So Long, Bob: A Pennsylvania Farm Boy's Letters Home from the War 1941-1945

By Brian Berkey

In November 1941, the war that had been raging in Europe since 1939 and in China since 1937 was coming closer and closer to the United States. The US had instituted the draft in 1940 and on November 4, 1941, more than a month before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the war came home to the family of Annie and Harvey Berkey on their farm near Elton, PA. That was the day when their middle son, Bob, received his draft notice. This book presents something of their experience of the war through a compilation of the letters that his family received from Bob as well as entries from Annie's diaries and the headlines and articles from their local newspaper, the Johnstown Tribune. It is a story of how an ordinary farm family from the hills of western Pennsylvania coped with the extraordinary circumstances of being caught up in a global conflict.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781644683149

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So Long, Bob

A Pennsylvania Farm Boy’s Letters Home from the War

1941–1945

Brian D. Berkey

ISBN 978-1-64468-313-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64468-314-9 (Digital)

Copyright © 2020 Brian D. Berkey

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books, Inc.

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

Elton, Pennsylvania 1941

A World at War

The United States Moves toward War

Stateside November 1941–July 1942

Major Events in the WarNovember 1941–July 1942

Induction and Training

Final Preparations

Over There—North Africa August 1942–July 1943

Major Events in the WarAugust 1942–July 1943

The 57th Fighter Group Moves Out(Palestine and Egypt)

Libya and Tripolitania

Tunisia

Over There—Italy September 1943–March 1945

Major Events in the WarSeptember 1943–March 1945

Sicily and Italy

Corsica

Italy Again

It’s Over April 1945–August 1945

Major Events in the WarApril 1945–August 1945

The End of the War in Europe

About the Author

This book was originally developed more than twenty years ago as a gift for my dad, Robert Berkey, to honor him for his service and for all that he has done in his life. This is dedicated to him and his parents, Annie and Harvey Berkey, for raising their family through some pretty difficult and tumultuous times and setting an example for all of us. It is also dedicated to all of Bob’s siblings, to Jake and Leon, who followed Bob into the Army Air Force, to Alva, who stayed on the farm to help feed the workers in the mills and mines around Johnstown, to Mary who preserved the letters and the diaries and many other family history documents for all those years, as well as to Paul, Ada, Lois, and Ruth who all worked in various ways to keep things going during the war.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank all my cousins for passing so much family history on to me, especially Kay Oliver for Annie Berkey’s diaries and many other documents, Lloyd Berkey and his daughter Cassie for all their work in scanning and passing on pictures and letters, and Barry Berkey for passing on pictures from the war. Most of all, I would like to thank my wife Emily Berkey for all her support and encouragement in helping to get this together.

Foreword

I feel that many people today think that the United States involvement in World War II, at least to a significant extent, began with the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. However, for many families in this nation, the war really started well before then, especially after the draft was instituted in July 1940. The impact spread through the nation as more and more sons and brothers were inducted into the armed services. The war hit home to the Berkey family in Elton, Pennsylvania, more than month before Pearl Harbor when the middle son, Bob, received his draft notice.

I believe that many folks today feel that the outcome of World War II was inevitable, that the Allies were destined to eventually overcome the Axis powers. However, in the dark days of late 1941 and early 1942, it certainly did not look that way. It took a nation working together to achieve the victory. While the German and Japanese leaders recognized the potential capacity of the United States, they really did not believe the American people would be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to winning a long drawn-out war. Of course, events proved them wrong but not before most of the nation were impacted in many different ways both at home and at the front.

This story is simply the story of one of the millions of ordinary people who rose to the occasion in many ways during those years. It is not about the generals and admirals or the major battles or the pivotal moments. It is about the ordinary men and women who worked together to accomplish something truly extraordinary. Tom Brokaw has referred to the folks from this time period as the Greatest Generation, and I think he is exactly right about it. Much history today is written from an iconoclastic, revisionist position that tends to focus more on the perceived failures or missed opportunities and downplays the tremendous accomplishments of many ordinary people.

