WINCHESTER – On Feb. 21, 1948, “Winchester Day” was celebrated, not in Winchester, but rather in Belgium. That was the day John Hanlon made good on a war-time promise – with Winchester’s help.
If anyone in Winchester in November 1947 did not read the Boston Globe and missed Hanlon’s confession that he had not kept a promise to return sheets used for camouflage during the Battle of the Bulge and that he meant to fix things, it did not matter, for The Winchester Star printed this headline on its front page: “Steamer Hanlon Needs Sheets/Former High School Football Star Wants to Make Promise Good.”
Would Winchester support a hometown boy who did his bit during the war and had a troubled conscience over an unfulfilled promise to people who helped save American lives? You bet it would – and did.
“People in my hometown of Winchester, Mass., began stopping me in the street, asking what they could do. Many telephoned and offered donations,” Hanlon later wrote. A committee was formed and, within a week, a collection date was set and a program planned. The clergy of Winchester’s 10 churches were involved. The 48 women’s groups of the town helped get the word out. Committee chairman Gladys (Mrs. Kenneth) Toye reportedly deplored the credit given her, stating that “the committee was the whole town.”
“I thought about all this deeply,” Hanlon wrote in 1962. “Although hardly of great significance in world affairs, here was an opportunity to pay a debt of honor. Perhaps most important, there would be the inner reward of simply having kept my word.”
Before the Winchester collection day, Hanlon had collected about 100 sheets from people across New England who read his story, and “there were donations from several of my men–men who had fought in the snow around Hemroulle that day and who perhaps owed their lives to the villagers.” Winchester’s “Sheets for Hemroulle Day” put the count way over the top.
On the afternoon of Sunday, Nov. 28, in memory of the church bell rung at Hemroulle, the bells of Winchester’s churches and Town Hall rang out, calling townsfolk to a special meeting where the price of admission was one sheet.
“It was a sight rarely seen in Winchester,” the Star reported. “People appeared on the streets, in automobiles and on foot, all carrying sheets and all heading for the high school. Young and old, rich and poor, high and low, were in the little groups converging on the high school, now and then stopping to raise their eyes to the sky where Navy planes from Squantum, commanded by a Winchester boy, Lt. Conrad Larson, roared overhead in formation as a salute to the festivities.”
Inside the auditorium, every seat was filled, so some people stood through the program. On the stage the American and Belgian flags were displayed. There was music. There were speakers, including the Belgian Consul for New England, Dr. Albert Navez, and, of course, Hanlon.
After telling his story, Hanlon asked another Winchester paratrooper with the 101st Airborne, Gerry Ficociello, onto the stage to give a demonstration of parachuting equipment which fascinated the kids.
At the end of the meeting, the sheet count was 540. With the 100 he already had plus some that came in later, he had 679 (or so – the figure varies in various reports) to take to Hemroulle.
In early December, Hanlon was invited to tell the story of the sheets on the “We, the People” radio show broadcast from New York. He confessed afterward, the experience was terrifying. “Six years in the army, I thought, and I never fell victim to battle fatigue. Now, after three minutes on the air I was completely exhausted and unnerved. Ever hear of ‘radio fatigue’? Brother, I had it!” On the pleasanter side was his meeting Mary Pickford, the featured guest on that same show.
On Dec. 30, he sailed for Cherbourg on the America. Due to a mix-up, the sheets, organized at the Globe office and packed by Filene’s Department Store, were not on board with him. Determined to deliver them himself, he met the later ship, bound for Antwerp, to collect his sheets. Meanwhile he went to the Olympic Games where he met up with Winchester’s Maribel Vinson, a former Olympic medalist turned reporter, who noted that “Jack, a very robust guy, is already suffering a moderate attack of nerves over what he terms the approaching ceremonie des draps de lit.”
He already knew he was not simply going to dump the sheets on the doorstep of the church. Hemroulle was preparing for his arrival.
The debt paid
Hemroulle knew Hanlon was returning. Hanlon himself had written a letter. Navez had written to the mayor of Hemroulle about the Winchester collection. On the same day that Hanlon set sail, the burgomaster of Longchamps (which encompasses Hemroulle) sent a resolution to Winchester saying in part, “Very deeply moved by the nobleness and the greatness of the symbolical gesture that you have done, Grateful toward the 101st Airborne Division which, in a dash of bravery without equal, liberated the territory of my town” and sending his “Heartiest wishes of peace and happiness for 1948, my wishes of union ever closer between our two people united in the blood they shed (together) and in Victory.” On behalf of his town council and citizens, he proclaimed “THANK YOU for the memory gesture.”
Posters in the Longchamps area advertised the “Souvenir-Gratitude” for Journée Winchester, outlining the program for the “great manifestation of friendship on the occasion of the symbolic visit of Col. J. Hanlon, our glorious defender.”
A reporter from the Globe arrived in Hemroulle ahead of Hanlon to report on the preparations and quoted a local school teacher saying, “We could never do enough for the Americans who fought off the Germans from our very doorstep.”
Feb. 2, 1948 was cold in Belgium. There was snow on the ground, as there had been when Hanlon was there before. When he arrived in Bastogne, he was greeted by the governor of Luxembourg and the mayors of Bastogne, Hemroulle, and Longchamps. They drove to a hill overlooking Hemroulle and walked the few hundred yards to the village church.
People lined the street, waving and cheering. Instead of soldiers, Boy Scouts acted as a guard of honor. Every house along the way was decorated with Belgian and American flags. The church was bedecked with pine boughs. At the church, it had been planned that Victor Gaspar ring the bell. Instead he told Hanlon, “You ring the bell.”
“He did not have to tell me twice. I grabbed the rope and rung the bell for a full five minutes. The villagers, who, I must admit, were standing just a few yards off, then crowded to the church entrance and I proceeded to distribute the sheets,” Hanlon reported to the Star. Gaspar (who had kept his own record) saw to it that each citizen received the exact number he had donated.
“I never had such a thrill in my life,” Hanlon wrote. “I will never forget the warmth and enthusiasm and appreciation that these people showed me this day.”
Hanlon was driven to some other villages and “annexed” as a citizen of Longchamps. At the village of Foy, location of an American military cemetery, “I had the honor of placing a wreath at the foot of the pole bearing the American flag.”
The last event of the day was lunch back at Bastogne, which lasted six and one-half hours since it included speeches. Hanlon was asked to convey thanks to the citizens of Winchester, and the town was toasted.
“In all, ‘Winchester Day’ was wonderful. At every turn, I was thanked for ‘repaying my debt’ and ‘not forgetting.’ But throughout the whole day I never lost sight of the fact that one group of people made the whole affair possible. That would be, of course, the people of Winchester.
“‘Winchester Day’ was their day, and I’m happy and appreciative about the whole thing.”
One donor, Al Gaum, who wrote his name and the letters R.S.V.P. on the sheet, received a letter from a Belgian farmer who got that sheet. He learned that the sheets went to a dirt farmer with eight children who lost everything in the war. Struggling along the hard road back, as many other Belgians were, he expressed gratitude for the assistance of Americans in general and the people of Winchester in particular.
The gratitude that the people of Hemroulle felt was so strong that fêting Hanlon was not enough. Two years later they sent the most valuable gift they could to Winchester.
Tomorrow – The Hemroulle Friendship Program
