OCR Text |
Show " 4J Poking at iioLLviiofli)! T'M GOING to leave my Hollywood A beat this time in order to share with you a letter from "Spec" Mc-Clure, Mc-Clure, formerly of my staff and now serving with our army in Belgium. I have found no finer expression of what our soldiers think about and their hopes for the post-war world. The army nurse to whom Spec pays tribute in this letter was Frances Slanger, who was killed by a German shell October 21. 1944, just a few hours after she had mailed to Stars and Stripes her open letter expressing her appreciation ol the fighting men she served. Spec's letter follows: "Dear Miss Hopper: It is late afternoon, and here the earth is relatively rela-tively quiet as quiet, one might say, as the army can ever be a thrum of distant motors; perhaps a friendly if loud argument or two; perhaps a lone G.I. grievously addressing ad-dressing his Maker over the latest exasperation. . . . "I have intended writing you something of entertainment here, but since morning I have been thinking think-ing of a dead girl whom I never knew but whom I, doubtless along with countless others, felt I knew. "She was an army nurse, and a few weeks ago, in answer to the blessings the wounded and dying had heaped upon her kind, she wrote an open letter to the men. It appeared ap-peared in our Stars and Stripes. And it was a model of a selfless devotion, a humanity, and an integrity in-tegrity one thinks extinct. . . . "She wrote as a G.I. Jane to a G.I. Joe deeply involved in a bloody business called war, asking not for understanding, expecting no mercy, but giving to her limits in both. Comradeship "And we knew there wasn't a false word in the letter. ... We knew it for our world, and we grinned in appreciation, knowing that we read the letter of a girl already dead, and her words fixed beyond alteration. altera-tion. They were sealed with "her blood. . . . "During this war, as both civilian and soldier, I've seen ideals trampled tram-pled in the mud by those who most profess to uphold them. I have seen this too often to have much faith left. And I have seen, as all who make an honest effort must, a thousand thou-sand forms of betrayal and stupid-1 stupid-1 ity. And in weariness I have told t myself a thousand times nothing re-i re-i mained to believe in that the an-j an-j cient enemies of mankind greed I and--ignorance were too great for our mortal strength to conquer. But now I know that this is not altogether alto-gether right. . . . One Ray of Hope "For somewhere in the sordid, selfish, self-ish, shameful business that makes up most of our petty lives there is a nobility that will not perish. And men declaring that nothing is worth fighting for are known to die with their faces to the enemy, refuting by their action the words their lips have shaped. "And I have seen too many graves of those who, loving life as dearly as I love it, nevertheless died in order or-der that something might keep on living. . . . "They say this war is won and the victory is ours. I believe it is. They speak of winning the peace. That remains to be seen. But this I do believe: If the common attitude atti-tude is not changed, if greed is not uprooted and sincerity restored to life, if a man's ideals are less than his purse, and the graves are forgotten, for-gotten, we will not have won the war; we will not have won the peace; we will have rather lost the world. . . . My love, SPEC." Thanks That Count Following is part of France! Slanger's open letter to Stars and Stripes, written just before the shelling shell-ing began which took her life: "For a change, we want the men to know what we think of them. . . . I'm writing this by flashlight. The G. I.s say we rough it, but we in our little tent can't see it. We wade ankle deep in mud. You have to lie in it. . . . We have a stove and coal. We even have a laundry line in the tent. Our G.I. drawers are at this moment doing the dance ol the pants, what with the wind howling, howl-ing, the tent waving precariously, the rain beating down, the guns firing. fir-ing. . . . "Sure we rough it. But you, the men behind the guns, driving our tanks, flying our planes, sailing out ships, building bridges, and the men A'ho pave the way and the men whe I were left behind it is to you we ' doff our helmets." Frances Slanger is buried in a military cemetery, flanked on eithei side by the fighting men she served. Precautionary For the closing scene of "Love Letters." Joe Cot ten and Jennifer Jones walk into the sunset. William Dietcrle kept saying. "Put a little more feeling into it, Joe." Just ther an electric cord started burning, and Diclerle said. "What smells?" Quickly Cotten replied, "Don't any body answer that!" . . Joan Loring, that fine little actress that Warners signed up on a long term contract. i goes into "Three Strangers." will: I Oeraldine Fitzgerald, Sydney Greei j street and F -trr Lorre. |