Defiance at Cairo: The Love and War Confluence of the Damgaard and Porch Families

By Neil Christian Damgaard

Defiance at Cairo is the story of a Wisconsin railroad worker, turned U.S.Army combat engineer, Martin Jens Damgaard and a Tennessee stenographer, Joe Evelyn Porch. They found each other at the beginning of the Second World War, fell in love, courted by letters, found each other again after war's end and made a life together. Their tale begins in 1940 and brings together the two "rivers" of large and fascinating families—symbolically at Cairo, Illinois where the Ohio River joins the Mississippi River. Long ago an army camp, "Fort Defiance", peered into the two rivers and was commanded once upon a time by Ulysses S. Grant. Martin's and Joe's lives were also marked by noble efforts to defy chosen targets of oppression, sometimes even each other. Martin was the final child of eight from immigrant Danish parents. Joe was the sixth of nine children in a proud and old Tennessee family. They made their lives together in the nation's capital, Washington D.C. and loved that city through nine Presidents. They raised one son, the author of this book.

This story is built around 170 extant wartime letters from him to her, through the army censors and across the sea. Seventy of those letters are included in this book. They mark the times through the days of build-up for the Normandy invasion through VE Day and the immediate days after. Martin's letters track the Allied advance through the eyes and experiences of a combat engineer in an elite unit, from England to Normandy, through France and Belgium, into Germany and all the way to Berlin. This is a saga of war and romance. It is the classic G.I. love-story and then of a life crafted together, with all its stresses, challenges and joys. It is an American tale. It is not however, a couple cocooned in the individualism of our current culture. Martin and Joe saw themselves as part of a larger narrative grounded in community and duty. Many family members, friends and colleagues factor into Martin and Joe's years, adding depth, connection and love. There is love in this book and there are surprises along the way. There is stress and disappointment and how those were dealt with. And there is honor, deserving a careful remembrance. The subjects of this story died in the 1990s having seen most of the twentieth century. It is the hope of this author that they will not be forgotten.

Many people, figures from World War II history, films of the time, events that are dramatic and campaign details of the 602nd Camouflage Engineer Battalion are reference. But the story is the two people, very different, brought together by the Second World War. As an Epilogue the author weaves their impact on him into the story. 70 Endnotes are included plus some 110 pictures, most of which are original from the author's archives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098321253

Book preview

PRELUDE - THE FAMILIES

Skip Damgaard rolled out of his bed in a small, upstairs bedroom of the bungalow-style, working class house at 1926 Banks Avenue in Superior, Wisconsin. It was a bright and sunny morning but cold in his room as his feet touched the wood slat floor. He was six feet, two inches tall and just a little too long for the bed—his toes had been cold all night. It was just two days before Christmas 1940, and it was his twenty-sixth birthday. He really wanted to do some early winter hunting today near Manitou Falls in the new Pattison State Park—that is, if it wasn’t too cold outside. Nah, it’s never too cold to hunt! he thought. It was, however, a Monday and normally he would be working at his job with the Great Northern Railroad. But his father, Chris, had said, "Martin, Ga pa jagt, det er din fødselsdag — Martin, go hunting. It is your birthday." Skip owned a Mauser 98 rifle that had somehow made its way across the ocean from the Great War, and he prized it for its accuracy. He had paid an astronomical $20 or it but it was his favorite possession.

Martin Damgaard had graduated from the local college and had worked for the railroad since graduation day in June of 1936. His father and mother were now both 70 years old, and Pa had only three months to live. Skip was the youngest in a family of three brothers (one had disappeared years before) and five sisters. He would enlist in the U.S. Army November 4th of the following year, a month before Pearl Harbor, report to the Recruit Center at Ft. Sheridan, Illinois, and then take basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. That would be followed by Officer Candidate School at the Engineer School, Ft. Belvoir, Virginia commencing on March 5, 1942. For the United States, the war was now three months old.

