Gilmer Meriwether, WWII Military Records

The Meriwether letters cover Captain Gilmer Meriwether’s voyage overseas to Australia and India. The 340th Bomb Group had arrived in North Africa by April, 1943, and apparently remained there during the whole period of the correspondence. Meriwether describes the voyage, the reactions of the Australians to U.S. troops, sandstorms and the end of the campaign in North Africa. Several letters reflect his opinion that the Germans would soon surrender. An April 9, 1943 letter from a relative in Clarkesville, Tennessee, describes relations between African American women working as domestics and their white employers and 'Eleanor Roosevelt Clubs.' A May 8, 1943 letter from Kansas City refers to the Women’s Army Corps. Meriwether's letters to his wife and family in Kansas City, Missouri, cover his service from February to October, 1943. His wife saved all of these letters along with photographs and other memorabilia in scrapbooks, one of which is housed in the UNL library special collections. The whereabouts of the other scrapbooks is unknown.