Don Dahlman
Sunday, December 7th, 1941: it’s seventy-nine years ago tomorrow that the Japanese launched their successful surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It began US involvement in World War II, and it was the pivotal event in the “Greatest Generation’s” life.
My Dad was twenty-three, a Jewish boy from Cincinnati bound to succeed as the nation came out of the Depression. He was on all of the “committees” and graduated from Walnut Hills High School in 1936. He then became a co-op student at the University of Cincinnati, alternating learning how to manage the Bookstore, his studies, and leadership on several university committees for five years. But the clouds of war were gathering well before Pearl Harbor, and Don Dahlman registered for the draft on October 16th, 1940 in his junior year. He wasn’t drafted though, and remained at UC to earn an accounting degree in the spring of 1941.
Walnut Hills Yearbook – Class of 1936
Dad enlisted in the US Army on November 17th, 1941. Maybe, now graduated, he knew that his “draft date” was coming. Anyway, as least as he told it, the “new boot” managed a pass to Atlanta for the weekend of December 6th. The story he told was that he was recovering from Saturday night’s partying when he heard about the attack. It was one in the afternoon in Atlanta, and Dad quickly headed back to his basic training camp.
Don Dahlman’s Draft Card
The Great Leveler
It was the same experience for all enlisted or drafted: boot camp, the military process and the war. For an entire generation of American men born between 1905 and 1925, there would always have their “war” experiences in common, whether they actually saw combat or not. It “leveled” them in many ways. Jewish boys from Cincinnati and Southern boys from rural Georgia were pressed into common service. The military was still segregated, so it did not change America’s racial divisions. But it did create a shared “national” experience.
It was like the radio. Prior to the spread of radio entertainment throughout the nation in the twenties and thirties, American “English” was strictly divided by accent. A southerner might not even be able to understand a Minnesotan, much less a man from the Bronx. But as most Americans listened to national radio broadcasts, a “common” accent emerged.
Regional accents didn’t disappear, but everyone knew how to sound like a radio “newsman” or entertainer. A national accent appeared: everyone sounded like they were from Cincinnati. (That might also be because WLW Radio in Cincinnati broadcast at 700 on the AM dial with 500,000 watts. You could hear it throughout most of the nation, from Iowa to Mississippi to South Carolina to Maine. And if you lived near the broadcast tower in Mason, Ohio, they said you could hear it on your bedsprings and lose fillings).
The Yank Arrives
After basic training, Dad was moved into Army Intelligence. He told us about concern that the Nazis were trying to encourage the draftees to desert – he called it the Ohio Plan, “Over the Hill in October”. But as the Army became more aware of Nazi ideology, Dad was transferred from Intelligence to Finance. Intelligence operatives might to be behind enemy lines, and the Army determined that was a bad place for a Jewish man.
Dad was an accountant by degree, so they switched him into the Finance office. It would be almost seven months before he was shipped out, bound for the “British Isles” and arriving on July 12th, 1942. His job was making sure the troops got paid.
Don moved up through the ranks, ultimately becoming a “Warrant Officer”. And he was always “social”. On a weekend pass to London, he arranged for one of his former colleagues in Army Intelligence to set up a blind date. The prospective candidate was wary of Americans, “They had terrible reputations”. So they met at a restaurant, The Queens Brasserie, where she could eye those coming through the door and decide whether to “make contact” or not.
Babs and Don
She did, and Don Dahlman met Phyllis Mary Teresa O’Connor, known to her friends as Babs. They hit it off from the very first dinner, and Dad soon found a way to get stationed in London. Troops need to be paid everywhere anyway. Babs and Don became a constant pair, walking the streets of blacked out London, and hiking the English countryside. And while Babs was unable to explain her frequent absences (out of town on her Government job, she said), Dad knew many of the Americans she knew. They were intelligence operatives, some working behind enemy lines in occupied Europe.
But that’s another story. Don sent a letter to his family: this “good Jewish boy” from Cincinnati was going to marry a Roman Catholic girl from London. They weren’t happy on the home front, but love is love. The wedding was scheduled for June 6, 1944. But the war had other plans.
So Don and Babs moved their wedding plans up, having a small civil ceremony in March. Don’s best man was his first cousin, Bud Levine, representing the whole of Cincinnati in the ceremony. And after a brief honeymoon, Babs “disappeared” again, dropped in France to help prepare for the invasion. And Don was “sequestered” with the rest of the invasion force in the South of England.
France
The D-Day invasion landed on June 6th. Dad would say, he “went in” with the fifth wave of WAC’s (the Women’s Army Corp) but it wasn’t just “paying the troops” that was important. An invading Army needs “invasion currency”, and an invaded nation needs to switch from the currency controlled by the Nazis, to one controlled by the Allies. It’s a big job in the “background” of the battle, but it also has to be won.
So as Babs helped coordinate with the French Underground to cripple Nazi communications and transportation, Don was wading through mounds of currency in the Paris banks, trying to audit the differing monies.
If not for World War II, they would never have met. Their “fairy-tale” marriage, that lasted for sixty-nine years wouldn’t have happened. And, of course, this author and his sisters wouldn’t be here.
Theirs is a story of happiness and success born in a world of tragedy. While not all of their compatriots of the “Greatest Generation” had that joyful life, they can all say the same thing. They can tell you exactly where they were in December 7th, 1941. It was the day that inalterably changed their lives, seventy-nine years ago.
Babs and Don – 2008