This book is also about the importance of understanding and preserving family history. Understanding our history is crucial to understanding who we are and why things are the way they are. This applies as much to our personal histories within our families as it does to the broader history. I encourage everyone to preserve the letters, the diaries, the photos, all the documents that can give insights into your family history.

Part 1

Introduction

Chapter 1

Elton, Pennsylvania 1941

In 1941, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was at the height of its common image as the smoky city. The city was the center of the steel industry in the United States as the mills and related heavy industries lined the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio rivers. The Great Depression was over, and the mills were working more than ever before as the European war created even more demand for their products.

About sixty-five miles east of Pittsburgh, the city of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, lay in another valley formed by three rivers. Situated in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains, the valley was much deeper, and the city was much smaller than Pittsburgh. In many ways, the city was like a scaled down Pittsburgh, including the steel and coal economy. The Little Conemaugh and Stoneycreek Rivers joined at The Point to form the Conemaugh River which eventually flowed into the Allegheny River above Pittsburgh. Steel mills with coke ovens, blast furnaces, open-hearth furnaces, and rolling mills stretched for more than ten miles along the rivers. The main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad entered the town along the valley of the Little Conemaugh and left following the Conemaugh River through the gorge in the mountains known as the Conemaugh Gap. Johnstown’s main claim to fame was the 1889 Johnstown flood that occurred when an earthen dam burst on a tributary of the Little Conemaugh about fourteen miles above Johnstown. The wall of water followed the valley into Johnstown and destroyed much of the city and took more than two thousand lives. While the 1889 flood was the most notorious, Johnstown had continued to have problems with floods, the most recent one had occurred in March 1936 when high water due to snowmelt and heavy rainfall flooded much of the town. The 1936 flood had resulted in the development of a flood control project for Johnstown under the Works Progress Administration instituted by President Roosevelt.

Much of the region surrounding Johnstown was dominated by an economy based on coal. Coal mines dotted Cambria County to the north of the city and Somerset County to the south. Many of the small towns of the area were company towns associated with the mines. Some of the towns never acquired names; they just went by the mine number: Mine 35, Mine 37, Mine 40, Mine 42, and so on. One of the biggest coal towns was Windber, located in Somerset County, a few miles southeast of Johnstown. Windber was named after the Berwind Coal Company that had started the town in 1897. Elton, Pennsylvania, was a small village located between Windber and Johnstown. It served the farming community in the immediate area and included a school, several churches, a post office, and a store. One of the farms just outside of the town was owned and farmed by Harvey Berkey.

Harvey’s ancestors had come to what is now Somerset County just before or during the American Revolution. His great-great-great-grandfather, Jacob, appears on the tax rolls for what was then Bedford County in 1776. The family was Swiss in origin, coming from the region around Bern. The name was originally spelled Burki but was Americanized in a variety of ways. Jacob Berkey was born in 1735. His origins are not certain, but his parents may have been included in the wave of immigrants from German-speaking areas that came to Pennsylvania in the period from 1710 to 1750. The best information available at this point indicates that Jacob may have been born in Berks County Pennsylvania and then moved to what eventually became Somerset County around 1775. Somerset County was created out of a portion of Bedford County in 1795. Jacob married Elizabeth Blough, who had come to Pennsylvania with her family about 1750. Jacob and Elizabeth settled in the northern part of Somerset County, near Shade Creek, not far from what became the town of Windber. Their home is assumed to have been somewhere near where the Berkey Church of the Brethren now stands just off of Route 160 between Winder and Central City. Jacob appears to have been well established in Somerset County by the time of his death in 1805. Based on the listing of his possessions in his will, it appears that Jacob was rather prosperous by the standards of the time.

They also raised a large family as was typical of the times. Jacob and Elizabeth had at least eleven children and fifty-seven grandchildren of which there is some record.

