by Jim Mockford, Member
On March 9, 2019 I stepped on to the stage of The Ralph Radio Theatre’s presentation of “Variety for Victory” a vintage radio experience of “1944 Mirth, Music and Memories” created by Producer Kimberly Poe for the charity benefit dinner program of Al Kader Shriner’s in Portland, Oregon. Ralph Radio Theatre presents an annual “Christmas from Home” holiday musical with talented actors, singers and the Dreamfire Express Band. I am not a member of the theatre troupe, but I was invited to join as a special guest, to read selected excerpts from my father Private Roger Mockford WWII letters home in 1944. I also prepared an exhibit of some of the letters and V-Mail that Dad sent to his parents, Rev. A.J. Mockford, Rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Oregon City and his mother, Frances, and family. My appearance on stage was in the role of my grandfather, and I wore a clerical collar to portray him. He would have been about my age at the time he received those letters from his son from ASTP at the University of Oregon and Camp Cooke in 1944, before shipping out to England, France and finally to the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.
After Dad passed away in 2015, I found a collection of about 200 letters and V-Mail that he had written home during WWII. I began an inventory in preparation to sent them to the Veterans History Project, but as I read them, I decided to delay the submission until I could draft a manuscript about his experience in the Battle of the Bulge. In 2016, we toured Bastogne and the Ardennes battlefields, thanks to the wonderful Belgian historian and guide Roger Marquet and his wife Monique, who drove us along the trail of the 11th Armored Division’s 55th Armored Infantry Battalion C Company that my father had traveled in 1944-45. He was on foot and in combat from Margarotte to Acul, and in the snow covered-fields and forests. We traveled on country roads to many of these sites, towards Bois Jacques and back to Bastogne. I knew of some of these places from Dad’s stories told at home and at the reunions of the 11th Armored Division and Battle of the Bulge Association meetings, but after finding the treasure trove of his written letters, I had a chronology with details that corresponded to the stories he had told, and some new stories to share.
When I talked about this opportunity to travel through the letters, back into the time before Dad and his generation turned 20 years old, with Kimberly Poe, she was not only interested in the content to include in Ralph Radio Theatre, but surprised me with an invitation to play a role in the “Variety for Victory” program. It was a meaningful way for me to share a short part of Dad’s story with an audience who loved the vintage radio format with its period advertisements, radio host jokes and banter, and comedy sketches, as well as the classic songs and tunes from the 1940s. “Variety for Victory” traveled back in time for ninety-minutes, but it is too much to try to describe the entire show here. Visit Ralph Radio Theatre online to get an idea of the annual Christmas From Home musical at: ralphradiotheatre.com.
In one of the letters was a poem that Dad liked, and it captured the spirit of families at home, with loved ones afar, so I read it as part of my script in the program:
We’ll keep thumbs up with pride in you
Though there’s tough time to weather
So on to Victory, Old Pal!
We’re in this fight together
Among the Shriners in the audience enjoying the program and dinner was 93-year-old Hap Baldwin, whom I was surprised and most delighted to find out was a Battle of the Bulge Veteran in the 76th Infantry Division, and we talked about the war years that my Dad and Hap had experienced 75 years ago. I am still working on the manuscript about the letters, but I am so happy to have had the chance to share a small part of that story with Ralph Radio Theater to a local audience, and find in that audience someone who knew was it was really like to be in the Battle of the Bulge!
Jim Mockford’s father Roger J. Mockford (born December 7, 1924) was a member of Patton’s 3rd Army 11th Armored Division 55th Armored Infantry Battalion C Company 2nd Platoon 2nd Squad in the Battle of the Bulge. He was the last President of the Northwest Chapter of the 11th Armored Division Association and attended the last national convention of the 11th Armored Division at Louisville in 2010. Roger and Jim travelled on the Honor Flight to Washington D.C. in May 2015, just six months before Roger passed away, a few days before his 91st birthday in December 2015.