TILL VICTORY

I am neither a historian by training nor a full-time writer - only a young Frenchman trying to honor those who fought for our freedom. In 2015, at the beginning of this book project, hundreds of veterans from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France and other allied nations were dying every day. While their attics were emptied by the movers, the memories and correspondence of our liberators often ended up in antique shops or auctioned on the Internet. Over the years, I have sought to collect and safeguard these direct testimonies of the conflict, before they were lost forever. To the frontline soldier, these letters were worth all the money in the world. They are now of inestimable value. Till Victory - The Second World War By Those Who Were There compiles nearly fifteen years of collecting and carefully selected writings. These are stories that have never been told before, for those who think they have read everything about this war, as well as historical context provided for those who might be new to the subject.

The letters of hundreds of soldiers were read, and in the end only a very small percentage were used. Deciphering the handwriting of each of these correspondences (often retrieved in batches of several dozen letters) could take days. I then had to translate and transcribe in full those that I thought were interesting. However, in the 1940s, the censors were (more or less) vigilant and few ventured to disclose information about their living conditions and combat experience... The majority of the messages were of no historical interest. But from time to time, a real gem caught my eye and it was put aside: the inch-by-inch fighting, fear, the loss of comrades, the miserable life on the front line, opinions on current events and the enemy, the contact with civilians before and after crossing the German border... It's all in Till Victory.

The second step was to research the history of each soldier in order to better understand the context in which these letters were written. There is no shortage of online sources for American archives, but it was often necessary to use the archives at Kew for the British, or the Service historique de la Défense in Vincennes for the French. Sometimes, associations or forums of enthusiasts were able to help me complete my work. I then spent whole days going through old handwritten documents, loaded with military abbreviations, hastily photocopied decades ago and then scanned in low resolution, to walk in these soldiers' shoes. Some documents were over 1,000 pages long. But the effort was often worth it: a love letter becomes so much more poignant when you discover that its author was killed a few hours later.

Finally, when I had been able to mix the individual stories with History and I was sure I wanted to publish a correspondence, there was one last crucial step: finding the soldier's descendants, in order to ask his family for permission to honor him in my project. I could find some clues about the existence of possible children in the letters, but the information was mostly incomplete... The unfortunate habit of online dealers to maximize their profits by splitting batches of old letters (and then selling them individually) made a large number of leads disappear and the investigation much more complicated. Fortunately, I had other means at my disposal: many genealogy sites, obituaries, veterans' associations...

The first family found was of Ray Alm, an elite American soldier from the 2nd Ranger Battalion, who landed on Omaha Beach. His son Rick, who unfortunately lost his battle with cancer on February 16, 2017, was an extremely kind man and interested in my project. As a great journalist (and a Pulitzer Prize winner), he always had a good anecdote to tell about his father. One of them was about the secret language that Ray and his wife Audrey had developed. Censorship did not allow Ray to reveal his location, so he used his signature in a clever way: closing his letters with "With love" meant he was in England, "All my love" in Scotland... France was "Lovingly". Not knowing where he would go, they prepared many codes in advance for countries such as Italy, Japan, Russia, Australia, and even Guatemala or Somalia. As you've probably guessed, "Till Victory" was the signature for Germany.

His son's kindness and trust gave me the courage to find more than forty other families. Before Rick sadly passed away in 2017, I promised him that the title of the book would honor his father. Beyond the anecdote, Till Victory represents optimism and determination, while carrying the uncertainty that this horrible war could bring to two young lovers' lives. The title perfectly sums up the content of the book: hope and fear, love and sacrifice, the home and the front, "until victory".

From the mountains of Italy to the beaches of Normandy, and from the deserts of North Africa to the ruined German cities, experience the history of the Second World War in Western Europe from 1939-1945 in an entirely different way. Using unpublished letters and diaries, follow the journeys of some fifty Allied soldiers (American, British, French, Canadian...) as they liberate the continent from Nazi rule, sometimes at the cost of their own lives. Arranged in chronological order and placed in historical context, their stories and letters are illustrated with many personal photographs, war memorabilia and original uniforms. Having miraculously escaped wartime censorship, these new first-hand testimonies are transcribed as is, whether they come from an elite soldier, a combat medic or a USO dancer. These poignant writings, completed in the mud of the European battlefields, reveal the hopes, doubts and fears of these young people sent to hell, making Till Victory first and foremost a book about Peace.

