By this time, Harry Truman had decided that they could not be married in the fall of 1917. He explained his decision in one of the most emotional letters he ever wrote.

Bess, I’m dead crazy to ask you to marry me before I leave but I’m not going to because I don’t think it would be right for me to ask you to tie yourself to a prospective cripple - or a sentiment. You, I know, would love me just as much, perhaps more, with one hand as with two, but I don’t think I should cause you to do it. Besides, if the war ends happily and I can steal the Russian or German crown jewels, just think what a grand military wedding you can have, get a major general maybe.

If you don’t marry me before I go, you may be sure that I’ll be just as loyal to you as if you were my wife, and I’ll not try to exact any promises from you either if you want to go with any other guy, why all right, but I’ll be as jealous as the mischief although not begrudging you the good time.

Bess, this is a crazy letter but I’m crazy about you and I can’t say all these nutty things to you without making you weep. When you weep, I want to. If you’d looked right closely the other night, you might have discovered it, and a weeping man is an abomination unto the Lord. All I ask is love me always and if I have to be shot I’ll try and not have it in the back or before a stone wall because I’m afraid not to do you honor.

Other officers in the Battery were married - Captain Spencer Salisbury, for instance. He was the brother of Agnes Salisbury, a good friend of Bess. Lieutenant Kenneth Bostian, brother of Bess’ tennis partner, Bill Bostian, had just married Agnes’ younger sister, Mary. Harry mentioned that these wives had come to a Battery picnic the preceding Saturday, but he had not invited Bess because “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

He added that he was sending Bess a picture of him. “It is in uniform, I am sorry to say, but I can’t appear as a plain citizen any more until the war is over. If you don’t like it you can tear it up or send it to Mamma.”

Those words suggest just how serious Harry feared the rift between them might become. Wistfully, he asked her if she could drive by Convention Hall sometime and watch him drill the Battery. “Some of the other officers have an audience sometimes.”

Bess did not tear up Harry’s picture. At his request, she returned the favor by sending him her picture, a special one on which she and the photographer lavished a great deal of care. It is my favorite picture of Bess. I have always considered it a remarkable study in character. The photographer had the instincts of an artist. He caught Bess Wallace’s unique blend of strength and femininity, and he also captured the regret and doubt that were troubling her in that tumultuous year. There is no smile on her face. She looks straight at the camera, as she had forced herself to look at life - serious, determined but not uncaring. I also now see a vulnerability that I never saw before.

The inscription on the back of the picture was a kind of prayer. It also marked the beginning of Bess Wallace’s decades of worrying about Harry Truman’s fondness for living dangerously. “Dear Harry, May this photograph bring you safely home again from France - Bess.”

The men of the 129th Field Artillery soon were on their way to Camp Doniphan, near Lawton, Oklahoma. Bess and Harry Truman were back to relying on the mails for communication. Just as he had throughout his travails as farmer, miner, and oil speculator, he kept her informed about the details of his army experience, from branding horses to washing socks by hand. She was able to all but live his success as the operator of the regimental canteen, which drew him into frequent conferences with his colonel. He and a friend named Eddie Jacobson teamed up to run the most profitable canteen in the camp and possibly in the U.S. Army.

Although he was a soldier, he was still a tenderhearted man, who hated to hurt anyone and was deeply distressed when he was forced to do it, even for the best of reasons. “I caught one of my men stealing money out of the cash drawer [of the canteen] night before last and had him put in the guardhouse. It took me all afternoon yesterday to draw up the charges. I guess he’ll get about two years. I backed him into a corner and made him admit that he took the money. He had ten dollars in one pocket and three dollars in another, and two in another, and three in another. Did it all in about an hour. I was at school [artillery school] when the canteen steward came up and called me out and told me about it. They say the poor fellow is a good soldier but so much money in sight all at once was too much for him.”

Bess’ picture did a lot to restore Harry’s confidence in her affection. He stopped closing his letters with “Most Sincerely” and began to use “Lovingly,” or “Yours always.” He told her “. . . I don’t like but one style of beauty and that’s yours. You should send me two letters the day you get this one for that last remark.”