On that same day—Skip’s twenty-sixth birthday, December 23, 1940—930 miles south in Nashville, Tennessee a sixteen-and-one-half year old girl named Joe Evelyn Porch was helping her eldest sister Mary wrap a few Christmas presents. Mary was 12 years her senior. "I wonder what I will get for Christmas, Mary? said the teenager. You will see in two days, Joey" said Mary. Joe was a junior in high school, quite pretty, and popular among her classmates at Isaac Litton High School. She was the sixth of nine siblings and one of six still living in the current family home on the Gallatin Pike. They had lived in lots of houses around Nashville and Old Hickory near the new DuPont plant. It was built to manufacture gunpowder during the Great War but now, since rayon and cellophane had begun to be manufactured there (in 1923), several family members found steady work there. The Porches lived in at least ten small homes in the immediate area of the plant for those years. Joe loved her family but struggled with certain features of their family life. She was five foot, three and one-half inches tall, weighed an even 100 pounds, excelled with her grades in high school, enjoyed membership in the school’s future business leaders club, was thought to be both smart and attractive and dreamed of a far distant horizon.

***

This is a World War II story and it is a story of romance. It is a family history with lots of drama. It is an American tale. And perhaps it is something of my own catharsis. A powerful line in a movie script captures my passion to write this book. In the 1982 Ridley Scott dystopic future film, Blade Runner¹ there is a very dramatic and moving final monologue—detective Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) has been ordered to track down and kill the rogue replicant Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer), who is near the end of his fixed four-year lifespan, now dying. Batty ends up chasing Deckard to the rooftops in the midst of a heavy downpour of rain, where Deckard misses a jump between the rooftops and ends up hanging precariously. Batty ultimately pulls Deckard up to safety despite knowing Deckard was tasked to terminate him, moments before Batty’s own pre-programmed death. They sit down, looking at each other. Reflecting on his experiences and imminent mortality, Batty says, with dramatic pauses between each statement: "I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain … Time to die." Batty then smiles and bows his head; he is gone.

There are those who would ask, Why write about your parents? What’s the big deal? How are they unique? It is a fair set of questions. There is nothing unusual or outstanding in having strong feelings, affections or even ambivalence about one’s parents. I claim no hallowed place among the children of men. But I have found a rich and lonely set of feelings for my own parents and so have set out to tell their story. They died in 1994 and 1997 respectively, and I have pondered writing this tale since their passings, some twenty-five years ago. Now however, various circumstances have arisen which prompt my attempt to talk about them, and to tell their story. I am older now and feeling the urge to place my own story into the wider context. I was raised as the only son of my parents, who were the children of their parents with their stories, which flowed from those parents. I also now have family members, some who knew Dad and Mom and some who did not, who have encouraged this project. And then there are, the letters of which I will speak about much more.

I did not pre-approve this project with them of course, having not imagined it until the end of my mother’s life. I do not know if they would approve it. Aside from the fact of my father’s intense concern for privacy due to his position in the U.S. Army, I can imagine my father conditionally approving a discrete writing of his story if done honestly, accurately and respectfully. He was quite a storyteller himself and a lover of stories from history. My mother on the other hand, also a careful keeper of discretion, may not be as quick to approve of the telling of her story. She might have said, It would be of no interest to anyone or my story is the same as that belonging to thousands of other women from that time or even, I wish no shaming or tattling. But I find their story inspiring, their coming together, their hammering out of a lifetime partnership—embedded within great historical times and driven by many absorbing details. So, I am given to strong conviction that somehow, for some reason, their story should not be forgotten.

I also desire it to be as true to life as possible. I intend no whitewashed fantasy or a tale of blind devotion, overplayed heroism, too-black tragedy or melodrama. I wish to tell it candidly and plainly about the very real people that they were. They were held in esteem by almost all family members and greatly loved by a few. Dad and Mom were given to live in times of incredible upheaval (the Depression and the Second World War) and then determined to craft a life together as best they could in more times of rapid change, culturally, technologically and politically.

As Christian books go this will not be one. I am a Christian and a seminary trained and ordained clergyman of long experience. But I shall synchronize my parents’ tale to various expressions of the Christian faith only as relevant. This will not be a sappy, preachy thing for if so, they would plainly object! And yet the spiritual backdrop, the authentically spiritual part of their lives, is important. To ignore or wholly delete the spiritual element would also raise an objection from their lips. They would have thought atheism or agnosticism absolute foolishness. But they were not zealous church people. They were, as has become very en vogue today, spiritual without being very religious.

Chapter One

THE RIVERS

Painted in wartime camouflage protocol, the 772-foot-long ocean liner eased out of its berth and into the Hudson River channel in a misty departure. A day before it had struck a tugboat in the harbor and its actual departure was delayed. Now, with no lights showing all crew and passengers were alert. Skip Damgaard and four other American army officers stood together at an edge of the ship and talking little, felt the ship’s engines slowly vibrate to greater speed. Most of them smoked but at that moment none held a lit butt. Darkness was the rule, even though by late 1943 U-Boat incursion had been thwarted significantly. The five officers brooded as the Statue of Liberty receded darkly into the distance. They were anxious to engage all their training, but they were sad as well. Leaving America for war in Europe was an enterprise of little fun.

