P.S.
KISS THE
DUCHESS
FOR ME
Letters from an unknown soldier
Edited and with
commentary by Joe Rossi
©1995-2005 All Rights Reserved
For Jerry Anthony and for Marilyn Alexia
She doesn't know why she never read the letters. She remembers seeing them in the old brown metal strong box. They had been there for some 47 years. Yes, she had glanced at some of the other contents of the strong box, the old envelopes containing outdated insurance papers, some old letters from his brothers.
When had her mother put them there, all 150, tied up in a white satin
ribbon? Did she stack them in each time she received one? Or was it after
that day in September? Rosh Hashanah it was. It was early evening, at twilight.
The doorbell rang. She remembered the doorbell, the
"That must be a telegram from Joey," her mother said, "Wishing us a Happy New Year."
She remembers her mother's anguished cry, the slump to the ground. She remembers herself, at nine-years old, for some reason running out the front door, falling to her knees onto the grass hands clasped together in some sort of prayer.
-Marilyn "the Duchess" Rossi
Prologue
For years, inside a box at my mother's
house lay the sleeping ghost of the past, waiting to be awakened like the
genie that waits inside the lamp, like the mystery that waits tucked away
in the dusty attic for years and years. We're not sure how they ended up so
neatly tied together and preserved; each letter sitting snugly inside its
envelope. All we know is that we have them.
Joe Moss was my grandfather. My mother's
father, he was the grandpa I would grow up knowing only through faded, old
photographs, and through stories my grandmother and mother would tell. The
letters were his.
And the letters tell a story.
This book was my mother's idea. Her working
title had been Letters from My
Father. In her possession were the 150 carefully-preserved letters her
mother, and my
grandmother, the late Gertrude Moss received from Private Joe Moss over
a period of eight months as he worked his way through basic training to finally
arrive in France during the summer of 1944 where the Allied invasion of Europe
was underway. An unrepentant and unabashed romantic, he wrote to Gertie, as he called my grandmother, almost everyday
he was in the service.
He began his letters with "My Darling,"
and ended usually with a postscript asking Gertie
to kiss their nine-year-old daughter for him. For years after his death the
letters remained in the brown metal strong box, neatly tied together by the
aforementioned white satin ribbon.
For my mother, reading the letters reintroduced
her to a man she had known only as a father. "I came to know him as a husband,
a cousin, an uncle, and as a friend." she said. For me the process acquainted
me with a man I never knew at all. I found myself transported back to the
1940s. It's like a time capsule, I thought. A good friend who read the letters
corrected me: “It is a time capsule,”
she said.
We are there with him in the barracks undergoing
basic training. We are there with him on the trains. We are there with him
in the French countryside "with the roar of guns as a background." We are
there with him at the U.S.O. watching the youngsters “jitterbug” and go to
it. We go to the movies with him where he avoids any
that deal with war. We rehearse with him as he and his fellow soldiers endeavor
to stage a show for their camp. We learn how much he loved show business.
One hope he always held out was that my mother, whom in his later letters
almost always referred to as "the duchess," would make it in show business
one day. As he hunkered down in those foxholes in
This book is also an opportunity to experience
World War II through the eyes of
somebody for whom the war never became history. Other published accounts
by those who were in the war but survived, while not to be afforded any disrespect,
can only look back upon the war as history. Joe never had that luxury. World
War II would never become history. His account is an immediate, first-person
look at World War II and at a fate that was closing in on him.
One thing to keep in mind is that these
are personal letters. Obviously, they weren't written for a large audience.
Therefore, there are references and situations discussed that will never
really understand. We've done our best to try and fill in the blanks, but
at the same time, where we couldn't, you'll have to fill in your own blanks
with your own imagination.
Once I approached a publisher with hopes
of publishing the complete collection of letters. He told me that because
my grandfather wasn't famous, nobody wanted to hear his story. After all,
he said, there are thousands of stories like his, and every soldier had a
daughter they called their duchess. And that is my point. This is a story
for the thousands of unsung heroes who nobody will know about it because
they weren't famous. Indeed, after my mother’s death
in 2001, I learned to what extent my mother had gone to bat for this manuscript,
uncovering letters to Stephen Spielberg, and Tom Brokaw among others. What strikes me about the totality of this story is that
it embodies everything that makes for good story telling.
A likeable but disadvantaged protagonist with dubious origins rises
above his circumstances, musters up the courage to confront a difficult situation,
and becomes a better man for it. It is the hero’s
journey through the long dark night of the soul. It
is overflowing with romance, with humor, with undeniable charm, and with
vivid imagery. It illuminates the bonds of blood that
are unbreakable even in times of war.
