During WWII, Uncle Dan served with the 439th Troop Carrier Group. This group was activated in June 1943 to haul rations, clothing, medicine, blood plasma, gasoline, ammunition, and other supplies to the front lines. They evacuated patients to rear-zone hospitals when not engaged in airborne operations. The group was located 5-10 miles behind the lines.
The group served in England in early 1944 for duty with the Ninth Air Force to prepare for D-Day. The group then moved to France to support advancing allies and participated in the Battle of the Bulge. As the Germans retreated, the group crossed the Rhine River to Darmstadt and traveled to Gottingen and Nuremberg. The group was in Cham (eight miles from the Czech border) when the war ended. Children threw bouquets of flowers into the jeeps. Uncle Dan guarded German prisoners while stationed in a staging area near Reims, France before his unit returned to the US.
While serving in France and Germany, Uncle Dan spotted a colorful book on the ground. Uncle Dan had studied German, but he was unable to read this book. It was printed in a different alphabet! His theory was that a Russian soldier dropped the book as he was “liberating” Germany along with the Allies. On the upper right-hand corner of the cover is the signature of a German man who picked it up earlier. Uncle Dan became the third owner when he brought this treasure back to the States. He only could read the pre-Revolutionary publication date: 1903.
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Thirty years later in 1975, my first husband and I traveled to Des Moines to visit Uncle Dan, Aunt Jane and my grandparents. Uncle Dan was impressed that my spouse was a Russian Studies graduate student at Yale University, especially because he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. After some hearty conversation about Ivy League schools, Uncle Dan disappeared and returned with the book. We were delighted and surprised. Uncle Dan told us the story of how he obtained the book, and he hoped that my spouse could translate it. Alas, my spouse determined that it was printed using the pre-Revolutionary Cyrillic alphabet. He was able to translate the book’s title: Fairy Tale: Marya Morevna. The book’s large, colorful illustrations were a bonus. Right before we headed back home, Uncle Dan had another surprise: he graciously gave us the fairy tale book!
Try as he might, my spouse was unable to translate this book. However, he was able to find a 1976 English translation of the book. The translated book retains all of the beautiful illustrations of the original book. The English translation gives us a glimpse into Imperial Russia’s fairy tales.
Diane Henrikson Russell joined OLLI in 2014. She has taken over 70 OLLI courses on leadership, radio, life story writing, Tai Chi, healthy aging, literature, science, politics, sociology, and humanities. Diane volunteers as a proofreader for the OLLI catalog and for OLLI Connects. Diane was Co-chair of the Volunteer Management Committee from 2019 through early 2023.
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