Memorable Month of May

The Memorable Month of May

As May draws to a close, the Green Box team has been reflecting on the month in terms of its milestone moments in Bob and Peggy Kurtz’s lives, and on the broader context that their story illuminates.

Beginning chronologically, on May 19^th 1921 Peggy Kurtz (nee Luther) was born. On the 102 anniversary of her birth we remember her courage and love.

Peggy married Bob in 1942, in the middle of WWII. While Bob was serving in Europe, she took care of their young son. When she learned that Bob’s plane had been shot down and that he was taken prisoner of war, she wrote many of the families of his flight crew to keep their hopes alive. In the midst of her own fears and uncertainties, she reached out to help others. As Jim Kurtz points out in our film, his mother’s courage was as great as his father’s.

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On May 7^th 1945, the Nazis surrendered to the Allies, and the war in the European theater was officially over. Bob had been liberated from his final POW camp, Stalag VII-A, only a few days before; and, he looked forward to going home as soon as possible. It was in that first week of May that Peggy learned that Bob had been liberated – her long months of anguish were over.

Bob had hoped to get home quickly but the process was chaotic, filled with medical exams, debriefings, and paper work for thousands of servicemen. A letter he wrote to Peggy on May 11^th, as he waited in La Havre France, gives us a poignant glimpse of his priorities:

I wanted so much to be home for your birthday, but we’ll make up for it with a real celebration as soon as I get there.

And it was on May 28^th 1945 that the ship carrying Bob Kurtz and hundreds of other returning soldiers sailed into New York harbor, where Peggy met him at the dock.

A letter from POW Bob Kurtz

May:

the month of Mother’s Day and Memorial Day; for the Kurtz family - birthdays and homecomings. As we reflect on their story, it brings to mind the importance of remembering and honoring. In WWII it was predominantly men who ‘went to war,’ but this didn’t mean that those who remained home - mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and friends - didn’t also serve. They kept families, farms, factories - an entire society functioning despite fear and desperate uncertainty. Peggy and Bob’s story illustrates how love is the force that makes the pain of war more intense, and the intensity of that pain more endurable. Our world has changed to some degree, in so far as the tragic violence of combat falls on both genders, as does the trauma of serving at home – an imperative to remember those who served, and to work to end the need for any more to do so in war.

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Happy Birthday Co-Director Vicki Hughes (5/18)!!! Shown here on location with Marek Lazarz - Dir. POW Camps & Museum, Zagan, Poland

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