The page that Bess brought home telling her how to register for war service was no accident. She volunteered to sell war bonds and was soon assigned Blue Township, not far from Independence. She also joined the wives and fiancées of other members of the 129th regiment in a woman’s auxiliary, which held regular meetings to entertain themselves and compare notes on what the men needed. In the following year - 1918 - she served on an Independence committee that welcomed and entertained visiting soldiers from Fort Leavenworth.

What really pleased Harry was the time and attention Bess gave Mamma Truman and her daughter Mary. Bess arranged for Mary to be elected secretary of the Woman’s Auxiliary and visited Mamma Truman at the farm. When she sent Mamma Truman a picture, she got a delightful little note, which she enjoyed enough to save. Mamma thanked her for the gift and then chatted about how she got along while Mary was away for several nights, no doubt on a trip connected with her growing involvement in the Eastern Star, the woman’s counterpart of the Masons. Mamma mentioned a cousin who had visited one night and then remarked: “I guess the Nolands are all dead. They have never spoken a word to Mary or me since Harry left.” She ended the letter with: “Come out.”

Along with selling Liberty bonds, Bess coped with wartime shortages of such commodities as sugar, flour, and coal. She also had to cope with her mother’s anxiety when her brother Frank Wallace was called in the draft. She shared this worry with Harry, who wrote: “Hope Frank will be blind the day of the exam.” He knew Frank was as necessary to Madge Wallace’s well-being as Bess. Every day when he came home from work, Frank visited 219 North Delaware and spent a half hour with his mother.

Frank failed the eye test and stayed home for the time being. But another of Bess’ brothers, George, was also on the draft rolls and was certain to pass when called. If the war lasted long enough, Frank’s eyes would not keep him out either. In the salty Missouri slang of my Aunt May, George’s widow, with whom I have spent many hours discussing the early years of Bess’ life, Madge Wallace “went up in smoke” at the thought of her sons going to France. Bess had to put aside her own more complicated anxiety about Harry Truman and spend hours calming and reassuring her mother.

Bess continued to correspond with Mary Paxton, and as usual, the letters were lively. Toward the end of 1917, Mary remarked: “I can sympathize with you about Harry because I sent the nicest man in the world to France about two days ago.” A few months later, another letter brought startling news: “I am a pretty happy person. I am accepted for canteen work overseas. . . . If they have a service flag in the church tell them to put a star in it for me and tell Mr. Plunkett [the Episcopal minister) to please say some prayers for me when I am on the ocean. I am trying to make it as easy as I can for one man who loves me too much and trying to make it as hard as I can for one man who does not love me enough.”

Mary obviously had mastered the art of multiple romances. She was determined not to risk all her feelings with one man again. Although Bess had chosen a different route to happiness, she never uttered a word of reproach or criticism to Mary. Perhaps she knew that Mary was too headstrong to take advice, even from her.

Harry Truman, too, was moving inexorably toward France. There were several false starts. At one point, the Battery had everything packed and the canteen closed down, and their departure was canceled. Everyone was discouraged, and Harry moaned that they might yet get “benzined” [dismissed from the army] and sent home. He did not really believe it and was soon trying to keep up Bess’ spirits by describing the war as a moral crusade as well as a rare opportunity to participate in the history of their times. “We heard a lecture by an English colonel from the Western Front last night, and it sure put the pep into us. He made us all want to brace up and go to it with renewed energy. He made us feel like we were fighting for you and mother earth, and I am of the same belief. I wouldn’t be left out of the greatest history making epoch the world has ever seen for all there is to live for because there’d be nothing to live for under German control. When we come home a victorious army we can hold our heads up in the greatest old country on earth and make up for lost time by really living. Don’t you think that would be better than to miss out entirely? I am crazy to get it over with though because I wouldn’t cause you a heartache for all there is in the world.”

Another time, Harry and a small group of other officers and men were supposed to rush to the East Coast to catch a ship to France for a special assignment. The orders were canceled at the last minute, and they learned a few weeks later the ship had been torpedoed off the coast of Ireland. Harry tried to make light of it. “Don’t you worry about what’s going to happen to me because there’s not a bullet molded for me nor has Neptune any use for me. Had I been on the boat that went down, I’d have been in Dublin by this time with some Irish woman at a dance (if she looked like you) or taking a look for the man who invented corks and corkscrews. Ireland’s a great country so they say. . . .”

