Thursday, June 22, 1944
With the Fifth Army, Italy – Major John O. McNeel, Registar, husband of Mrs. Rose W. McNeel, of Charlottesville, Va., and son of John L. McNeel, of Millpoint, is serving with an Evacuation Hospital that has made an outstanding record while serving close behind the front lines during the Italian Campaign. In January, this hospital, which was organized by the University of Virginia Medical School, became the first medical unit in the Fifth Army to receive Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark’s plaque for meritorious service by non-combat units.
A complete tent city, this hospital carries with it all of the facilities necessary to care for 750 seriously wounded patients. During periods of heavy fighting during the Italian Campaign, however, it has cared for as many as 1,200 casualties.
Several times during the campaign, the hospital has demonstrated the speed with which it can go into operation. The transformation from a completely mobile unit loaded on trucks to a modern hospital ready to receive all types of patients was accomplished in just over four hours when this unit moved up to the Garigliano Front.
Of more than 2,000 battle casualties treated by this hospital since it landed in Africa in November 1942, almost all of which required surgical operations, there has been a mortality rate of only 1.4 percent.
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J. R. Sutton received a message that his son, Gray, had been slightly wounded in the Italian campaign, He has been overseas about eighteen months.
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Major Paul H. Price, writing from somewhere in England. He is assigned to the British Forces as a mineral resource searcher. In his hut are seven other majors – all considerably older than he. One is a Scotsman in kilts, one Canadian, two British and three Americans. On some of their hikes they are escorted in with a bagpipe. Major Price says he has become quite good on a motorcycle, and has learned to shoot many types of firearms. He may even have a special deer gun for his next deer hunting trip with us here in Pocahontas County.
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George E. Heffner, S 2-c, of the United States Coast Guard, has returned to his base in Texas, after spending a nine-day leave with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Lanty Heffner, at Millpoint.
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Pvt. Howard R. Doss writes as follows:
Dear Times;
Once again, I write to you from the “South Pacific,” quite a ways from those blue hills of West Virginia, and our home state, we love so much and our loved ones at home. I hope everything is going fine with you these days and those around Greenbank. How I would love to be there this pretty Sunday, just to go to church with my wife, and meet all my friends in and around there; some things you just cannot forget even though we are far from them: Dempsey Johnson and his smile; the smell of the tanneries at Marlinton and Bartow, and last, but not least, the Pocahontas County fair, where you meet the people you see only from year to year. Last year, 1943, I was lucky enough to be there, but I guess in my mind, I’ll have to see the mule race this year.
Seems crazy, but as I write this, it seems as yesterday in the States. Funny, but true.
I feel safe in saying that you have had a letter from me. I guess you remember that Gayle Galford is my wife, so I need not say more about this.
In putting an end to this, I send my love first to the best paper in West Virginia, and my love also to the people of the county and town of Marlinton and home state of West Virginia.
Yours truly,
Pvt. Howard R. Doss
FIELD NOTES
This is a bird year and the trees and shrubs of every home have the cheerful, useful, beautiful creatures in number and variety. However, it would appear that E. M. Richardson has more than any of us in the spacious grounds surrounding his home out in the east end near the woods. Of course, the birds, like horses and dogs and his fellowmen, trust Mr. Richardson; like horseflies, you cannot fool them.
And this confidence is not misplaced. Then, too, there is another item which might as well be mentioned – he keeps his feed box full for the birds both winter and summer. However, this is but the outward, visible sign of the good heart within. Here is Mr. Richardson’s bird list, recently checked up from his porch: Titmouse, cardinal, robin, catbird, brown thrasher, wrens, flicker, chipping sparrow, oriole, fox sparrow, blue jay, scarlet tanager, gold finch, sapsucker, fly catcher, blue bird, hummingbird, turtle dove, whippoorwill, ground robin (tohee), blackbird, cowbird, starling, English sparrow.
WEDDING
Music-McNeill
Mrs. Eleanor H. McNeill, of Buckeye, announces the marriage of her daughter, Mildred McNeill, R. N., to Estel Music, son of Mrs. Elizabeth Music, of Logan, on Sunday, May 21, 1944, in Huntington…
DEATHS
Mrs. Mary Elizabeth McNeil Moore, widow of the late Prof. John S. Moore, died on Monday, June 19, 1944, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Lura Brill, in Marlinton… On Thursday afternoon, it is expected, her body will be laid to rest in the family plot in Mt. View Cemetery, the service being conducted from the Marlinton Methodist Church…
A professing Christian from an early age, Mrs. Moore lived her religion; fulfilling well her part as daughter, wife, mother and neighbor.
Walter Hull Yeager, aged 74 years, died at his home in Cheyenne, Wyoming, June 14, 1944.
Mr. Yeager was the eldest son of the late Henry Arbogast and Luverta Beard Yeager. He was born at the John Yeager homestead on Alleghany Mountain. He went with his parents in the middle 1880s to Wyoming, where his father held a government position…
