A Memorial Day Reflection
Honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice
One of the primary “characters” we have yet to meet in the story surrounding the capture of Nazi leader Ernst Kaltenbrunner in Austria at the end of World War II is Alfred “Etch” Etcheverry.
A product of Yale with a wife and two kids at home in the States, Etcheverry became Robert Matteson’s closest friend during their relatively short time working together in combat as WWII wound down.
Matteson was very impressed with him, as noted in his War Diary:
Etch attended Yale Drama School. He was the head of the Indianapolis Public Theatre. Had for 6 months the lead in “My Sister Eileen.” Had been offered a 7 year contract at 500 dollars a week salary at Warners Brothers in Hollywood. He turned it down to take courses in sociology at Columbia university. He stayed 1-1/2 year there and during that period worked on two OWI projects. He wrote and had published an article in the sociological journal “Social Forces.” His father is chairman of the department of irrigation at the university of California and is well known in that field. His wife also attended the Yale Drama School and has written a couple of plays…"
Etch is also frequently mentioned in Matteson’s book, A Search for Adventure:
New Year’s Eve we celebrated in Vichten at the Jacobys, drinking quetsch, which is like bathtub gin — so raw you can’t hold it in your mouth. Etcheverry, who as a Yale drama major and had some minor parts on Broadway, practiced his French on the Jacobys. He was a graduate of the University of California and a Basque, very good looking and intelligent. He had worked in New York and Indianapolis with the civic theater but grew tired of acting and turned to studying sociology at Columbia. He reminded me of Hugh Farley, a fellow English instructor at Carleton, and even had the same interest in Basic English.
One fateful day, Robert asked Etch to take his place at a routine meeting with a local Luxembourg villager; Matteson needed to interview a potential CIC applicant. The village was shelled and Etch was killed. Distraught beyond words, Matteson dedicated the rest of the mission to Etch, and stayed in contact with Etch’s wife, Marian, and his children.
After Etch’s death Marian decided to spend the rest of her life working for world peace. She became active first in the United World Federalists and then at the United Nations. I later ran into her there occasionally.
Memorial Day became an official federal holiday in 1971; as far back as the late 1860s, it was known as “Decoration Day.” This is a day set aside to remember and honor the ultimate sacrifice made by so many brave individuals like Alfred “Etch” Etcheverry.
Here is the text of the letter on Etcheverry’s memorial:
December 14th, 1944
My beloved wife,
In a few days, or possibly even a few hours, I shall be going into action.
It is never far from my thoughts that I may not see you again - you and our blessed babies. And since it is not given to us to know at what obscure spot on the map or what otherwise meaningless moment my time will come, I have thought it best to write - to write now while I am still sound and well - some few things about myself, about us, and our children.
If I should die, it will be no one's responsibility but my own that is was so willed. This is my war, my army - one in which, in a peculiar sense, I elected to serve. So easy it would have been to have requested limited service, even to have evaded the draft altogether. But I could never have brought myself to such a course last winter - so many lifetimes ago. And I could not bring myself to it today. For I would be severely judged and by mankind condemned if having seen the inevitability of this struggle, having urged that other men give their lives in the resolution of it, I were content with a lesser sacrifice.
However confused is our picture of the world today, how blurred the lines of the conflict, yet I am certain that I fight on the side of men of good will everywhere in the world. No, more than that. For men of ill will were not born so, and may, by time, and by God's good grace, be redeemed. It is for men everywhere - whoever they are, wherever they may be, that I am fighting...
From the war letters of Alfred S. Etcheverry
80th Infantry division, U.S. Army