WITH LOVE–IN WARTIME MARSEILLES

This is one of my favorite pictures of my mom and dad, Lt. Nurse Helen Eberhart Daley, and Captain Dr. Frank R. Daley. If you’ve read WITH LOVE WHEREVER YOU ARE, maybe you remember their rare and romantic getaway in Marseilles, underneath the barn of a French Resistance farmer. Some days young Frank and Helen believed the war would end that very week, and other days they wrote that it felt like the war would never end.

I’m so thankful for the emails and letters I’ve received from sons and daughters of WW2 parents. We all honor our heroes in different ways and still feel a connection.

This month, the e-book of WITH LOVE is on sale everywhere for $2.99. I’m using the sale as an excuse to reminisce.

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FRANK’S PATIENTS

Captain Frank R. Daley was sent from a wartime makeshift hospital in Alsace-Lorraine to a battlefield battalion aid station inside wartime Germany . . . probably because he refused to cut his hair (Helen loved those thick curls.) and, to add insult to injury, then said to his bald commanding officer, “So it’s true then.” “What?” demanded the officer. Frank shook his head and replied, “Misery really does love company.” Frank didn’t get the haircut, but he did get a freight train to the battlefield. He joined a British unit and performed surgeries in tents with mud floors. Toward the end of the war, he was able to doctor civilians, as well as soldiers. This is a photo of just a few of those patients.

SALE: WITH LOVE, WHEREVER YOU ARE– $2.99 for 2 weeks, the e-book everywhere

This is the day I’ve been building up to in these posts. Thanks for sticking with me this far. For the 2 weeks of the sale, I’ll be posting more war photos and hoping you’re not tired of me. . . or of my parents’ story.

WITH LOVE, FRANK’S PHOTOS

My last post showed a picture Helen sent to Frank. On the back of that photo, Helen wrote: “Don’t miss the background–someone always close.” The background showed her pictures of Frank. I wish this photo were clearer, but it’s evident that Frank had the same idea. On the back of this photo, he wrote: “my writing table.” The last years of Mom’s life, first in Missouri, then in Ohio with us, on her dresser she had pictures of Frank. And on the window ledge beside her bed sat their wedding picture, the framed photo above, on the right, the couple in their Army uniforms on their wedding day. It was the last thing she saw every night. I’m looking at it now, as it’s on the wall just to the right of my computer screen.  What special pictures do you keep close?

WITH LOVE…LETTERS & PHOTOS

Young Helen and Frank met in basic Army training during WW2. They only knew each other for a few weeks before getting married and then being shipped overseas to the front lines–to different fronts, different countries. For months at a time, all they had to keep their marriage together were 3 things: Love letters (They wrote 2-3 times a day, every day.); prayers; and photos, like the ones you see in the background beside Helen’s bunk. Helen’s bracelet was a gift from Frank. In one of his letters, he mentions that one of the German prisoners was making bracelets out of foreign coins for men to send home to their wives. Frank collected coins from every city where he and his wife pulled off a rendezvous. And now, I have that bracelet.

WITH LOVE…WHATEVER YOUR BAGGAGE

I love the smile on Lt. Helen Eberhart’s face here. This photo doesn’t give her location, but I’m guessing someone snapped the picture early in her WW2 service as an Army nurse in England and France. Look at those un-Army shoes, which soldiers weren’t to wear, and this must have been one of the few times she wore her helmet (She hated all Army “hats.”). And yet . . . look at that smile.

WITH LOVE, WHEREVER YOU ARE continued

Guess what! I thought I’d have to rely on photos I posted last year, but I discovered some new ones–if you call pictures from 1944 new. They weren’t in the Army trunk, but in a very small photo album I discovered while searching for something in the attic. The photos are a bit faded and blurry; but if you’ve read the book, you’ll recognize Lt. Helen Eberhart Daley and Lt. (later, Capt.) Frank R. Daley, Army nurse and doctor in WW2, my parents.

MERRY CHRISTMAS #5

Tradition! I’ve been reading up on the history of wreathes, and most accounts credit the ancient Persians for using the wreathe as a symbol of wealth and success. Later, the Greeks placed wreathes on the heads of winners of the Olympic Games. And in ancient Rome, rulers like Caesar wore wreathes as crowns. So why do we hang these things at Christmas? I try not to get too caught up in the origin of our traditions because we can claim traditions for ourselves and use the symbols to take us deeper into the meaning of Christ’s birth. We can use an evergreen wreathe, long-lasting and circular, never-ending,  to tell our children about the everlasting life God’s promised us through Jesus.

In this photo, it looks like my sister and I are holding hymnals. So, what are some of your favorite Christmas hymns?

THE FICKLE ARMY

Toward the end of WW2, all my mom (aka Lt. Helen Eberhart Daley, Army nurse) wanted to do was to secure a leave of absence and reunite with my dad (Captain Frank R. Daley, M.D.). She had been working nonstop in a General Hospital in France, and he had moved with a mobile unit (later called a M.A.S.H. unit) into Germany. When the war would finally end, they would have many hard decisions to make, and Helen wanted to make them together. Should she stay where she was? return to the States? volunteer for the C.B.I., service in China, Burma, or India? She carefully crafted this plea for a well-deserved leave, requesting only 7 days, though she had 26 days coming. The Army, through whatever powers that be, answered with one handwritten word: Disapproved.

http://www.dandibooks.com/with-love-wherever-you-are

 

MORE FROM HELEN THE STORYTELLER

For the last five years of my mother’s life, she came to live with us in Ohio. What an honor and a blessing it was to listen to her stories, to hear poignant details of the war, stories she’d never told me before!

In With Love, Wherever You Are, I retold the story of the day 9-year-old Helen determined she wanted to be a nurse. She’d raced home from school and found her mother lying in the garden, unconscious, blood spurting like a fountain from her leg. Helen ran to the house and called Dr. Roberts, who lived a good distance from their farm. He told Helen that a varicose vein must have ruptured and she would have to stop that bleeding before he got there. Then he instructed her to get a dime and hold it over the source of the bleeding, pressing hard until he arrived. Doc must have heard her gasp because he said, “Helen, I know you don’t want to touch that blood and–.” Helen interrupted him. “It’s not that, Doc. Where in tarnation am I going to find a dime in this house?”

Not only did little Helen find a dime, but she managed to stop the bleeding and keep up the pressure until Doc arrived. He had to pry her fingers away and proclaimed that Helen Eberhart was going to make a fine nurse one day. He was right.