John Aird’s Correspondence with the Parents of a Young Man Killed in Action
John Aird: 1919-2005 (Father)
Following my mother-in-law’s death, my husband and I brought
home a box of family letters from the 1930s and 1940s from her house. Most were letters between
John and Laurel, my in-laws, along with copies of letters Laurel sent to her
parents and other relatives. One letter was different. It was addressed to John
Aird at his parents’ Detroit home. The postmark read Goshen, Indiana, and it
was sent in October of 1945. The return address listed a name that was
unfamiliar—Mr. and Mrs. F. E. Priser. Curious, I read the letter, and realized it
was an amazing window into wartime and the bonds that formed between young men facing
danger far from home.
I did a quick Newspapers.com search on the Priser family,
and discovered that Mr. and Mrs. Fred Priser’s only son, Robert Priser, had
been killed in 1944 in Italy. He had been in John Aird’s army unit. The newspaper
in Wakarusa, Indiana, wrote a brief article on his death. It read as follows:
“Mr. and Mrs. Fred E Priser of Goshen were notified
October 31st by the war department that their only son, Pvt. Robert
Priser, 21, serving in the field artillery with Lt. Gen. Mark Clark’s Fifth
army in Italy, was killed in action on October 20.
The message was delivered only a few hours after the
parents had received a letter from their son, written on October 17, in which
he described conditions as ‘terrible’ on the battle front in Bologna. Pvt.
Priser inducted into the army May 26, 1943, while a junior at Indiana
University, went overseas in January of this year, landing in North Africa on
January 19. He saw his first combat duty in the march on Rome in April.”
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| Robert Priser, High School Graduation Photo |
I went back to John Aird’s memoir about the war, and found a
passage on Private Priser. John wrote as follows:
“Back at B Battery, things were not going at all well. I
alluded to this fact only vaguely in a letter home, but withheld the details.
The battery was suffering a series of casualties, more than all of the rest of
the battalion put together. One of the casualties was the young man who had
sent his fiancée a lock of his hair at Hampton Roads. His loss I felt deeply
because he was an only child and such a fine young man that his death seemed
especially tragic. In profound depression, I wrote an eight-page letter, which
on second thought I decided was not suitable to send home and trashed it. In a
later letter home, I recalled again the incident of the lock of hair. For weeks
I could not stop thinking about the young man, his fiancée, and his parents. I
could not accept his loss. Others in the battery evidently felt the same way. A
number of officers and enlisted men, including myself, began to write to his
parents, who answered every letter.”
I suspect that part of John’s profound reaction to Robert Priser’s
death had to do with the similarities between Priser and John. They were both
only children, and both had been young college students with a life of promise
ahead of them when the United States entered the war. Both had left college
before graduating, and ended up fighting together. The only differences were
that John was a scant three years older than Robert Priser, and John had
survived. I’m sure John could see his own parents in the Prisers; he could
imagine how his own death would be devastating to them.
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| John with his parents, Harry and May, before he was shipped out. |
John’s correspondence with the Prisers continued throughout
the remainder of the war, and even after John was sent home. The Prisers’ letter
mentions two other men, Jim May and Kenny Rump, who had recently written and expected
to be sent home shortly. Obviously, these were two other men from Robert Priser’s
unit who, like John, had continued to write to Robert’s parents.
The Priser letter also revealed that John Aird had not
merely written to the Prisers, but had visited them at their home while he was
on leave before he was discharged. The Prisers wrote:
“I cannot tell you how extremely sorry I was the
afternoon you stopped at our home because of my having to leave to attend the
funeral of our shop foreman. I am sure you understood but I really wanted to
visit with you much longer. While we sincerely appreciated the letters you so
graciously sent us when you were in Italy, yet personal contact and
conversation gives you something more and fills the gap which distance, unfortunately
cannot fill. However, we are clinging to the hope (and promise, if I remember correctly,)
that at a time when it is possible and convenient, you will come to see us
again soon.”
What a remarkable connection these people formed in the midst
of grief! They were able to reach across an ocean to share memories of a bright,
promising young man and to build a sort of friendship. And John was not the
only man who did this—others in his unit became penpals with this lovely couple
as well.
I found this letter to be profoundly moving and hopeful. It
demonstrates that even in the worst the world can give us, there is hope for
kindness, concern and comfort. We think of wartime as bringing out the worst in
mankind, but it also brought out the best.
Sources:
Death of Robert Priser. Wakausa Tribune. Wakarusa,
Indiana. Nov. 9, 1944 edition.
“Goshen Youth Killed In Italy”. South Bend Tribune.
South Bend, Indiana. Nov. 2, 1944 edition. Accessed on Newspapers.com.
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