Work Text:
Dear Captain Rogers,
I can’t begin to thank you for taking the time to reply to my previous mail in such detail; your recollections of your army service and membership of the 107th Tactical Team are absolutely invaluable for an understanding of those years, especially when so many records from that specific period are missing. It’s been an eye-opener for me to see just how far the story of you and your unit has been mythologised – what you refer to as “that whole Howling Commandos schtick” – and with your permission I’d like to adopt your very eloquent description (“the books make war sound like some kind of game, but we were just a bunch of guys who never expected to be fighting, trying to make sense of it all without proper food or equipment or ammo, while hell rained down around us”) to stand as the epigraph to my whole study.
As per your request, I’ve attached here a copy of the photograph I mentioned, and I’ve contacted my supervisor about your claiming ownership of the original: she’ll need to consult the trustees of the archive from which it surfaced, but of course if anyone has a right to it, it’s you. I wondered if perhaps you could tell me something of the circumstances in which it was taken – you and Sgt Barnes look so happy, despite your surroundings.
Also, if I can trespass just a little further on your goodwill, there are one or two points arising from your mail which I’d like to clarify, to be absolutely sure that I’m not misrepresenting the past in any way. First, you mentioned in passing that immediately before you enlisted you had been working at the docks, presumably alongside Sgt Barnes; it’s my understanding that your health was never robust enough for manual labor, so could I ask the nature of the work you were undertaking – bookkeeping, perhaps?
I also have two more specific questions about your campaign against Hydra with the 107th. I’ve been trying to match up the assaults on Hydra bases which you recalled with officially-listed actions, but inevitably there are some discrepancies between the two: in particular, you described an attack somewhere on the French-Belgian border in which you infiltrated the base as a team, commandeering a tank to break out through the wall after planting explosives in the laboratories. The official reports for this period are unhelpfully vague, but a similar action near Courtrai is mentioned in Major Falsworth’s memoir of the war, and according to him you in fact opted to smuggle yourself into the base alone, leaving the three other members of the unit (Sgt Barnes and Pte Morita having been sent to disable the watchtower on the slope above) to hijack the tank and break in with it to extract you just as the explosions detonated. Given that your recollection of these events is both recent and vivid, can I assume that your version is the more accurate?
My second point is rather more personal: reading your account, I couldn’t help noticing that while you emphasise the contribution made by all the members of the 107th Tactical Team in their different areas of expertise, you are often somewhat dismissive of Sgt Barnes’ actions: for instance, in Metz, when Barnes had become pinned down under fire and missed the intended rendez-vous, you say, “I went back like the dumbass I was to haul that mook out of trouble, though if he hadn’t been so careless I wouldn’t have had to go running into a firefight” and likewise on the Baltic strike, “...of course Barnes had dislocated his shoulder, so he was just lying there like a sack of potatoes bitching and getting in the way.”
Social attitudes towards friendships between men have changed so much in seventy years, it can be difficult for a modern observer to understand the nuances of such a relationship – I wondered if you might be willing to comment further on the nature of your and Sgt Barnes’ friendship. But of course I understand that this is a very sensitive topic, particularly when the grief of Sgt Barnes’ loss must still be so immediate for you, and if you prefer not to answer I would wholly understand.
With heartfelt thanks for putting up with my questions, and for your interest in my research,
Katherine R. Mendez
PhD Candidate
Department of History, UCLA