The line of descent from Jacob to Harvey goes through Jacob’s youngest son, Peter, who was born in 1782. Peter Berkey married Elizabeth Fyock and according to records lived in Conemaugh Township, Somerset County, and operated a gristmill. Census records indicate the Peter and Elizabeth were living with their son Daniel in Paint Township, Somerset County, in 1860. This census shows that four generations of Harvey Berkey’s ancestors were living in two households in Paint Township. These included ten-year-old Jacob D. Berkey, his thirty-one-year-old father David, his fifty-year-old grandfather Daniel, and his seventy-nine-year-old great-grandfather Peter. Peter and Elizabeth had at least eleven children. The line of descent from Peter to Harvey goes through Peter’s son Daniel. Daniel’s son Andrew is the ancestor of one of the most famous Berkeys, Russell. Russell Berkey served in the United States Navy in World War II as a Rear Admiral in command of a cruiser task group in the South Pacific. He and his ships participated in most of the campaigns around New Guinea and the Philippines.

Harvey’s grandfather, David Berkey, was born in 1829 and died in 1896. His death was the result of injuries inflicted on him during a robbery attempt in June 1896 at his home in Old Ashtola, not far from Windber. The robbery and murder of David Berkey led to one of the most famous trials in Somerset County history. James and John Roddy, the men accused of the robbery and murder, were hung in April 1898 in the last public execution in Somerset. David, his wife Caroline Beabes, and most of their children are buried in the Berkey Cemetery where their gravestones can be seen today.

Harvey’s father was another Jacob. Jacob D. Berkey was born in 1850 and died in 1923. His first wife, Lavinia Baumgardner, died just after giving birth to the last of their seven children. He met his second wife, Julia Livingston Reitz, while traveling to Somerset as part of the trial of the murderers of his father, David. Julia’s first husband, Christian Reitz, had died in 1891. Therefore, Julia was stepmother to both Harvey Berkey and to Annie Grace Reitz, the girl that Harvey married on March 19, 1903.

Harvey Berkey was born on August 25, 1876. At first, they lived on the farm that Jacob had located between Elton and Mine 42. However, in 1914, fire destroyed the house on the farm, and Harvey and family eventually moved to another farm a few miles away on the other side of Elton where they still lived in 1941. Harvey and Annie’s first child, Mary, was born in March 1904, and by 1923, they had nine children including Paul (born 1906), Ada (1908), Lois (1910), Ruth (1912), Jacob (1914), Robert (1916), Alva (1918), and Leon (1923).

By the fall of 1941, the older of Harvey and Annie’s children had married and moved out of the house. After attending Juniata College, Mary had served as schoolteacher to some of her younger siblings before marrying Rayford Wright in 1929. Rayford was a doctor and had his practice in Conemaugh, just up the Little Conemaugh River from Johnstown. In 1941, Mary and Rayford lived in Conemaugh with their son and three daughters, ranging in age from six months to eleven years.

The Berkey Family, circa 1940

From left: Leon, Alva, Bob, Jake, Ruth, Lois, Ada, Paul, Mary, Annie, Harvey

The oldest boy, Paul, had married Mary Jane Smay in December 1929, and in 1941, they lived on Bedford Street in Johnstown with their son Lowman (age ten) and daughter Sarah (age eight). Ada was married to Fred Stambaugh, and they were living about thirty miles from Elton in Bedford County Pennsylvania. Ruth was the newlywed in the family, having married Claude Brumbaugh in June 1941. Ruth and Claude were living just outside of Johnstown in an area known as Park Hill at the time. Lois and the four younger boys—Jake, Bob, Alva, and Leon—were living with their parents on the farm as United States involvement in World War II approached. In addition to helping with the farmwork, Bob had a job working for an International Harvester farm equipment dealer located in Richland Township about five miles from the farm. The dealership was owned by Elmer Hoffman.

The United States instituted the military draft in July 1940. Bob was the first of Harvey Berkey’s sons to be affected by the draft. He registered with the draft board in nearby South Fork and received his draft notice in October 1941. The November 4, 1941, edition of the Johnstown Tribune included the notice of Bob’s selection by the draft under the caption South Fork Board Names Selectees for Nov. 24 Call, 43 Men Will Go to Fort Meade. As a staunch member of the Church of the Brethren, Harvey was not in favor of his son joining the army. He wanted him to apply for status as a conscientious objector. However, Bob decided to go over the objections of his father, and he was inducted into the army on November 24, 1941, just two weeks before Pearl Harbor.

