Letters from Clarence F. Miller: Btry C 535th AAA Bn 1943 - 1945

Cpl. Clarence F.Miller
Btry C 535th AAA (AW) Bn
APO 562 c/o P.M.
New York, NY
Postmark: US Army Postal Service 895 Oct 22, 1945
LeHarve France
Oct 21 1945
Dear Friends
Received your welcome letter & sure was glad to hear from you again.
Well I am still in LeHarve & am leaving in a few days so if you write again write to my home address. If you write to my army address I may not get it. It may be some time before I receive it but I will have it when I get there if every thing goes OK we should be in the states by the middle of Nov. I sure been waiting for this for a long time & it is very close now.
Well I suppose you have most of your farm work done all but husking & some plowing haven’t you? Maybe next year I’ll have plowing to do for my self if every thing is OK when I get there. I haven’t made up my mind yet what I want to do when I get there. I may buy a truck & haul milk like I done before I came in the Army. I suppose I will have a big surprise when I get back. They say that there are a lot of changes. I sure am glad I don’t have to stay over here any longer. Well I have to get some of my clothes ready to pack so I better close for this time. The home address is or will be
Mr. Clarence F. Miller
Neillsville,
R1 Wisconsin
c/o Frank Miller
Best of Luck to you & all
a Friend
Clarence

[Paul's comment: what a beautiful way to end. He's going home, and thinking about the future again. Thinking about crops and driving the milk truck. Back to the Clarence that we have gotten to know, before the ravages of war took its toll. He leaves us with his home address, and signs off as "a Friend." Thank you, Clarence. You are a friend to us now.]
 
I have found them really fascinating insights of the period, it would be interesting to know what he got up to after the war to complete the story.

How many of the family will you meet when you hand over the letters?

Also have you worked out the relationship between your grandmother and the writer, ie. is he a relation or family friend?
 
Yes now you have to tell us about the family. Surely you won't allow this to end here. Have you got it organized so that you know who is who? They may ask.
 
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MontyB said:
I have found them really fascinating insights of the period, it would be interesting to know what he got up to after the war to complete the story.

How many of the family will you meet when you hand over the letters?

Also have you worked out the relationship between your grandmother and the writer, ie. is he a relation or family friend?
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His mother is my grandma's first cousin.

We know that he was married in 48. I am curious as to what his wife will be able to tell us. Did he talk about any of this stuff ever?
 
crazytanker said:
Yes now you have to tell us about the family. Surely you won't allow this to end here. Have you got it organized so that you know who is who? They may ask.
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I know who everyone is that he mentions in the letters, except for Ed Huinker, who I only have a vague idea. It's a different family, but I know he had moved up to Wisconsin and lived in the same area.

The other people he mentions are in his family in some fashion, brothers, sisters, uncles, cousins.

I know he ended up with something like 8 children. I have the list from his daughter.
 
pgwenthold said:
[no envelope]
LeHarve
Sept 20 1945
Dear Friends
Received your welcome letter & was pleased to hear from your again.
So you don’t think the boys are coming home very fast well I don’t think so either. They sure take there time getting us out but it didn’t take long to get us into it. Jeanette wrote me & said her husband landed in New York so I guess she is one happy girl & I glad she is you know I think a lot of her. I know she is the best sister I have. Her & I use to go to dances & have a swell time. I would rather take her then a lot of other girls I know. Yes you guessed it right about the invasion. We were the first Anti Air Craft guns on the Utah Beach on Normandy France & we were also surrounded on the German brake through Dec. We were surrounded for 2 days & that is one time life looks very short to all of us, but the good Lord was with us.
The Germans came out with there air power & we had good shooting. Shot down 13 in those two days & half of the fliers never got out of there burning plance. It was an awful way to die but they shot a lot of our planes down. People will never know how much we lost. It was plenty in men & supplies but thank god it is all over with now. It seems funny to travel with no one shooting at you but it OK. Our Battalian is giving us a map of our traveles & where we were on dates throughout the war. Well it will be some thing that people can look at but it don’t interest me any. There are a lot of things I want to forget & never will talk about.
Well it is time for lights out so I will close for now. Best of Luck to you & all.
As ever a friend
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Update: the family still has the map. I'm going to get a copy.

Also, the thought within the family is that he got a Dear John letter from Marie, and so that was the source of the break-up. He says it's not her fault, and I think it's more of "I don't blame her."
 
pgwenthold said:
Update: the family still has the map. I'm going to get a copy.

Also, the thought within the family is that he got a Dear John letter from Marie, and so that was the source of the break-up. He says it's not her fault, and I think it's more of "I don't blame her."
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One thing that letter tells me is that it wasn't true when he said the map did not interest him as the fact that he kept it says other wise.

As for the break up I get the impression that they were not as close as is thought as he rarely speaks about her at any stage during letters other the times she was actually with him, the only evidence I can see that would lead me to believe other wise is the rather dark letter he sent late in the piece which I assume was about the time of the break up.
 
MontyB said:
One thing that letter tells me is that it wasn't true when he said the map did not interest him as the fact that he kept it says other wise.
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I wonder the same thing. Although he may have just saved it for posterity or for others. He does say that maybe some will be interested in it. But I was very excited when I heard that they still had the map. Not because we need a map - I'm sure I could find one somewhere, and I'm sure the travels of the 535th in WW2 is written somewhere, but just because of the fact that he still had it.

Actually, speaking of that - the family is concerned about trying to copy the map because it is oddly shaped and rolled up (and presumably brittle). Challenge - can anyone find an electronic copy of the map? I could really use a copy, and it doesn't have to be his.

