Two Rapid City Veterans Remember Telegrams Home from WW2 Battlefield

Instant Internet messaging is so commonplace today that the younger generation might forget when the nineteenth-century telegraph revolutionized our ability to quickly send messages over vast distances.  Commenting on the arrival of telegraph in 1844, Thoreau remarked that “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”

     But during World War II, the parents of two Rapid City soldiers did receive telegrams that shook them to the core.  Janet Oliver received one that said her son Thomas, the son of an Army general, was missing in action: “The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret that your son First Lieutenant Thomas K. Oliver has been reported missing in action since six May over Italy.  If further details or other information are received you will be promptly notified.”

     B-24 pilot Tom Oliver was actually shot down over Nazi-held Yugoslavia on May 6, 1944, a century after the telegraph debuted.  Despite his injuries, Oliver roamed the countryside in a band of partisans, until his eventual repatriation.  Oliver is professor emeritus of electrical engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

      Paul Priest fought his way through the Battle of the Bulge with the 9th Armored Division, crossing the Bridge at Remagen in the dark of night, then into the fiercely defended German fatherland.  “It was at this time that I found out my parents had received a telegram reporting my death; it was another Paul Priest. Things like that happen in war. It was a great relief to my parents when they heard I was still alive and they got a letter from me.”

     You are invited to hear Paul Priest and LTC George Larson (USAF ret) speak about their new book on the Bridge at Remagen on Saturday, November 8 at the Western Dakota Technical Institute, 9 am, an event sponsored by the Black Hills Veterans Writing Group.