Bob’s draft notice

Chapter 2

A World at War

The beginnings of World War II are rooted in the peace settlements of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations were intended to prevent any future wars. However, the provisions of the treaty and the ineffectiveness of the league were major factors in creating the conditions, which led to war in 1939. Considerable diplomatic effort was expended in the 1920s and early 1930s to encourage disarmament and guarantee peace. The League of Nations and a variety of conferences and meetings tried to come to agreement on the reduction of arms and the prevention of war. One treaty, the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, attempted to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy. However, in spite of all these efforts and emphasis, the world slipped ever closer to war. As early as 1933, Cordell Hull, the United States secretary of state, predicted that war in Europe was inevitable and would come within the next ten years.

The 1930s were a period of increasing rearmament and aggression by Germany, Italy, and Japan. The quasi-democratic or outright totalitarian regimes in these countries used war and the preparation for war to stimulate their economies and secure their political power. The Japanese took the first overt steps when they invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. They also attacked Shanghai and other Chinese cities and provinces periodically through the next several years. Finally, in 1937, they started a full-scale war with China. The Japanese militarists favored a policy of Asia for Asians, and they strongly resented the power and influence of the western powers in Asia, especially Great Britain and the United States. The condemnation of their attack on China by the League of Nations and the United States only served to strengthen the power of the militarists as they took over political power in Japan. The Japanese pressed their attacks on China so that by the end of 1939, they controlled the most important regions of the country, including the entire seacoast.

In Italy, Benito Mussolini had risen to power in 1922 and established a Fascist regime. He harbored delusions of being a modern Caesar and returning the glories of the Roman Empire. He engaged in a variety of diplomatic maneuvers in the 1920s and early 1930s designed to enhance his position in Europe and Africa. His first target for outright aggression was Ethiopia that was bordered on two sides by Italian colonies in Eritrea and Somaliland. An invasion of Ethiopia was launched in October 1935 as the Italians used all the military means at their disposal against the poorly equipped Ethiopians. This included the use of poison gas and indiscriminate bombing attacks. Italy’s adventure in Ethiopia was the final evidence to the Axis powers that the League of Nations was completely powerless to take any effective action against aggressor nations. Repeated appeals from the Ethiopians to intervene were met by endless committee deliberations and no decisions or commitments to take any meaningful action. Mussolini’s next target was the small nation of Albania, on the Adriatic coast. Italy invaded Albania in April 1939 and quickly defeated and annexed the country.

In Germany, Adolf Hitler used the resentment over the burdens of the Treaty of Versailles and the economic depression to gain control of Germany in 1933. He used the democratic system in Germany to work himself into the position of chancellor and eventually president. Once in power, he abolished any form of democracy and seized total control. His first moves toward war involved the rearmament of Germany. At first, this proceeded as a poorly kept secret, but in 1935, Hitler formally denounced the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles which placed limits on the German military. Many senior members of the Germany military leadership were suspicious of Hitler and his motives. However, most of them went along with Hitler’s program as it promised the return of Germany as a military power. Anyone who got in the way was retired or otherwise eliminated. The first move of Germany’s reborn military came in 1936 with the reoccupation of the Rhineland, a portion of Germany located between the French border and the Rhine River that had been demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles. Even though the German forces were weak at this point, the French and British did not move to counter Germany’s blatant disregard of treaty provisions. Hitler’s next adventure was in Austria where a combination of political intrigue and threats resulted in the 1938 union of Austria and Germany.

Hitler’s main agenda was to gain living space for the German people who Hitler considered to be the master race. The primary area where Hitler planned to gain this living space was in Eastern Europe. He considered the Slavic peoples of this area as racially inferior, and he also feared and hated Communism. He saw the Soviet Union as the ultimate enemy. However, Hitler also recognized that he would have to deal with the French and British if he was to carry out his plan. His first target in Eastern Europe was Czechoslovakia. Hitler used the complaints of a German minority in Czech lands bordering Germany as an excuse to pressure Czechoslovakia for territorial concessions. Czechoslovakia refused his demands and was initially supported by France and Great Britain. However, the British and French considered themselves poorly prepared for war. This fear of another war caused them to agree to Hitler’s demands at the infamous Munich conference in September 1938. The Czechs were not represented at the conference, but without French and British support, they had no choice but to go along. The loss of the borderlands rendered the remaining portion of Czechoslovakia defenseless. Continued threats from Germany and uprisings in Slovakia led to the collapse of Czechoslovakia, and Hitler was able to occupy the rest of the country March 1939. The French and British, who had pledged to help defend Czechoslovakia against aggression, refused to intervene because they claimed that no actual attack had been made.