She also participated through Harry’s letters in his struggle to win promotion to captain. He told her about his appearance before an examining board headed by a terrible-tempered general named Berry and his narrow escape from the medical officer, who thought his eyes were so bad he wanted to send him to division headquarters. Lieutenant Truman talked him out of it. In another letter, he gave her an inside glimpse of army life, along with some good news about his promotion: “I got an underground intimation that I passed my captain’s examination all right. I don’t believe it though until I see the evidence from Washington. I am telling you only because I thought maybe it would be nice to share good news with you if it is only a rumor, and I know you won’t kid me about it if it’s false. To tell you the honest truth I’d rather be a first lieutenant than anything else in the army except a buck private in the rear rank. He’s the guy that has no responsibility and he’s the guy that does the real work. I heard a good one the other day which said that a lieutenant knows nothing and does everything, a captain knows everything and does nothing, a major knows nothing and does nothing. Very true except that a captain has to know everything from sealing wax to sewing machines and has to run them. He also is responsible for about $750,000 worth of materiel and 193 men, their lives, their morals, their clothes, and their horses, which isn’t much for $200 a month and pay your own expenses. I shall probably get the swell head just as all captains do if I get it, and it will be lots better for me if I don’t. . . .”

Then came a telegram that must have made Bess wonder about her resolution to share all aspects of the life of the man she loved:

WE ARE MOVING TODAY. YOUR PACKAGE CAME ALL RIGHT AND WAS VERY FINE. WILL WRITE YOU FROM TRAIN. HARRY S. TRUMAN

At 5:00 a.m. on March 21, 1918, the telephone rang at 219 North Delaware Street. It was Lieutenant Harry Truman calling from a railroad phone in Kansas City, where the troop train had stopped to change engines. The switchman who let him use the phone said: “If she doesn’t break the engagement at five o’clock in the morning, she really loves you.” The engagement stayed unbroken.

When Harry reached New York, he got a telegram from Bess. She asked him for a picture. She even told him where to go - White’s, one of the best photographers in the city. Harry sensed what she was thinking or, to put it more exactly, fearing. “Don’t you worry about me not taking care of myself. . . . I’m going to use my brains, if I have any, for Uncle Sam’s best advantage and I’m going to aim to keep them in good working order, which can’t be done by stopping bullets.”

Harry tried to cheer her up with a lively letter from the Hotel McAlpin, where he was staying in New York: “Would you believe it? I am here at this joint along with four other Missouri guys. We are having the time of our innocent young lives lookin’ out the window up Broadway. . . . Got up this morning [at Camp Merritt, New Jersey] had breakfast of ham and eggs at a cafeteria in the camp, and then got permission to come to the city. Got a taxi, five of us did, and drove thirteen miles to 130th Street, rode the ferry across, and then began hunting for the subway downtown. They told us it was only a block from the ferry. We walked around and hunted and finally decided to take the elevated, which was nearby about four stories up. Well the elevated turned out to be the subway! The devilish thing runs out of the ground about 120th Street and runs over a low place on stilts. We couldn’t recognize it as the subway. We have all had shines, shaves, baths, and are now in here to go to church somewhere this afternoon. We haven’t decided whether it will be A1 Jolson or George Cohan.”

In France, letter by letter, Bess followed Harry through the exhausting ordeal of another, tougher artillery school, where he got to be so good at “trig and logs,” as he called it (that’s trigonometry and logarithms), that he was made an instructor. Then came even better news. On June 14, 1918, he wrote: “I am back with the regiment and a sure enough captain.” It had taken six weeks for his promotion to catch up with him so he had “about a bushel and a half of francs back pay coming next payday.”

Even better news followed exactly a month later. “I have attained my one ambition, to be a Battery commander. If I can only make good at it, I can hold my head up anyway for the rest of my days.”