Based on the fact that countless strangers
have written me, who knew little about me or my mother, telling me how moving
they found the manuscript, I have to believe there is a larger audience for
this work. And when you read the letters and get to know Joe, you will no
doubt see that in addition to being a soldier he loved show business. So, yes, I think he would dig this; he really would. He
is the star of this show.
Come to think of it, the story of Joe Moss
ought to be a movie, it really should. That’s about the best way this country
could honor him. This isn’t Saving Private Ryan. This
was real. And yes, Tom Hanks
is much too old now, but he was my choice to play Joe back when I first sat
down to start transcribing these letters and realizing the book that my late
mother, who had begun her own decade-long battle with cancer, had first germinated
Some further notes about these letters. Joe tended to write in fragments. My
spelling and grammar checker just about went nuts with “fragment consider
revising.” Well, fragments are the way my grandfather
wrote, and I wish to remain true to the conversational tone of his letters. I have edited out quite a few of the P.S. remarks as well
as the salutations, but left in enough of them so as to intimate the tone
and style of his letters without too much redundancy. I
also attempted to edit out the more mundane passages that don’t move the
story along as much, but just as with the openers and closers, I felt some
inclusion was necessary in order to understand the context of the letters.
Lastly, a childhood friend of mine I shared
this with put it best: my grandfather was a writer. And that’s where I think all those publishers and agents
who passed on the concept, missed the point. Yes, the story is a common one,
no doubt, and yet Joe tells his story in a way that makes it come alive.
He was the first embedded reporter before there was embedded reporting.
He was the real thing.
Chapter 1-An Unlikely Hero
Joseph R. Moss was actually born Joseph Robert
Moscowitz in
Much of the information for this biographical sketch was derived from
a 1942
employment application Joe filled out. Where the application asked what
his siblings did for a living, he wrote real estate. Truth is, while they
did have some real estate holdings, their real profession was running illegal
gambling rackets. In other words, some of this biographical information must
be taken with a grain of salt.
David Moscowitz moved his family to the
On
Proto, or Gertie, in
occasionally call her Marilyn, instead preferring to call her pet names
he'd invented like
"Slowpoke," and "the duchess." Nicknames were a thing
with Joe. Gertie often became his "Darling Chin
Up Girl."
As a family, the Mosses bounced back and forth between
Joe's sister Carrie married Abe Schneider, whom is often referred
to as Uncle Abe. Abe and Carrie had two boys, Burt nicknamed Babe and Jerry,
whom Joe makes numerous references to in his letters. Uncle Abe's thing was
carnivals and amusements, and when he and Carrie moved to the
Still, it would seem that all his life, Joe had to rely on the generosity
of his older
and more successful brothers, either for money, or for business and employment
opportunities. It is for this reason, that his relationship with his siblings,
especially his brother Eddie, seemed somewhat strained. This
becomes even more evident when you read his letters while he is in boot camp.
While he does correspond with his brothers, the letters coming from the brothers
to Joe are few and far between.
To give a good example of the nature of the relationship between Joe and his brothers the following letters do set the tone.
On
It was quite a surprise to me, to learn that you wanted to hear
from me. My
behavior in the past year, most certainly, was cause enough for a complete
lack of interest in my welfare. I am humbly grateful to you for your inquiry.
This letter, incidentally, is not by way of explaining my actions. I doubt
the Good Lord above could make things clear.
So far my luck has been true to form. I haven't as yet found anything
to do. All of
my efforts have been directed towards finding employment in an airplane
plant but due to
the fact that I can’t prove my citizenship my application will not
even be considered.
Truthfully, I was almost positive of gaining employment in one of the plants
and as a
matter of fact I wasn't a bit worried and now. Then last week I evolved
the brilliant idea of looking for some sort of business, you see I had the
audacity or rather the effrontery to believe I could induce either you or
Ben to set me up in business, of course, I knew what the answer would be.
At least it was a good laugh.
At the present time I am playing with the idea
of going to either
The few want ads
I have answered here demand experienced help, so naturally
I
am at a disadvantage.
Shortly thereafter, the words from a
Two months
later, on
Haven't worked since I arrived here and from the looks of things
I haven't much
chance. I wrote attorney Millstein for some
official proof my citizenship which was
absolutely necessary to go to work in any defense plant. He replied with
a letter stating the fact that he felt sure of my status of a citizen. The
letter proved of little value to me since the various employment people referred
me to the office of immigration and naturalization. Upon being interviewed
there, I was told I needed a certificate of derivative citizenship. I filed
application and now I have wait nine months for my certificate. I will try
my luck in
A short while after this, Joe wrote to Eddie again, and explained
that for $500 he
could take over two of Uncle Abe's stores in the Fun Zone. Here is Eddie's
one page
response:
I presume Abe has mentioned our
telephone conversation of a few days ago and of Ben's and my decision to
send you $300.00. To be very frank with you, I want to say that everything
was all right with me until I found out about your $200 story to Stewart.