As for the break up I get the impression that they were not as close as is thought as he rarely speaks about her at any stage during letters other the times she was actually with him, the only evidence I can see that would lead me to believe other wise is the rather dark letter he sent late in the piece which I assume was about the time of the break up.
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Not sure. He does refer to her on occasion, and it is clear that he is corresponding with her. Early on, he does say explicitly that he wishes he could get back to see his girlfriend and his parents.

And I know that the engagement was a real engagement and not just a "we agreed to get married." She had an engagement ring, and apparently sent it back. Note that he said they had planned to get married in the fall (would have been the fall of 42, I think), and the Army mess up the plans.

What I see is that he got 3 days leave to be home in almost 3 years. That's not easy on any relationship, of course. This is why he says that there is no future for unmarried guys, I suspect. He is figuring that all their girls will have moved on.

My wife's first response was to ask about Marie's children. When was the first born? It's presumptuous, I realize, but was she pregnant when they got married?

Unfortunately, finding anything about Marie has been even harder. To the best I can tell, after getting married in Neillsville, they moved to Milwaukee. There were a lot of people in Milwaukee. But hey, if anyone can find anything about Joseph and Marie Vetrano, we might be able to figure out more.
 
I was wondering about Marie's children also... there were I think nine months, then she got married.....hmmmmmmmm. I wondered that ever since I read it. That'd be interesting!

Dadsgirl

Look Vetrano up on your PC in the White Pages in that area.
 
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My dad and I drove up to Neillsville yesterday to meet with Clarence's family and to bring them the letters. His wife and three of his children were there.

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We had a wonderful time talking about their family, and I learned a lot more about Clarence. They did farm for a while after he and Anita got married, but ultimately he ended up working for the county doing highway maintenance. However, he always kept a large vegetable garden.

There will be an article about us in the Clark County Press soon. I'll send you the link when it comes out.
 
One last request for help: can anyone find when he was discharged from the service? In his letters, he says he was on his way home at the end of October, but that's the end of the correspondence.
 
More information about his service is available from a letter he sent to his parents, sometime after the war was over. It was published in the Clark County Press (date: to be determined). Clarence’s family provided a copy of the article, and I reproduce the text here:

They recently released the censorship regulations so I thought I would drop you a few lines to let you know a little more about my escapades since I left the good old U.S.A.
We left for New York Harbor Februaty 11. I doubt if I will ever forget that first day out at sea. It was snowing and cold and I was so blue I almost felt like crying, and most all of the others did, too. We had a fairly nice trip over, although we swept out a submarine once or twice, but nothing ever came of it. They surely had us guessing, though. We arrived in Glasgow, Scotland, February 22, and from there took a train ride to Bridgewater, England, where we made our home until the invasion of France.
On June 4 we left Portsmouth, England, for the coast of France. We were all expecting a rough ride across the Channel, but as luck was with us, things were pretty quiet. We manned the ack-ack guns on the ship and were on the alert status most of the way across. When we neared the beach everything began to pop. I never saw so many planes and ships concentrated in one area in my life. There was enough noise from the massive Navy guns on our warships alone to drive a man crazy. The whole beachhead area was just one big cloud of dust from shellfire and divebombing.
When I hit the beach I got my first taste of war and to say the least it was repulsive. I had read a lot in the papers about the German artillery, but I never realized it was so ruthless and merciless until we came face to face with it on the beach. The first night we got very little sleep and most of us didn’t get any, but sleep was the least of our worries. There was a German plane that went over just after dark and it came every night thereafter about the same time. We called him “Bedcheck Charlie,” anyway he started dropping his bombs and three dropped within a few yards from us but they were duds and didn’t go off. If they had, a lot of us would have been buried alive or killed by shock.
From the beach, we were sent inland to guard an air strip at Coigny, France, and stayed for some time before and until Cherbourg fell [note: June 30].
Then came the breakthrough at St. Lo [note: July 25-27]. We stayed thereuntil we got to Versailles where we got another big landing field for our planes. From there we got passes to Paris and enjoyed the beautiful scenery and some pretty girls.
Then we went on to Leige, Belgium where I got my first glimpse of the highly publicized buzz bomb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb). They travel very fast and are hard to hit. I got to see Liege a little later, where lots of homes were nothing but piles of rubble. Then came the German break-through, and Krenkelt, which was near the Siegfield line. On December 16 we were in the middle of the Germans’ big drive. We became surrounded with our escape routes cut off while more shells than I thought were possible were thrown at us in the next three days. On the third night we were finally able to open up a road where we could retreat for several miles back, where we held a stand.
Finally we drove the Germans back to the Cologne Plains. We crossed the Rhine River at Ludendorf bridge. And there, we were the first ack-ack of our kind on the opposite shore. The Germans tried to knock out the bridge with their planes divebombing the area so as to keep our reinforcements from crossing, but we kept them from knocking out the bridge.
After the Rhine, we were around the Ruhr Valley and when the Krauts surrendered we were sent to the Third Army under General Patton, where we were until the war ended. Now you have an idea of what we have done in this war.
 
Oh, and another update. I have come closer to reaching Marie's family. I have sent a message to her daughter-in-law on facebook. She is still alive.
 
MontyB said:
Is that one you really want to track down?
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Absolutely. Marie is a very compelling character in the story, and I think her story is interesting in itself. I'm not sure exactly how much I will found out about the situation of their breakup, but I am also interested in things like, what did she do at the "foundry" during the war? She is a real Rosie-the-Riveter. The more I can find out about her wartime experiences, the better it will be.

For now, all I know they have at least 4 kids and that one of them owns a winery, and learned the craft from his father (passed down from his grandfather).
 
Pgwenthold,
I'm absolutely thrilled for you! Keep the great work up. I know you're enjoying the adventure.
So am I.
Thank you.

Dadsgirl
 
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