“Prowler,” Daily Bulletin | May 2, 1945 How would you like to have the experience of finding a picture of a place you knew in your own home town while amid strange surroundings some 5,000 miles from home? Pvt. Gerald G. Gummere of North Platte did just that. In the advance thru Germany he was billeted in an old house … and among the things found in the dwelling was a picture post card of the North Platte Canteen. Daily Bulletin | May 8, 1945 Mrs. R.F. [Helen] Nosky and Mrs. A.E. [Minnie] Swanson, working at the North Platte Canteen yesterday, received an unexpected pleasure when a special train, carrying 195 liberated prisoners from the Santo Tomas prison camp in the Philippines, stopped in the city.
to do the task. Upwards to 4,000 cups are pre- pared each day for the service people, and these few tend to the tremendous chore. The water is watched, [a] supply of coffee ordered, urns taken care of and checked daily and the many little things [done] which always are done in an under- taking of this proportion. U.S. and Soviet troops met April 25, splitting Hitler’s Germany in two. Benito Mussolini, propped up by Hitler since Italy’s surrender, was shot to death with his mistress April 28. As Italians publicly reviled their corpses the next day, Hitler married his longtime mistress Eva Braun with the Soviets close to his Berlin bunker. On the 30th, he shot himself through the mouth after Eva had swallowed cyanide. The “Thousand-Year Reich” was in its death rattle. Daily Bulletin | May 1, 1945 Another name was added to the Honor Roll at the North Platte Canteen yesterday when a group of workers from the Bushnell community joined with the Dix community and served at the center. Traveling some 175 miles Sunday night, the group brought their supplies direct to the sta- tion to have them available early Monday. There were 40 people with the group, and several of the earlybirds arrived at 6:30 in the morning to start their work.
Among the passengers was Mrs. Ray Andrews, long time friend of both, who formerly lived in Gothenburg, and her 15-year-old daughter, both of whom spent three years as captives of the Japanese. Mrs. Andrews, the former Bertha Jensen of Gothenburg, was in Manila teaching when the city fell. Her husband had just left the island to receive medical attention in this country and was not a captive. She told Mrs. Nosky they had been treated fairly well but had undergone terrible periods of waiting and suspense. Her weight went down to 97 pounds during her incarceration, but most of her normal weight has been regained. Facial lines attested to the fact of the strenuous ordeal, but Mrs. Nosky reported they could both still smile. Mrs. Andrews has a brother, Richard, and a sister, Nora, both of Gothenburg. The European war ended when Hitler’s successors surrendered unconditionally at Gen. Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims, France, at 2:41 a.m. May 7 (7:41 p.m. May 6, Central War Time). The surrender would be repeated and officially con- firmed the following day in Berlin. Neither daily’s May 8 issue declared V-E Day was at hand, though The Telegraph, printing the afternoon of May 7 (at left), led with a famous (but unauthorized) Associated Press dispatch on the Reims ceremony. In any case, North Platte did not break out in raucous celebration as it did on Nov. 11, 1918. World War II went on.
The North Platte Telegraph
96 CANTEEN: AS IT HAPPENED
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