Also that Ben was a little peeved on learning that he had to pay Dudgy some $69.00 for you. Well, we are sending you
$500.00 as per your letter. See if you can us a count for this money. Trusting that this is a beginning towards a better relationship
amongst us all.
We don’t know if Joe ever gave Eddie and Ben a good count for their money.
Don Moss told me that after Joe’s death, his father Eddie rarely, if ever, talked about his youngest brother and would get choked up when his named was mentioned.
Now my mother had always maintained that her father had been drafted, and I decided not to really belabor the point with her. My theory is that a little girl could never really accept that her father willingly left her, and so that he was drafted has always been what my mother maintained. But based on my research as we can see in the letter I quote from it is possible he enlisted. Bennie’s widow, Aunt Helen, when I spoke to her in 1995 suggested as much. That doesn’t rule out his being drafted. Dave Marks “taking it pretty hard” suggests from the very first letter, that Marks’ fate wasn’t of his own choosing, and so perhaps so it was with Joe.
On November 15, selective
service ordered Joe to report for induction at the local draft board in
It’s worth a sidebar mention the stories mother would tell of her mother working at Saks 5th selling lingerie, and the notable evening when none other than Ella Fitzgerald walked into the store to buy some gifts for her staff. Because she was a black woman none of the other sale girls were willing to talk to her. My grandmother and made a handsome commission for her efforts.
So, Gertie sold lingerie to stars while Joe, once in the
army, always held out the hope that his age, 33, and his status as a pre-Pearl
Harbor father, would keep him out of harm’s way. He assured himself and his
family that he would get a lucky break, such as being assigned to the special
services branch where he could work as an entertainer, or sent to
Joe's own inner struggle as he grapples
with ramifications of what is happening to him,
is illustrated clearly in the letters. A transformation was underway, a coming
of age, as it were. Through his faith, love and courage, his story honors
the thousands of unknown soldiers, whose stories will never be told, whose
sacrifices will never be known.
On the battlefield one man may triumph
over another, but remember, Hitler lost the war.
Chapter 2-Good Soldiers
Joe Moss at Basic Training
Well, here I am established in my barracks. We had a fairly good trip out here, although it took us three nights and two days to arrive. I feel fine although it will be rather hard to get used to the barking of orders by the corporals and sergeants. They let you know immediately that discipline is the backbone of the army.
Our training consists of 17 weeks of learning how to kill, after that only the Good Lord knows what will happen.
Dave Marks, the fellow I introduced you to in the station, is my bunk mate. That is, he has the upper and I have the lower. If you remember, I told you he was taking this quite hard and he still is. I have been trying to cheer him up and I have partly succeeded.
It was a good thing we left the station in
Our camp is located about 10 miles north of
size of an average community. If we get any overnight passes I imagine we
will spend them in
The financial situation will not be very good because
not only are they taking $22 for an
addition to your allotment, but I had to subscribe $3.75 a month for war
bonds. My laundry will be $1.50 per month. Then add incidentals such as toothpaste,
soap and $7.30 per month for insurance; I won't have much left for perhaps
even cigarettes. Every corporal stationed here has a racket all his own.
We had to have hangers to hang our clothes on and "we had to buy them from
the corporal 7 for a dollar. How do you like that?
January 4
Today, we were taught
how to make a field pack. You have seen them on soldiers in the
movies. I now know how it is done. This morning also, I had my first look
at German War
Prisoners. They all seemed cheerful and happy. The sergeant told us that
most of them
never want to go back to their native land and they look forward to
I had a very pleasant surprise this afternoon. As a
matter I feel quite proud of myself. We
are all taken to the interview department for a second questioning as to
our capabilities. You recall my telling you that I had no idea what sort
of score I made in my I.Q. at
amazement, I was told that we were the seven highest scores out of the 300
men in our
company and our scores were so very high, that this additional test was
to determine
whether or not the first one was just accidental or if it showed a true
picture of our
intelligence. If my score, this time, is as high, it may mean going to Officer
Candidate School (OCS).. He told us that we may
or may not complete our basic, depending upon the openings in the school
and the war department. He also warned us not to be disappointed if we remained
privates in the infantry. Well, dear, I can only say that "Blessed be those
who expect the worst, verily they are never disappointed."
We had a rather hard day of it, today. In the first place it rained all
night last night and all of today. We started the morning off by going to
the drill field and lying down in the wonderful, cold, sticky, wet mud of
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