Hitler now turned his eyes on Poland as his next target. The first disputes with Poland centered on the city of Danzig and on the Polish Corridor which was a narrow territory which had been given to Poland after World War I so that Poland could have access to the sea. Hitler’s actions against Poland followed much the same pattern as those against the Czechs. He devised charges of persecution of German minorities in Poland and tried to blame the Poles for causing all the problems. As it became increasingly evident that the Poles were not going to give in to his demands, Hitler prepared for war. He stunned much of the world by signing a nonaggression pact with his Communist enemies, the Russians. On September 1, 1939, after the Germans staged an alleged Polish attack on a German radio station, they invaded Poland. By September 4, Great Britain and France had honored their pact with Poland by declaring war on Germany and what would become known as World War II was on.

Progress of the War (September 1939–October 1941)

Europe. By November 1941, Europe had been at war for more than two years. The Germans had conquered much of Europe, and their armies were deep inside Russia. Poland had been the first to fall at the beginning of the war in September 1939. Denmark and Norway had been invaded in April 1940. On May 10, 1940, Hitler launched his attack on the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. The Netherlands and Belgium surrendered within a matter of days, and the French were crushed within a period of less than six weeks. The survivors of the British troops that had been supporting the French were evacuated from Dunkirk by early June. On June 11, 1940, Mussolini’s Italy declared war on France and Great Britain, in an attempt to get in on the winning side at what appeared to be the end of the war. This created another front in North Africa where the Italian possessions of Libya and Tripolitania bordered Egypt.

After the surrender of France on June 21, 1940, Hitler expected the English to come to terms. The German Luftwaffe launched a series of air attacks on England. These attacks were intended to break the will of the British people and eliminate the Royal Air Force in order to facilitate a German invasion. However, the Battle of Britain did not go Hitler’s way, and he was never able to summon the courage to actually launch an invasion of England. The winter of 1940–1941 was the period of The Blitz in England as the Germans continued to use night bombing attacks on major cities to drive the British out of the war. The British retaliated by beginning their own campaign of night bombing of targets in Germany.

North Africa. The only significant ground fighting of the winter of 1940–1941 was in North Africa. The fighting in North Africa was a seesaw affair, which saw the British drive the Italian forces back deep into Italian territory until the Germans sent help. General Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps arrived in Libya in February 1941. In March, Rommel attacked the British and drove them back. By mid-April, the British were back in Egypt where they had started. Heavy fighting through May and June 1941 resulted in a stalemate along the Egyptian-Libyan border which lasted until November.

Russia. The war began with an uneasy alliance between the Russians and the Germans. They had signed a nonaggression pact in August 1939 and had cooperated in the destruction of Poland. However, Hitler looked upon the Soviet Union as the ultimate enemy, and once he decided he was not going to invade England, he turned his eyes toward the East. The Germans launched a massive attack on Russia on June 22, 1941. The German attacks shattered the Russian armies and drove deep into Russia toward their main objectives of Leningrad and Moscow. By November 1941, the Germans had virtually encircled Leningrad and had driven to within sight of Moscow.

Asia Pacific. The Japanese had signed an alliance with Germany and Italy in September 1940. However, there had been fighting in China going back to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. In 1937, the Japanese occupied Peking and launched attacks against the rest of China. Japanese aggression against China brought the Japanese into conflict with the British and Americans who supported the Chinese. American public opinion was against the Japanese and relations between the two nations deteriorated throughout 1940 and 1941. In April 1941, the Japanese signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union to free them to focus on China and the Western Powers. The Japanese also took over French Indochina in July 1941. The reaction of the United States to Japanese expansion was to ban the sale of aircraft fuel to Japan and to freeze Japanese deposits in the United States. As the crises deepened in the late summer and fall of 1941, moderate elements in the Japanese government were pushed aside and war with Japan became more and more likely. Last-minute diplomatic maneuvering in November 1941 failed, and the Japanese made the fateful decision to launch the war with an attack on Pearl Harbor.

