Transcript of Letter from Katherine Fite to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Fite

3 Monday, July 23 8 Dearest Mother and Daddy, I have seen so much since I last wrote you. You probably read in the papers that Jackson went to Nuremberg over the week- end. Me, I went too! I was rather frightened of the trip - both the fly- ing and the going into Germany, but it was probably the most interesting week- end I ever had. I wish I had had time to write a detailed account when I got back last night - already the sharpness of the impressions is fading away. Anyway I shall try tonight to get some of it down, and please save the letter. I am tired and may not finish, having worked until 10.30 at the office. In the party were Jackson, his three principal assistants - his press rela- tions man - an officer from the engineers corps - a photographer - the Brit- ish Attorney General and two assistants and a British General, the French representative, (the bravest man in the party, foe he was sick or on the point thereof the whole time), his assistant and a man from the French Embassy, the Justice's sec'y (female) and myself and a lovely colonel who had us in charge. The Justive has his own plane, a C-47 with a crew of four. We flew from Bovingdon in the clouds, but they cleared over the Channel and from France we looked back at the Dover Cliffs and the Channel looked very narrow. Thence over Brussels and Liege into Germany and the Rhineland where we flew low (and bumpily) to see the sights. We hit the Rhine just south of Gebleng Cologne and could see the Hindenburg Bridge collapsed. We went right by the Remagen Bridge all fallen into the water. Thence over Coblenz which they say is badly destroyed but which I ouldn't see well. Frankfurt even I could see is a mass of destruction. Just alemost exactly 3 hours and we were in N I- emberg. There, being VIP (Army for Very Important People) we were met group of officers - including the Commanding General in the region. We piled into jeeps or their first cousins and set off in a cavalcade into the city. Nuremberg is a shambles. The old city they say is 85% destroyed. The people look, as you have read, healthy and well fed and surprisingly well dressed and clean, considering what they must have to live in. Bicycles everywhere, but as one of the Frenchmen reminded me, the bicycles came from all over Eur- e. Somehow I hated to look at the Germans - some looked at you boldly and curiously -others look very stupid and sullen. We were taken for lunch to the Grand Hotel - a wreck outside, but fixed up inside by that reharkable organ- - ization, the U.S. Army, of which more anon. I was startled to find the ho- tel using German servants (bitte this and bitte that) We lunched in grand style with linen (no napkins in England) and wine (Rhine and Bordeaux) and Reichspartei silver. Delicious cooking and toasts and speeches, Jackson be- ing host to the French and British and all of us guests of the U.S.Army. Af- ter lunch, by cavalcade to see the old courthouse and jail and the opera house. The Courthouse room we saw (badly damaged of course, still has the ten commandments and Fiat Justitia on the walls. (Should be Ruat Coelum, said Mr. Sidney Alderman, a witty and brilliant civilian lawyer, 2nd to the Jus - tice) The opera house (with Hitler's box in which stands a sentry) is more or less intact and is used for church services, USO shows and symphony con- certs by a German orchestra. Sunday P.M. we attended a concert at which the orchestra played Beethoven's Fifith, the Victory Symphony. We did not how- ever sit in Hitler's box. Our cavalcade always was headed by an armored car and escorted by MP's on motorcycles and each driver was armed. We were "bil- leted 6 or 8 miles out in a charming group of country houses out of which the Army simply turned the proprietors and installed us. The other girl said she felt as tho she were trespassing - but that didn't bother me. After all we are military occupants. I did however balk at going out shopping for Ger- man toys. We had cocktails on the terrace where I chatted with a State Dept man sent down from Mr. Murphy's office at Frankfurt, also with a Col. Fair- man from the Judge Advocate's office. He is a Political Science professor S. TRUMAN "NATIONAL APCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMIN say