Ink on Paper By Sara Hilton
“I’ve had enough of this.” Shoeboxes
of handwritten letters. Journals and diaries. Postcards. These are the surviving words of everyday life, the documents that chronicle love and loss, grief and healing, passion and longing, and even the most mundane. Here are a few local letters of interest from the past...
On February 26, 1945, Mr. and Mrs. John Walden of Tecumseh were notified that their son, Pfc. Henry Walden was killed in action in Luxemburg, Germany. Henry was just 20 years old when he died. In 1945, excerpts from his letters home were published in the Tecumseh Herald for the community to read. Once again, ink pressed to paper gave a young man a voice, even after he was gone. His words and his tone reveal both sides of the coin of war — pride and despair. In his letters, we see a young man who is ready to die for something in which he believes. We also see the weary homesickness of a young man telling his mom that he has seen enough. “In regard to your question about a furlough,” he writes, “it’s not impossible, but improbable. I doubt if I ever get a chance to go home.” “Mom, if you want to make me happy, please don’t worry about me. You are the only thing in the world that matters to me; you and my family. So please try to forget about me and the war. If anything happens to me just take it like a dream. I at least will have died for something that is worthwhile. Until a person has been over here he wont know what we have in the United States. In fact, he will never know the meaning of the words liberty and freedom.
will be finished tomorrow. Then I’ll go back to the front with the boys and I know they’ll be glad to see me.
February 20, 1945
The cake you sent me was very good and I gave it to the cook for all of the boys. When they get anything they do the same. Boy did I get a scare today. Some other fellow got his foot blown off and it still lays there. I hope I’m this lucky the rest of my life. n
“Papa Papa is Sick ”
“Papa is sick,” wrote Tecumseh’s Perry Hayden in his journal on Oct 11, 1918. “Think it might possibly be from influenza. That is the epidemic in our country at present. Thousands of cases in the concentration camps. Gov. Sleeper issued a proclamation asking all public meetings to be stopped.” From 1914 to 1952, Tecumseh resident Perry Hayden recorded his daily life in journals. In 2005 his daughter, Martha Woodward, donated the journals to the Tecumseh District Library, where they serve, in one sense, as an eyewitness account to history. But there is something more when you see his penciled handwriting sprawled across each page. There are days of normalcy. “Worked at the bank.” And there are moments of emphatic anger, the irate pressure of the pencil on the page. “THE SONS of Bitches” he writes and then furiously underlines eight times when Germans fire on passenger ships. However, throughout the fall and winter of 1918, there is a problem. His papa is sick.
October 12, 1918
Papa is a little better but still enough under the weather to stay in bed nearly all day. Great epidemic of Spanish Influence prevalent.
October 14, 1918
School was closed today because of the Spanish influenza. Five teachers and dozens of pupils being taken with it.
October 20, 1918
that there still was a little hope. While in the hospital I was taken with cold chills. (remarkable, eh? You’d think chills would be warm?) Had a hard drive home, no lights and rotten roads so that I was pretty nearly all in when we arrived home. Mother gave me some ginger tea and a whiskey sling and bundled me off to bed. Papa is too weak to get upstairs so they brought the bed down.
No church. Closed by state order to prevent epidemic of Spanish flu from spreading.
December 13, 1918
December 11, 1918 Papa in bed all day.
I get better every day and papa gets weaker.
December 12, 1918
Ink on Paper continued...
I left the bank at 11 o'clock to take papa to Ann Arbor in the car to see a specialist…. Papa is very very weak. I asked the Dr. if there was any hope. He said papa was a very sick man but
I have the 'Flu' stayed in bed all day.
December 20, 1918
February 10, 1945
Well, Mom, I guess there isn’t any news that you don’t already know about, probably you know more about it than we do up here. I think I told you that I am in the Third Army. Ole Blood and Guts Patton. What a man. I’ve got to make this one short, I’m taking a load of fellows to a movie tonight.
February 16, 1945
Well, Mom a lot has happened since I wrote you last. We crossed into Germany in one day and the same day I shot down another plane. It was an ME109. We were sitting there along side the road and here she came, going like a bat out of hell. So I jumped in our [blocked out] and one burst and she started to fall. I hope this thing is over with soon because I’m getting spring fever. I want to come home. I’ve had enough of this. I’ve seen all that I want to see. Our truck is in ordance getting repaired and 17