Subsequent letters revealed that this promotion was a mixed blessing. Battery D was composed mostly of Irish-Catholics from Kansas City. Contrary to earlier versions of their background, they were not all lower-class mugs by any means. Many of them were college men, but they all shared a fondness for breaking any and every army regulation on the books. They had already ruined three captains before Harry Truman got them. Nevertheless, in a week, he was reporting more good news to Bess: “They gave me a Battery that was always in trouble . . . but we carried off all the credits this week. I hope to make a reputation for myself if the cards fall right and I don’t get wounded or something. It is the Irish Battery I have and the adjutant has decided to put an O in front of my name to make me right. They seem to want to soldier for me and if I can get them to do it, I shall consider that I have made the greatest success there is to make. If I fail, it’ll be a great failure too. That’s always the case though. The men are as fine a bunch as were ever gotten together but they have been lax in discipline. Can you imagine me being a hard-boiled captain of a tough Irish Battery? I started things in a rough-cookie fashion. The very first man that was up before me for a lack of discipline got everything I was capable of giving. I took the Battery out to fire the next day and they were so anxious to please me and fire good that one of my gunners got the ague and simply blew up. I had to take him out. When I talked to him about it he almost wept and I felt so sorry for him I didn’t even call him down. Tell George [Wallace] that little Higginbotham is one of my shootin’ men. He pulls the hammer on No. 1 gun and he sure rides it. The other day it nearly bucked him off.”

Bess matched Harry letter for letter. One day he got four - and a box of candy from Paris on which was written: “Sent by order of Miss Bess Wallace, Independence, Kansas City, Mo.” Along with worrying her man through France, she had to cope with a family crisis at 219 North Delaware Street. Her grandfather was dying. Her mother all but collapsed at the thought of losing the one man who had sustained her. George P. Gates had been ill since early in 1918, suffering largely from the complications of old age. (He was eighty-two.) On June 26, 1918, he died. For Bess, too, it was a wrenching loss. A strong, genial, loving presence vanished from her life.

The loss also triggered considerable anxiety. Her grandfather left his wife Elizabeth an annuity, so she was financially secure. But the rest of his modest estate was divided among his five children. Madge Wallace received $23,247.39 - not enough to support her and Bess and her youngest son, Fred, whom Madge had resolved to send to the University of Missouri, for more than a few years. If Harry Truman was killed in action, Bess’ future would be bleak.

We know, now, that he was not killed. But the coming months and years of Bess Wallace’s future were as opaque and threatening to her in 1918 as they were to the women who sent men to all the other wars of our century. She threw herself into her war bond sales work and put a star in the flag of the Episcopal Church for Harry, even though he was a Baptist who seldom went to church. In her letters, she shared some of her deepest feelings with him. She revealed how awful she had felt when he came to a Fourth of July party in his uniform in the summer of 1917. It is interesting that it took her an entire year to tell him. As he neared combat, she seemed to want to let him know that her pain at the thought of losing him had been acute from the start.

Letters from another friend with a strange (but in my opinion lovely) name reveal that Bess was afraid that she might have a nervous breakdown in 1918. Arry Ellen Mayer had grown fond of Bess and vice versa when her family moved to North Delaware Street from Kansas City. When they relocated again, this time to Toronto, Canada, the two young women began a lengthy correspondence. Bess saved dozens of Arry’s letters, almost as many as those of Mary Paxton. Where Mary was intense and dramatic, Arry was cheerful and high-spirited. She obviously gave Bess an emotional lift, but she also was close enough to let her write frankly.

“Don’t for heaven’s sake get nerves,” Arry wrote in response to Bess saying she might have a breakdown. “They are the meanest things on earth, and the only cure is a complete rest. And I know how you’d hate that. So do get rid of them quick, please.” Arry cheered her by reporting that Canadian friends wrote from France that the Germans could not hold out much longer. “Take care of yourself,” Arry wrote, “for you know . . . you want to be ready for a glorious time when Harry comes home. It’s so splendid of him to be going . . .”

This sentiment was not one Bess was hearing at 219 North Delaware. Other letters reveal Bess was interested in Arry’s romantic experiences. When she hinted that she was falling in love with a Canadian major, Bess wondered how she could possibly marry a foreigner. “It’s a shame to have made you so excited about my thoughts of embracing matrimony,” Arry wrote. “I will confess I am mightily tempted, but I haven’t the courage. You’re quite right, I simply couldn’t marry anyone but an American.”

Bess sent Arry a copy of the photograph she had sent to Captain Truman and received an ecstatic reply. “It’s the one picture I’ve always wanted and most given up hopes of ever having,” Arry wrote. “My but I am glad the ‘General’ had to have it. That’s surely one of the good things out of this war.”

