I was born on August 19, 1930 outside of Williamsburg at Goldbug and I walked two miles to catch the school bus and go to Woodbine High school. I was at Cumberland College when I was sent a draft notice.  I took it to the president of the college who was a friend of the family. He was a Rear Admiral in the Navy and he went to Draft Board and had me deferred until the end of the semester.

To report for the draft, I went to Paris Island, South Carolina.  After training I was sent to Korea. When we got there, we left went to the east side of Korea which is a very mountainous terrain, heavily wooded with large pines. There were some Marines already there and we were sent in there to reinforce them. It had become the main line of resistance, the 38^th parallel and that is where we were.

The coldest I remember was Christmas Day, 1952. It was 42 below zero and we were not out of enemy range. We were recuperating, backing up the 7^th Marines and it was my duty to do the flag detail. I didn’t think the Major would be out of bed so I put my thermals on and my thermal coat and I ran out there and I ran the American flag up as high as I could get it to go and run back and jumped in my sleeping bag.

When we were on the line, our commander said we were going to get combat pay for every month that you are here in Korea. So he had us right on the front line so we would get combat pay for every month that we were there. There we would have bunkers. There was a roof but the roofs were sand bags as heavy as you could load it down. In January and February and March was cold. On April the 30^th 1952 it was May Day Eve and those Orientals were having a May Day Eve party. We turned fire and we fired all night long and at some point we ran out of ammunition. We told them we were going to run out and they had Jeep cartloads of ammunition bringing them to us. We were just loading them up and firing them, 81 mortars. We were sending mortars so far out, if they killed anybody I don’t know but our infantry that was along in front of us on the MLR. One of our guys would be up there telling them, “Hey, there are enemy at a certain point.” And they would calculate the distance exactly. We had FDC – Fire Direction Center – and they would call it to us on the phone if something wasn’t working right, they would yell it out through a bunker door or something, “We want three rounds at such-and-such and we want it for effect.”

There were several major battles.  Heartbreak Ridge was September the 13^th, 1951. I was not there yet. I was in Boot Camp at Paris Island. Old Baldy was another battle. I am not sure how long it lasted. It escapes me how long it took to do anything because all I was thinking about then was doing as much damage to them as I could and it didn’t concern me how long it was going to take because I knew I was there. I can tell you that on August the 19^th, 1952 I was in a gun pit with another guy, Curtis Lundy, and I heard a round coming in. I was unconscious for I don’t know how long. When I come to my self, I was laying outside the gun pit, my helmet off my head and I don’t know if my inner senses of hearing another one coming brought me around or not, but I heard another one coming. I grabbed my helmet and I jumped right back in that hole. The next one came and I heard it go on over me and went about 200 yards behind me. 

Another major battle was Bunker Hill. We were there at Bunker Hill –. Bunker Hill was August the 12^th, ’52. I was not wounded the first few times of tough combat, but on August 19^th, 1952, I heard a round coming in. I was blown out of the gun-pit and was unconscious for a bit. I touched some hot shrapnel from the previous round. My hearing was impaired, but I was unaware there were any other injuries. I spent the night in the gun-pit. Four Chinese soldiers came by on patrol, but I hid. I had my weapon and pistol, too. If they did find me, I was not going to let them take me prisoner. I stayed in the gun pit over night. The patrol left at sun rise. Next, a Marine came to the edge of the gun-pit. I could not hear him speak. He tried to help me but I became unconscious. I ended up on a Navy Medical ship. Afterward, they sent me back to the 1^st Division, 5^th Regiment, 2^nd Battalion Weapons Company, 81 MM mortar where engaged in battle. The entire company was overrun. A lieutenant and I were sent back to headquarters; all the others were sent back to the hospital ship. We were then stationed to the 38^th parallel until early 1953.  I didn’t get a scratch. But when I got off the train at Williamsburg, Kentucky, put my duffle bag on my shoulder and went down to a find a taxi cab to take me home, I lived a few miles out there in the country – the driver ran off the road. It was not a real bad accident but they did not have seat belts in the automobiles back then. It throwed me against the rearview mirror and cut me right down through there. When that happened I told the driver, “I’m going to pay you right here. I know the way home and I will walk the rest of the way home.” I threw that duffle bag on my shoulder because, I don’t know, he might have been drinking. They didn’t have MADD mommas against drunk drivers then but most of those taxi drivers did sell bootleg whiskey.

Elmer Joe Lovitt  lives in LaGrange, Kentucky with his wife, Patricia. They celebrated their 57^th anniversary recently. They have three sons, Robert, David and Mark.