In August 1943, “half the town of Bowling Green called a halt to usual Sunday afternoon pleasures” to tune into the “Army Hour” radio program and listen to one of their own, Brig. Gen. Victor Herbert Strahm, detail an important low-level bombing attack during World War II.

The one-page newspaper clipping on file in the Kentucky Library from the Louisville Courier-Journal is by author “Dot Tellitall,” obviously a Kentucky girl who was in the know, and it details how word of Strahm’s radio program assignment breezed through Bowling Green.

“As his mother, Mrs. F.J. (Alice Jones) Strahm, had been informed by a cable message not to miss last Sunday’s ‘Army Hour,’ the word was passed around town and the general’s friends were glued to their radios,” Dot informed her readers.

An Associated Press account notes 175 B-24 Liberator bombers of the U.S. Ninth Air Force flew a 2,400-mile round trip to dump 300 tons of explosives on the Ploesti oil fields in Romania, curtailing a fuel supply for the Axis powers of Germany and Italy.

“Brigadier General Victor H. Strahm of Bowling Green, chief of staff to (Major) General (Lewis H.) Brereton, praised the 2,000 specially trained airmen who took part on the attack and predicted the raid would ‘materially affect the course of the war,’ ” the AP reported in a dispatch from Cairo dated Aug. 2.

“We bombed the refineries, storage tanks, distilleries and cracking plants,” Strahm told the wire service.

Bowling Green had been following the military career of Strahm, son of professor Franz Strahm at what was then Western State Teachers College, since the young man’s exploits as a World War I flying ace had captivated the hometown audience.

Between Sept. 4 and Nov. 4, 1918, Strahm shot down five enemy planes as part of the 91st Observation Squadron, according to www.theaerodrome.com, which details exploits of America’s air aces.

Strahm received the U.S. Distinguished Service Cross for “extraordinary heroism in action near Metz, France, on Sept. 13, 1918. The citation filed under General Orders No. 1, War Department, Jan. 2, 1919, notes, “Major Strahm displayed remarkable courage and skill in penetrating the enemy territory for a distance of 25 kilometers, flying at an altitude of less than 300 meters,” adding, “His plane was subjected to intense fire from anti-aircraft guns in the region of Metz, and he was attacked by a superior number of German planes, one of which he destroyed. He completed his mission and returned with information of great military value.”

Piloting a French-built Salmson 2A2 designed by industrialist Emile Salmson, Strahm posted victories over Rembercourt, Orley Ferme, twice over Jametz and Confians. Capt. Everett R. Cook, commander of the 91st Squadron, noted the Salmson flew at about 100 mph, and in a dive, that speed could reach 250 mph, according to www.gaspatchmodels.com. Strahm was one of 15 flying aces in the 91st to receive the U.S. Distinguished Service Cross. The New York Herald’s Paris edition printed the honor on Jan. 2, 1919, noting in the last line that Strahm was from Bowling Green, Ky.

Capt. Phillip R. Babcock of the 88th Squadron said of the plane: “The Salmson was a damn good airplane. It sounded like a bunch of tin cans on the end of a string, but they could shoot all kinds of holes in it and it would still run,” according to www.gaspatchmodels.com.

Strahm had joined the U.S. air service in May 1917 after graduating from Western in 1915 and underwent flight training in Dayton, Ohio, where Wilbur and Orville Wright had designed and built the first flying machine before actually taking flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C. He enlisted in the military as a private.

He wrote more than 100 letters back home between 1917 and 1919 about traveling to New York City, then Europe to take part in World War I. The letters are on file at the Kentucky Museum.

In one letter, dated Sept. 18 and signed “Vic,” Strahm told of an aerial confrontation above the Metz Railroad station: “… We started and four Huns followed us four all the way, but refused to attack us. As we turned over Metz, with these four on our right and behind, seven more came from in front and they all attacked us. It was a real scrap too, with odds three to one for the Huns (Germans). Well, we went into a circle and we circled on the inside with eleven Boches on the outside trying to separate us. I caught our opening finally and started out of the circle for home, the other following in perfect formation. We got away all right, without a loss and brought down two of the Huns and another is supposed to have fallen out of control. …”

Strahm commented in a letter home in 1918, “One of the fellows had 3 Germans get after him the other day but he did fine and got away chasing two of them off. The Germans are very very good fliers and wonderful shots so we have to be very wary of them in the air.” He added that the German pilots tried to position their planes so they would be flying right at the Americans framed by the intense brightness of the sun. “This is their main attack,” he told his parents.

After World War I, Strahm was discharged from the Army in 1920, then returned back to his military career and was stationed stateside in the 1920s and 1930s, according to his biography on file at the Kentucky Museum.

Years later in his military aviation career, Strahm had occasion to fly over Bowling Green and would circle the large brick house on College Street as a signal to say hello, as detailed in a Sunday article in The Tennessean on Oct. 22, 1933. His mother would respond by running to her yard and waving a white tablecloth. Strahm was born in Nashville on Oct. 26, 1895.