Then came the letter from France that Bess had dreaded. Captain Truman was in combat. “I . . . have accomplished my greatest wish. Have fired 500 rounds at the Germans . . . been shelled, didn’t run away thank the Lord, and never lost a man.” With that uncanny instinct for fulfilling her deepest wish, to know, to share everything with him, Harry added: “Probably shouldn’t have told you but you’ll not worry any more if you know I’m in it than if you think I am.”

At the same time, the letter revealed his caution about telling her every detail, especially those that would worry her. Not until the war was over did Captain Truman report just how dangerous that first encounter with the enemy had been. “The first sergeant failed to get the horses up in time and The Hun gave me a good shelling. The sergeant ran away and I had one high old time getting out of that place. I finally did with two guns and went back to my former position. . . . The boys called that engagement the Battle of Who Run because some of them ran when the first sergeant did and some of them didn’t. I made some corporals and first class privates out of those who stayed with me and busted the sergeant.”

From this first brush with the Germans in the Vosges Mountains, the Battery soon moved into one of the major battles of the war, St. Mihiel. Bess got a stream of vivid letters from Harry describing his experiences. He told her about bringing the Battery forward under fire, with shells falling on all sides of them, and never losing a man. “I am as sure as I am sitting here that the Lord was and is with me,” he wrote.

Peace rumors began sweeping Europe as the German armies fell back under the American assault. Captain Truman read them and promptly turned his mind from shellfire to something more pleasant. “Would you meet me in New York and go to the Little Church Around the Corner if I get sent home?”

But the peace rumors faded, and the fighting resumed. This time, the 129th fired the opening rounds in one of the most stupendous battles in history, the American drive into the Argonne. “I have just finished putting 1,800 shells over on the Germans in the last five hours,” Captain Truman told Bess on November 1. He also reported he had gotten a commendation for having the best-conditioned guns in the U.S. Army. He gave the credit to his chief mechanic and put a copy of the letter in the files. But he said he was going to save the original. “It will be nice to have someday if some low-browed north-end politician tries to remark that I wasn’t in the war when I’m running for eastern judge or something.”

This statement must have been startling news for Bess. Eastern judge was an administrative job in Jackson County. There were three judges - actually commissioners - who supervised the county government, in particular the roads. For a few months after his father died, Harry had served as road overseer in Grandview. He had proposed an ambitious road-building program and been fired for his trouble. The judgeship was one of the most fiercely contested jobs in Missouri, because so much patronage power was connected with it. Bess hardly could have been thrilled to discover that Harry Truman was thinking about plunging into the cutthroat political world that had destroyed her father.

Within minutes of floating that future, Captain Truman was telling her that he would be just as happy “to follow a mule down a corn row the balance of my days - that is, always providing such an arrangement is also a pleasure to you.”

The next day, in another letter, he was telling her he was proud to learn that she had been made manager of her district for the latest Liberty Loan bond drive. “Should we decide to promote some of my numerous oil leases when I return, I shall know whom to elect secretary and money getter.” He somewhat ruefully confessed that he had yet to buy a bond because each payday he lent most of his centimes and francs “to worthless birds in this regiment.” He had no real hope of collecting these loans. “Maybe I can make them collect votes for me when I go to run for Congress on my war record - when I get tired of chasing that mule up that corn row.”

Captain Truman obviously did not have a clear plan for his postwar life, except for marrying Bess Wallace as soon as possible. It is interesting that there is not a hint in any of these letters that Bess tried to take advantage of this uncertainty and tell him what she thought he should do. Instead, she concentrated on praying and worrying him through that rain of shellfire through which he rode so confidently in France.

Suddenly, incredibly, it was over. At 219 North Delaware, everyone was awakened about 4:00 a.m. on November 11 by the sound of clanging church bells. As dawn broke, people took to the streets for the wildest celebration in the history of Independence. Bells rang, fire engines sounded their sirens, factories blew whistles, and cars blared horns continually for the next twelve hours. Bess and her friends joined the exultant crowds in Jackson Square. It was all marvelously joyous and good-natured. Not a single person was injured, and the only reported property damage occurred when some celebrator fired off a gun and the bullet went through a window.

In France, on November 11, Captain Truman gave Bess a blow by blow (or boom by boom) account of how the war ended for him and Battery D.

