Major Homer "Al" Smith's wartime letters home

David Threlkeld brought these letters to the Historical Society Museum last week, a gift to the people of Lucas County from his family, and I spent a few hours on Monday cataloging them --- as well as other items.

There are 160 letters, dated between March of 1942 and September of 1945, the wartime letters home of U.S. Army Air Corps Maj. Homer "Al" Smith, killed on Nov. 19, 1945, when the P-51 Fighter that he was piloting crashed in severe weather over China.

Maj. Smith (more about him here) was David's uncle, first husband of his mother's, Marjorie's, sister, Mary Ellen (Clark) Smith/Young. Three years after Maj. Smith was killed, Mary Ellen married Leck Young, a Chariton High School classmate, and they spent 58 years together in Chariton. She died in 2006 and he followed during 2013. As there were no children by either marriage, items they had treasured, including the letters, were passed to nieces and nephews.

The photograph of Maj. Smith came to the museum a few years ago as part of the Col. Bassel and Dorothy (Smith) Blakesmith accession. Mrs. Blakesmith was Al Smith's sister. We also have in the archive Col. Blakesmith's wartime correspondence, several hundred letters written home during the course of a military career that began in 1942 and continued through Korea into Vietnam.

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Maj. Smith and Mary Ellen were married Jan. 1, 1940, in Chariton. On Feb. 24, 1942, Smith and his best friend and future brother-in-law, Bassel Blakesmith, both pilots, enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps, leaving Lucas County on March 24. The first letter home here is dated March 27.

More than 100 of these letters were written during 1942. The Smiths were able to be together during 1943 and 1944 when he was assigned as a flight instructor in Georgia and Florida, Correspondence picks up again during January of 1945, when now Capt. Smith was deployed to the China Theater of operations, and continues into late September, a few weeks before his death.

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I've read only two or three of the letters, pulled from their envelopes when I could not decipher the postmark. They were so intensely personal that it made me uneasy --- and so I've not read more and probably won't. 

Maj. Smith's remains never were recovered. There is a cenotaph in his memory on the Smith lot in the Chariton Cemetery and his name is inscribed on Tablets of the Missing, Manila American Cemetery.

There are no descendants to tell his stories, but these letters will have a permanent place in the historical society archive to serve as reminders that this young man lived and loved and died in the service of his country, available to anyone who might wish to know him better.