Chapter 3

The United States Moves toward War

The United States at first tried to avoid any involvement in the European war. The isolationist attitude in the country that developed after World War I was very strong. It went so far as to prevent the country from joining the League of Nations which weakened that body’s ability to effectively deal with international crises. As war clouds gathered in Europe and Asia, the isolationist spirit in the United States was exemplified by the enactment in August 1935 of the Neutrality Act. The act prohibited the export of all arms, ammunition, and implements of war to belligerent countries. President Roosevelt stated that the act was intended to avoid any action that might involve the country in war. The first test of the new act came in October 1935 when Italy invaded Ethiopia. The act was enforced, and the United States embargoed all arms and munitions shipments to both Italy and Ethiopia. This was a significant advantage for the Italians, as they did not need US munitions while the Ethiopians were totally dependent on outside sources for any modern weapons.

As the European nations came closer to war in the late 1930s, the United States continued its isolationist posture. In February 1936, an amendment to the Neutrality Act was passed which limited the powers of the President to deal with foreign belligerents. At the same time, the United States was involved in negotiations with the French, British, Italians, and Japanese aimed at limiting the number and size of ships in their respective navies. In December 1937, war came closer to home as the Japanese bombed and sank a United States Navy gunboat and other American-owned vessels on the Yangtze River in China. The Japanese declared the incident an accident and eventually paid more than $2,000,000 to settle claims from the incident.

In early 1938, the realization that the world was headed for war began to sink in as President Roosevelt called for a massive rearmament program for the United States. He stated that the existing US military forces were inadequate for national defense in light of the increasing armaments of other nations. By March 1938, some US officials were beginning to publicly criticize Germany’s aggressive actions in Europe. However, most congressmen and the general public did not seem to care very much about what was happening to Austria at the time. In May of 1938, Secretary of State Hull reiterated the US stance on neutrality when he rejected a Russian offer related to joint defensive arrangements. During the height of the crisis in Czechoslovakia, President Roosevelt made it very clear to the world that the United States would not support France and Britain in any joint action against the Germans. Shortly after the Munich agreements, the United States ambassador to Great Britain Joseph P. Kennedy also confirmed a policy of neutrality when he stated, It has long been a theory of mine that it is unproductive for both the democratic and dictator countries to widen the division now existing between them by emphasizing their differences. After all, we have to live together in the same world, whether we like it or not.

In January 1939, President Roosevelt publicly questioned the Neutrality Act and again called for a dramatic increase in the defense budget. He stated at the time, We have learned that when we deliberately try to legislate neutrality, our neutrality laws may operate unevenly and unfairly—may actually give aid to an aggressor and deny it to the victim. In April 1939, Roosevelt appealed to both Hitler and Mussolini to not attack or invade any nation with whom they had a dispute. The Axis leaders ignored this appeal, as well as an August 1939 cable from Roosevelt to Hitler that urged the German leader to submit the Polish question to negotiation or arbitration.

When the war in Europe broke out with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the United States quickly declared its neutrality in the conflict. On September 8, President Roosevelt proclaimed a limited national emergency. He stated that the European war imposes on the United States certain duties with respect to the proper observance, safeguarding, and enforcement of its neutrality and the strengthening of the national defense within the limits of peacetime authorizations. At the same time, increases in enlisted manpower strength were authorized, and the president was allowed to recall reservists to active duty. On September 21, Roosevelt asked Congress to repeal the arms embargo provision of the Neutrality Act. He stated that the repeal would be more likely to allow the country to remain at peace than if the law were to be allowed to stand. The debate on the repeal was helped by the German seizure of an US merchant vessel that was carrying tractors, fruit, and grain to Britain. The repeal was passed on November 4, assisted by one of Roosevelt’s fireside chat radio broadcasts where he stated, "In and out of Congress, we have heard orators and commentators and others beating their breasts proclaiming against sending