We are all wondering what the Hun is going to do about Marshal Foch’s proposition to him. We don’t care what he does. He’s licked either way he goes. . . . Their time for acceptance will be up in thirty minutes. There is a great big 155 battery right behind me across the road that seems to want to get rid of all its ammunition before the time is up. It has been banging away almost as fast as a 75 Battery for the last two hours. Every time one of the guns goes off it shakes my house like an earthquake.

I just got official notice that hostilities would cease at eleven o’clock. Everyone is about to have a fit. . . . I knew that Germany could not stand the gaff. For all their preparedness and swashbuckling talk they cannot stand adversity. France was whipped for four years and never gave up and one good licking suffices for Germany. What pleases me most is the fact that I was lucky enough to take a Battery through the last drive. The Battery has shot something over ten thousand rounds at the Hun and I am sure they had a slight effect.

Even before this long letter ended, he was thinking of Bess and marriage. He included a nice compliment for her war work.

It is pleasant also to hear that Mrs. Wells [Bess’ Aunt Maud] has adopted me as a real nephew and I shall certainly be more than pleased to call her Auntie Maud and I hope it won’t be long before I can do it.

You evidently did some excellent work as a Liberty bond saleswoman because I saw in The Stars and Stripes where some twenty-two million people bought them and that they were oversubscribed by $1 billion, which is some stunt for you to have helped pull off. I know that it had as much to do with breaking the German morale as our cannon shots and we owe you as much for an early homecoming as we do the fighters.

Bess was proud of the part she played in this fund-raising achievement. In those attic files at 219 North Delaware Street, I found carefully preserved her commission as a “Liberty Soldier” on the “ladies committee” that sold $1,780,000 in bonds in Blue Township.

That Thanksgiving, Maud Gates Wells invited the Wallaces and Grandmother Gates to Platte City. The invitation was gratefully accepted. No one wanted to spend the day at 219 North Delaware without Grandfather Gates to carve the turkey. Everyone had a lovely time in the Wells’ spacious mansion. There was a good deal of joking about whether Captain Truman might go AWOL and swim the Atlantic to get home and marry Bess. The well-fed guests returned home by streetcar, which required a change in Kansas City. As they waited for the Independence car, May Wallace noted that Bess and her brother George (now May’s husband) were both shivering. There was a chilly wind blowing, but it was not that cold. The next morning, they were still shivering. Both had the flu.

In 1918, that was not good news. That year’s flu was not the ordinary bug that gave its victims twenty-four or thirty-six hours of chills and went its way. It was a killer that had already wiped out whole families and villages in Europe and other parts of the world. George was lucky. He recovered fairly soon. So did Mary Truman who caught it in Grandview. But Bess sank into a nightmare world of fever and delirium that lasted for weeks. More than once, the family was sure she was dying.

The rest of Independence was not doing much better. As the number of dead and dying mounted, the authorities closed schools and theaters and factories to try to isolate people and break the momentum of the epidemic. At 219 North Delaware, as Bess slowly recovered, she found that she could hear almost nothing in her left ear. The doctor informed her that it was a not an uncommon legacy of this killer flu. But at least she was alive. Everyone knew that Bess was herself again when she announced, early in January, that she was going to take a walk.

Separated by 5,000 miles of water and land, Captain Truman wrote Bess letters about a fabulous leave he was enjoying in Paris and Nice and Monte Carlo. He was horrified when he found out, weeks later, that she had the disease that was killing so many people. “I am so glad you are out of danger from that awful flu. You’ve no idea how uneasy I’ve been since hearing you and Mary had it. We over here can realize somewhat how you must have felt when we were under fire a little. Every day nearly someone of my outfit will hear that his mother, sister or sweetheart is dead, it is heartbreaking almost to think that we are so safe and so well over here and that the ones we’d like to protect more than all the world have been more exposed to death than we.”

While she was recuperating from the flu, Bess received a letter from Mary Paxton that probably did her more good than any of the pills the doctor prescribed. Mary was at a YMCA post trying to give 2,500 homesick soldiers an American Christmas on a limited budget. She had met an Independence man who told her that the 129th Field Artillery had come through the battles with light casualties, and Captain Truman was not among the killed or wounded. When “the boys” come home, she told Bess, “No one can do enough to appreciate what they have been up against - and the trenches are only part. It is impossible for anyone not here to understand the temptations they have. We don’t preach to them but just talk it straight out to them. Don’t worry about Harry though for he is a rock you can build on.”