On the 7th of January 1944, the 602nd Army Engineer Camouflage Battalion, First Army, shoved off in New York harbor. Their Headquarters (Hq) personnel included their C.O., Lt. Colonel Robert E. Kearney, Major John R. Herndon Jr., 2nd Lt. Roland F. Carpenter, Major Albert E. Tarbox, and Captain Martin J. Damgaard. I imagine this small group of officers on the rail of their ship—a thing endured by many thousands of others— watching the Statue of Liberty recede behind them as RMS Mauretania departed the Hudson. She would dock twelve days later in Liverpool, England. (Perhaps four-year-old John Lennon was holding the hand of two-year-old Paul McCartney at the dock, watching the big ship pull in.) There was only one such specialty camouflage battalion—445 enlisted men and 30 officers divided up into four companies (A through D) —deployed to the European Theater of Operations and another such battalion to the Pacific. The 602nd arrived at Camp Foxley, Hereford, England. Dad remembered tromping around the ruins of a castle there, of which there are many in the region. It may well have been Snodhill Castle, a post-Norman castle about which almost nothing is now known. From there the 602nd went to Tyntesfield Camp, Bristol, then to their marshalling area before finding themselves bivouacked on the 9th of July 1944 in Osmanville, France for their first month of action.

Snodhill Castle, Herefordshire, 12th Century

My father, Captain Martin Damgaard, was in that company as they watched New York disappear and wondered what lay ahead for them. They called themselves camofleurs.

Dad (called Skip by my mother and most others, though not by his Mom, I remember) was born and raised in Superior, Wisconsin, which is poetically located at the western terminus of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Martin Jens Damgaard was born on the south side of that city on December 23, 1914 in a small house which still stood in 1973 when I last visited. He was the youngest of ten children (eight survived). At some point in the story my grandparents lived in a small farmhouse in south Superior, which burned, forcing the family to find a new home. They ended up at 1926 Banks Avenue in a compact two-story house, which my Aunt Edith inherited and in which she rented out rooms to Great Northern railroad men for many years.

Superior, Wisconsin lies 169 miles east of Lake Itasca, Minnesota, which is the beginning of the Mississippi River. Although technically Superior is a Great Lakes port flowing due east as the iron ore freighters sail, my father’s family home was not far from the origin of the Mississippi River. Dad’s parents emigrated from Denmark around 1890, each 20 years old and neither ever to return to Denmark. Although each left many relatives behind there, Christian and Metha (Hansen) would live out their lives and raise their children within a day’s drive of the source of the Mississippi River. Christian died in 1941 at 71 years old and Metha died in 1960 at 90 years old.

At Cairo, Illinois the Mississippi is joined by the great Ohio River, itself fed by the waters of the Cumberland River, 57 miles or so east at Smithland, Kentucky. The Cumberland is the river of my mother’s family. Her name was Joe Evelyn Porch and she was born in Waverly, Tennessee on May 21, 1924, the sixth of nine children to Robert Hedge Porch and Mary Ella Hardeman. I imagine my mother’s family at home along the Cumberland’s banks, in Nashville and Old Hickory, Tennessee. Mississippi and Tennessee—two national heritage names, each with six double letters—an appropriate superlative to describe these two classic American families, converging to my sight in 1943.

The Mississippi and The Ohio

I think of my parents’ two families as symbolically rooted and sourced by these two rivers. The rivers converge (or at least the Cumberland’s successor, the Ohio) at Cairo, Illinois. It was the site of a Union Army camp, Fort Defiance, commanded by Ulysses S. Grant. As my mother had ancestors on both sides of the American Civil War, and as her own disposition was often in defiance of one brutish force or another, what could be a more apt title for the story of my parents than Defiance at Cairo? This is their tale of confluence, given by their son. It will also diverge occasionally to consider the times in which my parents lived.

My paternal grandfather, Christian Sorensen Damgaard (known often as Chris (or even Christ with a short i)² was born on December 9, 1869, baptized on January 24, 1872, and grew up in Haderslev (Hadersleben), Schleswig, Holstein (Germany) Denmark. Another document, obscured, but from the same town is dated July 1, 1882, and I imagine it to be record of his