have you to love and to know that when I’ve arrived at a sensible solution to these direful financial difficulties I’ve gotten into, that I’ll have the finest, best-looking, and all the other adjectives in the superlative girl in the world to make the happiest home in the world with. Now isn’t that a real heaven on earth to contemplate? I think it is and I know I’ll have just that in the not far off future, unless it is necessary for me to get myself shot in this war - and then I’ll find you somewhere. I dreamt that you and I were living in Rome when togas were the fashion. I am always dreaming of you. I’m never anywhere in a dream or out of it that I don’t imagine you there too. Last night I thought I was in an airplane in France. I fell about 17,000 feet and didn’t get much hurt and I was idiot enough to weep because I couldn’t see you in the hospital. It seemed that you were outside and they wouldn’t let you in. Some dream, what? (I had a cheese omlet for supper.) I’m going to eat one every night.
Those comments about the war warned Bess Wallace that Harry Truman was finding it difficult to ignore the appeals to patriotism and courage that President Woodrow Wilson was issuing in Washington. Years later, Harry recalled that he was “stirred heart and soul” by these war messages. Bess soon was dismayed to learn that Harry had rejoined the Missouri National Guard. (He had let his original enlistment lapse in 1911.) He threw himself into the local effort to expand Kansas City’s Battery B and Independence’s Battery C into a regiment. As a former member of the guard, he was suited to this task. He recruited so many men that he was elected a first lieutenant of a new Battery, F.
Although Frank and George Wallace were both younger than thirty-three-year-old Harry Truman, neither enlisted. I am certain that their mother was the reason. A woman who would not permit married sons to move off her family’s property could not bear the thought of them going to war in distant France. Bess struggled to support Harry’s decision, but it was hard to accept. Madge Wallace undoubtedly used all her mournful guile to make him look uncaring and indifferent.
For a month, Bess managed to control a dangerous mixture of anger and disappointment. She told herself that there were millions of other women in America going through the same experience, but she had waited so long and marriage had seemed so certain. In six months, she would be thirty-three years old. Many people were predicting the war would last at least four years. She might be too old to have a child when Harry Truman came back - if he came back.
She tried to conceal her feelings from Harry, but they burst out one night in July. A week later he wrote to her, admitting that he had “felt like a dog” for the past seven days. “It seems I have caused you to be unhappy by my overenthusiastic action in getting myself sent to war.” Another woman about whom he cared deeply had had a similar reaction: “Two big tears came in Mamma’s eyes last night when I started off to Lodge in my soldier clothes. You are the two people in the world I would rather see smile and that I like to cause to smile and here I’ve gone done the opposite to both of you. Perhaps I can make you all happier for it. I’ll try my best. Some way I seem to have an ability for getting myself into things by my overzealous conduct or anxiety to see them a success and do not see the consequences for myself or others until the conclusion comes.”
For a while, Harry tried to disguise the seriousness of his decision. He told Bess that it was not yet certain that all the National Guard units would be incorporated in the new U.S. Army immediately. They might not have room for them and the hundreds of thousands of men the government was drafting. His bad eyes might keep him out of combat. The Russians, who had had a democratic revolution and kicked out the Czar, were launching a massive
Those comments about the war warned Bess Wallace that Harry Truman was finding it difficult to ignore the appeals to patriotism and courage that President Woodrow Wilson was issuing in Washington. Years later, Harry recalled that he was “stirred heart and soul” by these war messages. Bess soon was dismayed to learn that Harry had rejoined the Missouri National Guard. (He had let his original enlistment lapse in 1911.) He threw himself into the local effort to expand Kansas City’s Battery B and Independence’s Battery C into a regiment. As a former member of the guard, he was suited to this task. He recruited so many men that he was elected a first lieutenant of a new Battery, F.
Although Frank and George Wallace were both younger than thirty-three-year-old Harry Truman, neither enlisted. I am certain that their mother was the reason. A woman who would not permit married sons to move off her family’s property could not bear the thought of them going to war in distant France. Bess struggled to support Harry’s decision, but it was hard to accept. Madge Wallace undoubtedly used all her mournful guile to make him look uncaring and indifferent.
For a month, Bess managed to control a dangerous mixture of anger and disappointment. She told herself that there were millions of other women in America going through the same experience, but she had waited so long and marriage had seemed so certain. In six months, she would be thirty-three years old. Many people were predicting the war would last at least four years. She might be too old to have a child when Harry Truman came back - if he came back.
She tried to conceal her feelings from Harry, but they burst out one night in July. A week later he wrote to her, admitting that he had “felt like a dog” for the past seven days. “It seems I have caused you to be unhappy by my overenthusiastic action in getting myself sent to war.” Another woman about whom he cared deeply had had a similar reaction: “Two big tears came in Mamma’s eyes last night when I started off to Lodge in my soldier clothes. You are the two people in the world I would rather see smile and that I like to cause to smile and here I’ve gone done the opposite to both of you. Perhaps I can make you all happier for it. I’ll try my best. Some way I seem to have an ability for getting myself into things by my overzealous conduct or anxiety to see them a success and do not see the consequences for myself or others until the conclusion comes.”
For a while, Harry tried to disguise the seriousness of his decision. He told Bess that it was not yet certain that all the National Guard units would be incorporated in the new U.S. Army immediately. They might not have room for them and the hundreds of thousands of men the government was drafting. His bad eyes might keep him out of combat. The Russians, who had had a democratic revolution and kicked out the Czar, were launching a massive
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