Many of Strahm’s early letters home dealt with the logistics of money, travel and lifestyles. He noted in a 1917 letter, “… Have not touched (and he underlines touched) a cigarette since the day after I left cause Mother did not want me too (sic).”

When he arrived in France, he wrote back, “We get good food and lots of it and we are as healthy as bears.” He added that he couldn’t tell them about the “horrors of war” and noted that up to that point he had had “enough traveling for the rest of my life,” describing an ocean trip and train travel “from first class down to 40 of us in one of the little French freight cars.”

Strahm died May 11, 1957, having served the U.S. military in two world wars.

Letters and radio were the chief ways for Bowling Green residents to keep track of happenings in World War II. Bowling Green author Nancy Baird details many letters to home in the 1990 Register of the Kentucky Historical Society written by Capt. Harry Lucellus Jackson of Bowling Green, who served as a special services officer for the 120th Regiment of the 30th Division, referred to as “Old Hickory.”

The title of her article, “To Lend You My Eyes … The World War II letters of Special Services Officer Harry Jackson,” comes from Jackson informing the homefront that he intended to “lend you my eyes to see the beauty (of Europe) and to help me ignore the horror and ugliness of war.” He wrote 86 letters to family members from the time he arrived in Normandy during D-Day’s June 11, 1944, landing at Omaha Beach, until he returned to the United States in November 1945, Baird reports.

Baird notes in the introduction, “Written in foxholes, bombed out buildings and commandeered property between the hedgerows of Normandy and the German-Czechoslovakian border, the World War II letters of Captain Harry L. Jackson present an interesting view of the war zone and its occupants.”

Jackson received the Bronze Star in late January 1945 “for meritorious achievement and services during the summer and fall of 1944,” preparing more than 2,000 battle citations that would lead to medals for other soldiers, Baird related.

“The Special Services Department was created by the U.S. Army in 1941. The duties included providing recreational and educational programs, writing regimental histories, preparing requests for commendations and awards and serving as liaisons between civilians and the military,” Baird notes in the article.

Standing tall at 6 feet 6 inches, Jackson is described as “well-read, articulate and refined” by Baird, and he was knowledgeable about “art, architecture, music and the theater.” Because of his large size, he was nicknamed “Big Foot” and “Slim Stretch,” and those names were even emblazoned on the two sides of a confiscated German amphibian jeep, Baird noted, adding that with his size, Jackson was quite a sight driving under the vehicle with his knees almost to his chin.

If he didn’t touch the war, the war touched him through his role as community problem solver in the tiny towns of Europe.

“A mother of small children whose home harbored an unexploded shell, a man without heat because American troops had taken his only stove, and an elderly homeless woman desiring a pass and transportation to join her family in a nearby town,” were just some of the issues he needed to resolve. Baird said Jackson never revealed in his letter how he fixed those problems but he did say, “We help when we can.”

He was particularly taken by Belgium experiences, writing home, “… The women of the countryside took it as their God-given obligation to prepare food for us. Some even bringing a large pot of soup on a wheelbarrow for a distance of five miles – another brought cooked potatoes on a bicycle … We actually suffered from overeating … It was like an old Baptist Association (meeting),” Baird reports in her article.

Jackson also saw the very dark side of war. He visited German labor camps. In a 1945 letter, he describes the camp as “(a) mass of starving humanity, moving about in a state of static coma … reduced to the basic instincts of the animal … the camp of the littered dead – abandoned by the Huns … the horror, the stench, the heinousness of their persecution and final death throws cannot be described. I have seen all of this. I do not want to remember it … There are times when I have thought I was going insane from seeing too much and being so close.”

Jackson was to return to Europe years later in 1962 and walk the beaches of Normandy, Baird’s article notes.

Jackson became the director of community relations at the Lubrizol Corp. in Cleveland and served on the board of directors for the Cleveland Art Museum. He retired in the late 1970s and returned to Bowling Green. The Harry L. Jackson Gallery at the WKU Kentucky Museum features traveling exhibits. He died June 1, 1985, at age 78.

The horrors of war caused one soldier to assess his role in the carnage and what he would not surrender to in his mind.

A 1942 Western Kentucky Teachers College graduate, Ohio County native Dee Carl Perguson Jr., from Horse Branch, offered this powerful description of German prisoners of war he saw, according to an article by Baird in the 2003 Register of the Kentucky Historical Society:

“All of them had stubble beards and wore rumbled (sic) dirty grey-blue uniforms. One among them stood out … He wore glasses and in his left hand, held close to his chest, he clutched two small books. Clearly he treasured these … I also carried books to the front. I sensed that we shared a common humanity and a common tragedy … at that moment on the trail I did not feel that sad-faced German, protectively holding his book was an evil man. Although the U.S. Army had trained me to kill, it had not trained me to hate.”