The family's Second World War

The album’s wartime pages span the war almost exactly, but they span it from one side. On one edge sit the photographs of Mary Ann Walker’s wedding to a young Army lieutenant at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Jacksonville on 14 May 1941 — seven months before Pearl Harbor — preserved on Book 2, pp188–191, with the engraved invitation at Book 2, p187 and the newspaper engagement notice at Book 2, p180. On the other edge sit the snapshots of small children on garden lawns at Fort Benning and along the Hudson at Mount Vernon in 1944, mounted across Book 2, p193 through Book 2, p197. Between those two clusters Amy FitzSimons Walker — the compiler — assembled what she had: three uniformed sons-in-law and a son, a wartime letter from a former servant, and the everyday photographs of grandchildren growing up while their fathers were away. The war itself, the campaigns and the postings and the fighting, is mostly absent. That is the album’s nature: it records the family at home.

Lt. Oswald Beverley McEwan

The compiler’s youngest daughter, Mary Ann, married Oswald Beverley McEwan on 14 May 1941, six months before the United States entered the war. The wedding photographs at Book 2, p188, Book 2, p189, Book 2, p190, and Book 2, p191 show him in civilian morning dress; the engraved invitation at Book 2, p187 prints his name without rank.

The single album page that records his service is the studio portrait at Book 2, p181. Sepia-toned, head-and-shoulders, captioned in pencil in the compiler’s hand: Oswald Beverly McEwan. He wears a peaked service cap with the U.S. Army officer’s eagle, a four-pocket olive-drab service coat, and on his shoulders the single gold bars of a 2nd Lieutenant. The collar discs carry the crossed-cannon insignia of the Field Artillery. The portrait is undated but is consistent with his commission in 1941 or 1942, contemporary with the wedding. The print has a diagonal crease through the upper right, evidently handled often before it found the album.

That photograph is the entirety of what the scrapbook records of his wartime service. There is no later portrait at a higher rank, no theater snapshot, no V-mail, no clipping. The fuller story of Oswald McEwan’s career is held in family memory beyond these pages, and falls outside the scope of what the album itself attests.

Capt. James Pickens Walker Jr.

The compiler’s son, James Pickens Walker Jr., appears in uniform at Book 2, p169. The studio portrait is a sepia-toned vignette: a smiling young officer in an Army tunic, the overseas cap on his head bearing the twin silver bars of a captain on its left front. The right collar disc carries the U.S. of the regular officer corps; the left disc carries the caduceus of the Medical Corps, with a smaller caduceus on the lapel below. A circular shoulder patch is faintly visible at the lower right of the print, too indistinct to identify. The page bears no caption.

The portrait dates from his captaincy, somewhere in the window 1942–1945. That a young physician would have entered the Army Medical Corps with a commission, then advanced to captain during the war years, is plain on the face of the photograph; what unit he served with, where he was posted, and whether he saw overseas service are not recorded in the album.

Dr. Robert Corbell Jr.

The most narratively complete of the three in-law servicemen is the compiler’s middle son-in-law, Dr. Robert Corbell Jr. — “Bob” — married to her middle daughter Emma Dee Walker. He appears not in a uniform portrait but obliquely, as the father of the small boy in the five snapshots of Robert Lawrence Corbell III mounted on Book 2, p192. Beneath the photographs the compiler wrote out, in pencil, the only contemporaneous service narrative the album contains:

Dee & Bob lived in Richmond until Bob finished medical school. He then interned in Norwalk Conn. — He finished his internship in June 1941 — and went into service. He was stationed at Ft. Belvoir & then at Ft. Benning. He joined the 82nd air borne.

The narrative is precise and economical: a Richmond residence during medical school; a Connecticut internship completed in June 1941; entry into service that summer; posts at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and Fort Benning, Georgia; assignment to the 82nd Airborne Division. The accompanying snapshots fix the family’s geography in those same years — R. L. C. III NORWALK CONN. 1942, R. L. C. III + J. P. W. 1942 Portsmouth Va, R. L. Corbell III 1st Xmas 1941 — the small boy moving with his parents through the wartime postings.

The 82nd Airborne was reactivated in August 1942 and ran its initial parachute training at Fort Benning, fitting the narrative’s timing precisely. As a battalion surgeon Bob Corbell would have served in the medical detachment supporting airborne infantry. The album does not follow him into combat: there are no theater photographs and no later narrative. What the album records is the doctor at his stations stateside, with his young family, before the division shipped for North Africa.

Edna’s letter, September 1944

The most direct wartime correspondence in the album is not from any of the family’s own men. It is the four-page pencil letter from Edna — a former servant in the Walker household in Savannah — written from Fort George, Florida, on 12 September 1944, and mounted across Book 2, p176, Book 2, p177, and Book 2, p178. The first three pages are filled with memories of the household, of “Miss Dee” and “Miss Mandy” and their small children. On the fourth page, Book 2, p178, she turns to the war:

I hope the gires husbond’s are alright and safe so thay can return and live happy again. We havent heard from my son-in law in over a month. miss Maryon say she could tell us about him. he landed in Itlay last year this time from africa he was promoated the first of the year from Sgt. to staff sgt. and is with the 25th Chemical Decon Co. I belive he must be with Genral Mark Clark’s 5 th armey in Itley. tell miss maryon if she can tell us something abat it please do altho it wont help matters any I dont know if thay sent him to france or not. the toughest fighting is going on now.

The 25th Chemical Decontamination Company was one of the support units that shadowed every major Allied advance, carrying gas-mask, smoke, and decontamination equipment forward in case the threatened chemical warfare materialised. Mark Clark’s Fifth Army had landed at Salerno in September 1943, taken Rome on 4 June 1944, and by the date of Edna’s letter was grinding north through the Gothic Line in the northern Apennines — “the toughest fighting” she names with sober accuracy. Whether her son-in-law was still in Italy or had been transferred to the French front, she did not know. The album does not record what became of him.

What the album does not show

The wartime service the album documents is the service the camera could reach: a young lieutenant in a Jacksonville studio, a young captain at a base photographer’s, a young doctor’s training-post addresses pencilled under his son’s birthday photos. The campaigns themselves — the airborne drops, the artillery batteries, the field hospitals, the Apennine ridges — are off-stage. That is the genre. A family album compiled at home by a mother and grandmother could only hold what came back through the mail: portraits, snapshots, letters. The fighting is registered, when it is registered at all, by its absence — a portrait without a sequel, a narrative that stops at “He joined the 82nd air borne,” a letter that ends with a daughter waiting for word.