A Letter Home

(A personal note - Perhaps nine years ago, my wife Pam, worked with my father to tape his story. She also went through volumes of American and German documents and an unbelievable amount of letters home from my father before and during his years as a POW. Pam did this because her father’s health was failing and she had done the same with him, recording his life for future
generations. Pam feels that everyone’s life has a story to tell. The fact that all of these documents recording my father’s war years exist today is a tribute to my father's mother, Olive Hoel, who kept every conceivable record. Today, I received from my father the two very large binders of these documents and letters that Pam had organized and I was overwhelmed reading through even a small amount of the documents, particularly the letters home from my father at age 22. As I said at the beginning, I am not certain how this story will evolve but hopefully it will be told now more through my father's own words during the War. Today’s post is simply the letter sent from my father to his mother on May 16, 1943, the day before his B-26 was shot down. It is clear that my father had no idea what was to occur the very next day.)

May 16, 1943

Dear Mother,

The last couple days have been so beautiful outside all the time; so this is the reason for such few letters. We have also found a little action and will continue in it now and then. Things are much as we expected them for which we are glad. And now we are mighty proud of our B-26’s. Your papers probably carried an account of the “un-named” medium bombers who struck with much success the other day.

I suppose to-night you are all sitting about with Mil (my father’s sister, Milnore, who was a WAVE in the service), if she got home for her leave as you said she would. I am quite confident I won't be too long over here. The whole Axis program is meeting with less and less success each day. Soon they will be up against the wall just as their forces were in Africa.

This morning it hardly seemed as if a war was being fought. The sun was out so nice I took a long bike ride on some of the smaller roads. Everyone seemed so cheerful as I met them working about their houses. The country side is just beautiful this time of year. Flowers seemed to grow everywhere and all mixed together to give a beautiful picture. I only saw one car the whole time I was out, and quite oddly enough it was an American Jeep. This afternoon we got back to work and I flew a couple hours leading some new navigators in a formation. As I expected they were lost 10 minutes from the field and they couldn't locate themselves on the map. For us it is quite easy now and we can spend a little more time on such trips sightseeing.

I'm sure the more flying Grant (My father’s cousin) does in a B-24 the less he will like it. There is no support to it and I would dread the thought now climbing up to 20 or 30 thousand feet every time I went on a mission. They have to contend with the cold and the use of oxygen. Everyone of the B-17 or B-24 boys I've talked with wish they could be transferred to B- 26’s. None of us liked them at first but now wouldn't trade for anything.

How are you folks holding up with the rationing? I don't imagine you are starving. We had a dance in the officer's club last night and one of the girls I was dancing with said my hair was turning gray at the temples. I became alarmed so I ran into the boy's room and looked - quite to my relief I found it was just blond. I guess I haven't changed any from last September except that I'm little fatter.

My hut has a door at either end and in this weather we keep both of them open. One is not more than 15 feet from the main highway so people riding by can look right in. I mention this because just a few minutes ago a whole family came peddling their bikes by. I heard the man say to the kids “See, that's where the American soldiers sleep.”

Ken Tulpin wrote the other day. He said he was getting along okay but thought he'd have to spend the summer out there. I guess he's put on a lot of weight which he certainly could use. I have a few other letters I'd like to write tonight so we'll close this now.

Love,

Jim

Twelve hours later my father's B-26 was shot down , 40 of his squadron friends were killed and Jim Hoel's life changed forever.

Origins

Please click on the slide show under "Related Links" titled MARGRATEN Netherlands American Cemetery Slide Show . It is a moving tribute to my father's recent visit with my brother Gil to find the graves of our father's fellow airmen and friends lost during the War.

As Jim and the three other crewmen sat for those three or four hours on the shores of the Maas Canal, Jim doesn’t specifically recall all that went through his mind. After all, that was 66 years ago. Soon Jim and the others would be loaded onto trucks and transferred to an interrogation point. Jim did think of his parents, Omer and Olive Hoel, living in Evanston, Illinois, and worried about them receiving the “missing in action” telegram and how long it would be before they learned that he had survived, if he did.

Jim might have thought of his grand-father, Olaf Hoel, the first of our family to set foot on these shores in July of 1868. Born in Tonset, Norway in 1841, Olaf was the eighth of ten children and he had come through New York Harbor, no less excited, I’m sure, than my father, when many years later, he was to return from the War, through the Harbor.

Starting with the invasion of Norway three years earlier on April, 9, 194o, the country remained under both the military occupation of German forces and civil rule of a German commissioner. Norway’s occupation by Nazi Germany ended on May 18, 1945, after the surrender of German forces in Europe. This period of occupation had a significant impact on Norwegian society, and it was years until Norway considered itself as having passed on and into the "post-war era."

Olaf Hoel made his way to the Midwest, where on July 16, 1876, he was ordained a minister at Washington Prairie near Decorah, Iowa. In August of that year, Olaf moved to Canby, Minnesota where he became the Pastor for the St. Stephens Congregation of Canby. For the next 36 years, he served this congregation and was the “area’s pioneer pastor” as well. Reverend Hoel eventually served 11 churches in his circuit ministry and was increasingly called upon to minister to Norwegian settlers spread over a wider and wider area. In a 1928 letter, Reverend Hoel describes the challenges of a circuit ministry:

“The parishioners were found in a radius of seventy miles, so a great deal of traveling had to be done. This we did with a pony and a little open buggy. There were no roads, but by aid of a compass we were able to find our way over the prairies. By starting at daybreak, we often did not reach our destination until in the middle of the night. Many were the times the way had to be fought through prairie fires and snowstorms......We speak of tiresome rides nowadays, but few can imagine how tedious and lonesome the trips over the prairie were – no roads and seldom, if ever, meeting a person on an entire trip.”

