Collections

This collection relates to the 385th Bombardment Group, Heavy, that was stationed at Station 155, Great Ashfield, Suffolk, England during World War II.  The collection includes a publication which documents the group's history during the war.

This collection mostly consists of Dutch language civil and military administrative documents from the career of André Lauwrensius van Assenderp, who was a Dutch colonial administrator in the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia) and Suriname from 1932-1946. Some documents date from WWII and its immediate aftermath 1) when André served in Suriname from November 1941 to November 1943 as the District Commissioner and Commissioner of Police in Paramaribo, the colony's capital, and 2) when he served in the Netherlands East Indies from April 1944 to November 1946 as an assistant-resident and military administrator in the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration (NICA) and the Netherlands Indies Army (KNIL). Photographs include: Netherlands Indies Government Information Service (NIGIS) photos of Merauke, Dutch New Guinea (1944-1945) and the Allied invasion of Balikpapan, Dutch Borneo (July 1945), as well as personal photos of André, his American wife Carol Johnson van Assenderp, and their children. Artifacts include André's Royal Netherlands Indies Army (KNIL) officer's dress uniform with hat and ceremonial sword, a WWII Japanese sword, a sword machete, a British pith helmet, individual portrait paintings of André and Carol, and Carol's hollow chain Javanese bracelets. The collection also has André's KNIL military training booklets, Carol's written recollections of their first years in the NEI, and personal letters from family members in Holland (1940 and 1947) and the US. There are also papers from André's teaching career at the Florida State University (1949-1958).

The collection includes 236 letters with some postcards and V-mails that "Cliff" wrote to his mother, Gladys Shirley, letters written to Gladys Shirley from some relatives of a soldier-friend of Cliff's who'd died in an accident, letters to Cliff from a woman he'd befriended in South Wales, and from his deceased friend's mother, to whom he'd written a note of condolence. News clippings, ephemera, and documents are also included. Cliff's letters express worries about post-war life and jobs, the desire for furlough, the point system, railroad strikes, Churchill, FDR, prices and wages, blackouts, housing problems in the US, draft dodgers, poor conditions in Germany (children begging GI's for candy, etc.), illness, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation (UNRRA), and much more. Letters date from October 1943 though 1948. Cliff's letters to his mother end in March 1946.

This collection relates to Technical Sergeant James A. Armstrong who served 691st Ordnance Company in the European Theater of Operation. He participated beginning with the Normandy Campaign and each subsequent campaign with the company through to Germany. After the war, he was also commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant Ammunition Supply Officer and assigned to the 633rd Ordnance Company. The collection contains letters, military documents, and photographs.

This collection primarily consists of the letters of John B. Savard, an American soldier who fought in World War II and saw action at the Normandy landings, the Battle for Brest, and the D-Day Landings. Most of the material consists of letters to and from his parents, though letters from other soldiers are included. In addition to letters, this collection contains Savard's sketches, a poem he wrote detailing his reaction to the Battle of the Bulge, a manuscript of his autobiography detailing his life from birth to his time as a US Postal Worker and several photographs taken during the Second World War.