After the book was released in France in October 2018 (and soon became an award-winning bestseller), there was still one huge task ahead: translating it into English so that these heroes' stories are known throughout the world. The English version Till Victory - The Second World War By Those Who Were There (available on Amazon here) was released in November 2020 by Pen & Sword Books in the UK (order here) and distributed by Casemate in the US and Canada (order here).

The men and women honored in Till Victory - The Second World War By Those Who Were There:

Maurice Balloux,
155e régiment d'infanterie Forteresse
Roger Vallières,
105e régiment d'artillerie lourde hippomobile
Desmond Finny †,
Royal Army Service Corps
Charles Desrue,
136e régiment d'infanterie Forteresse
Paul Clavier,
9e Escadron du Train
Alexis Wolff,
98e Régiment d’infanterie
Jean Vacher-Corbière,
France Libre
Harold McOnie,
2nd New Zealand Division
William Brown,
Royal Army Ordnance Corps
Thomas Friedrich,
56th Coast Artillery
Jim & Vernon Miller †,
Royal Canadian Air Force
Ronald Whitehead †,
15th Air Force
Laurence Alexander,
14th Canadian Tank Regiment
Alan Morehouse †,
1st Infantry Division
Voyd Tromblee,
34th Infantry Division
Ernest "Bud" Siegel,
509th Parachute Infantry Regiment
John Leslie Harris,
11th Canadian Tank Regiment
Paul Pirat,
3e Division d'infanterie algérienne
Joe Nemec,
3rd Infantry Division
Willard Purdy †,
895th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion
Andrew Gagalis,
45th Infantry Division
Baldwin Chambers †,
1st Armored Division
Michael Davey,
Royal Marines
Murray Goldman,
82nd Airborne Division
Ray Alm,
2nd Rangers Battalion
James Macpherson,
Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa
George Ross,
2nd Warwickshire Regiment
Leonard Wood †,
1/5th Queen’s Royal Regiment John Irvine †,
4th Infantry Division
Leo Brown,
90th Infantry Division
Cortland Kester †,
9th Infantry Division
Melvin Berg,
4th Quartermaster Company
André Bonnafous,
2e Division blindée
Jean Denise,
FFI / 1re Armée française
Cecil Newton,
4th/7th Dragoon Guards
Paul Williams,
IX Troop Carrier Command
Raymond Edwards †,
4th/7th Dragoon Guards
Basil Taylor,
1st Airborne Division
Gerald Southwell †,
6th Armored Division
Wendell Follansbee,
10th Armored Division
Gordon Pierson,
17th Airborne Division
Duette Mills,
101st Airborne Division
Raymond Hurd,
1st Infantry Division
Melvyn Roat †,
102nd Infantry Division
Eugene Cleroux †,
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders
Kenneth Glemby,
9th Air Force
Henry Crookhorn,
303rd Signal Operations Battalion
Guenther Ahlf,
95th Infantry Division
Carl Holmberg,
4th Infantry Division
Archibald Sayce †,
4th Infantry Division
Hugh Stewart,
Army Film & Photography
Albert Vardy †,
Royal Canadian Air Force
Barbara Stuart,
Camp Shows, USO
Fleming McConnell,
Occupation Forces
Harrison Forrester,
7th Armored Division

WHAT'S NEXT...

While promoting Till Victory, Clément Horvath was secretly working on a new project... This time, the reader would follow only one soldier, but through a particularly complete and fascinating correspondance, that the author was once again able to save from oblivion: the war letters of American Captain Otis Hewett, in the 4th Infantry Division. This project soon became a new book, TILL THE JOB IS DONE - World War II letters from an officer in the US 4th Infantry Division (1944-1945), and a complementary documentary: TILL THE JOB IS DONE - in the footsteps of an officer of the 4th Infantry Division! Learn more about it on this page...

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