On August 19, 1876, Olaf Hoel married Mary Lund of Canby. They brought 8 children into the world, the youngest of whom was Omer, Jim's father. The children were born before Olaf moved to Canby but it was in Canby that Reverend and Mary Hoel have left a legacy that my family cherishes today. Mary’s brothers built a home and sold it to Olaf in 1903. As described at the time, it was “one of the best resident properties in Canby and had, without a doubt, the finest surroundings.” The “49 day wonder” Victorian home was built in 1891 and eventually enlivened with decorative balconies, a turret and gingerbread trim. The home remained in the family for the next half century and when finally sold went somewhat into disrepair.

But in 1976, the town of Canby recognized the potential and looked “into the possibility of starting a Canby Museum” with the Lund-Hoel House. The town purchased the home and over the years to follow was able to retrieve, from members of the Lund and Hoel families, most of the items and furnishings that were in the home at the turn of the century, including Olaf's Bible and his daughter Nella Hoel's “prized Everett upright piano.” Eventually, the home looked as it had when Olaf’s family first resided there.

The “Lund-Hoel House” is now a museum on the National Register of Historic Homes. In 1991, Jim’s father, Omer, the last remaining child of Olaf and 97 years old at the time, visited Canby to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Lund-Hoel House. After walking through the home and directing the rearrangement of furniture so that it was “the way it was then,” Omer sat under a broad chestnut tree in the back yard surrounded by most of the residents of Canby and told stories of his life in this home.

As Omer, my grandfather, spoke, I glanced over at my father who used to run around the stone fence surrounding the home when he was a boy and I thought of the challenges that my great grandfather, grandfather and father had survived and overcome so that I could be there that day. I was reminded then, and often since my father’s watch appeared, of a quote I heard once from a now forgotten source, “You’ll never untangle the circumstances that brought you to this moment.” Perhaps not, but how fortunate we are for those things like the discovery of my father’s watch and the Lund-Hoel House that keep looping us back to the past so that we might discover stories that enrich our lives and strengthen us today.

Jim was born in Canby on September 2, 1922 and moved to Evanston, Illinois in 1932 where he remained until he entered the War.

Tomorrow – Moving into the German Prison of War System

A Personal Note

I have received a surprising number of emails from people around the globe who have thanked me for this Blog. Most of these responses have been from people who never had the chance to know their fathers who died in the War or from people, much like me, who took their father's World War II experiences for granted while growing up and raising their own families. Their fathers passed on before they had the chance to truly understand their experiences and lessons learned during the War.

As I responded to a very thoughtful email today, I explained how very lucky I am that my father is alive today at 87, and of course lucky to be here myself. Had a few things gone differently on May 17, 1943, I would not be here today. I am also getting to know my father so much better these days, visualizing as I write, his life at 22 years old.

I mentioned in an earlier post, in passing, that as my father was sitting with is back to the bulkhead, bracing for the crash, he was not afraid. I asked him today what was the basis of that sense of acceptance, was it a faith in God, a surrender to the inevitable or something else. He didn't have an easy answer. My father is a much too humble man to suggest that bravery was an explanation.

He finally said that he never believed there was any way to survive a B-26 crash. As will be described in later posts, many B-26 airplanes crashed during training in the United States and over seas and my father had never seen one person survive one of those crashes. My father, I believe, simply accepted his inevitable fate. This forces me to look deep into my own heart and wonder how I would have responded in these circumstances.

The certainty in his mind of his impending death, forced some form of acceptance and as he says "I was at peace." He told me, as many have said before, "My entire life in 30 seconds or so flashed before my eyes, from a young boy to the present." As I mentioned earlier, his only true regrets were the telegrams his parents would soon receive, the first, a "missing in action" message, and later "killed in action."

My father always stresses that the real heroes were those who never returned and as you can imagine he gets very emotional these days as he recalls all the friends and true heroes who died so young.

As I explained today in response to one of many emails, I have been sitting on my father's tapes, documents and pictures for much too long. I am so fortunate to have the opportunity to write this story with my father today.

It is ironic perhaps that this was my father's first time in Europe. A short distance to the north, The Hoel family had left Norway, and made the hard journey with my great-grandfather, Olaf Hoel, to Minnesota in the late 1800's. I will talk about that tomorrow and the many struggles my father's earlier generations experienced that perhaps contributed to my father's courage that day.

There are so many stories to follow that I get impatient to tell them all right now. I will give you a glimpse of one that occurred just following my father's interrogations by the Germans. Hearing that one of the prisoners, my father, was from Evanston, Illinois, a young German soldier who had not been involved in the interrogation asked his superiors if he might have a word with Second Lieutenant Hoel.

It turns out that my father and this now German soldier, both 22 years of age, had grown up in the same neighborhood in Evanston, Illinois. As the result of a cruel "invitation" to "Dual Citizens", young German men living in the United States, who still retained their German citizenship, were a few years earlier invited to take a free vacation to their homeland. Shortly after arrival they were "conscripted" into the German army and unable to return home.

The ironies of war.