Now that Bess could consider the future without dread, she told Captain Truman that she did not think getting married in New York was a good idea. She wanted to have the ceremony in Trinity Episcopal Church in Independence, where her family and friends could join in the celebration. The Captain said he was “perfectly willing” to accept that arrangement. “I just couldn’t see how I was going to wait until I could get to Independence,” he explained. But he had now learned that the army planned to discharge units en masse, which meant he would have to wait until the regiment got to Missouri anyway. “But don’t make any delay,” he warned.

The wedding and Captain Truman’s growing dissatisfaction with army life mingled in other letters from France.

I have a nice boy in my Battery whose name is Bobby . . . and once in a while he brings me a letter that he doesn’t want any second lieutenant [an army censor] nosing into, and it’s always addressed to just Dearest and I feel like an ornery, low-down person when I read them - sometimes I don’t, I just sign ‘em up and let ‘em go. But if that girl doesn’t wait for that kid I know she’s got a screw loose. He doesn’t write a thing silly but he’s all there and I hope she is too.

What I started out to say is that I’d like to write you a really silly, mushy letter that would honestly express just exactly what I feel tonight but I have command of neither the words nor the diction to do it right. Anyway I had the most pleasant dream last night and my oh how I did hate to wake up. Of course I was in U.S.A. parading down some big town’s main street and I met you and there was a church handy and just as casually as you please we walked inside and the priest did the rest and then I thought we were in Paris and I woke up in a Godforsaken camp just outside of old ruined Verdun. . . .

We just live from one inspection to the next. You know these regular army colonels and lieutenant colonels who’ve had their feet on the desk ever since the argument started are hellbent for inspections. Some of’em haven’t been over here but a month or two but they can come around and tell us who went through it exactly and how we did not win the war. Some of’em are nuts on horse feed and some are dippy on how to take care of harness and some think they know exactly how many ounces of axle grease will run a gun wheel to kingdom come and back. One important little major who had evidently read somebody’s nonsensical book on how to feed a horse came along the other day and wanted us to feed the horses oatmeal, cooked!

Captain Truman particularly disliked the harsh West-Point style discipline of the regulars. He was distressed to find himself being forced to imitate them to maintain discipline in his bored soldiers. “If we stay in this place much longer,” he wrote, “I’ll either have a disposition like a hyena or be the dippy one. If there’s one thing I’ve always hated in a man it is to see him take his spite out on someone who couldn’t talk back to him. I’ve done my very best not to jump on someone under me when someone higher up jumps on me, because I hate the higher-up when he does it and I’m sure the next fellow will hate me if I treat him the same way. . . . Justice is an awful tyrant. Just to show how she works I took all the privileges away from a fellow for a small offense and gave him a terrific calling down and I had to do it four times more when I found out that four more were offenders in the same way. One of ‘em was a man I particularly like too and I know he thinks I’m as mean as Kaiser Bill. . . .”

Harry Truman was saying goodbye to his boyhood dream of being a soldier. In this letter, he revealed to Bess the part she played in it: “You know when I was a kid, say about thirteen or fourteen, I was a tremendous reader of heavy literature like Homer, Abbott’s Lives, Leviticus, Isaiah, and the memoirs of Napoleon. Then it was my ambition to make Napoleon look like a sucker and I thirsted for a West Point education so I could be one of the oppressors, as the kid said when asked why he wanted to go there. You’d never guess why I had such a wild desire and you’ll laugh when I tell you. It was only so you could be the leading lady of the palace or empire or whatever it was I wanted to build. You may not believe it but my notion as to who is the best girl in the world has never changed and my military ambition has ended by having arrived at the post of centurion. That’s a long way from Caesar, isn’t it? Now I want to be a farmer. Can you beat it? I’m hoping you’ll like the rube just as well as you would have the Napoleon. I’m sure the farmer will be happier.”

But he remained proud of his military accomplishments: “Personally I’d rather be a Battery commander than a brigadier general. I am virtually the dictator of the actions of 194 men and if I succeed in making them work as one, keep them healthy morally and physically and make ‘em write to the mammas and sweethearts, and bring ‘em all home, I shall be as nearly pleased with myself as I ever expect to be - until the one great event of my life is pulled off, which I am fondly hoping will take place immediately on my having delivered that 194 men in U.S.A. You’ll have to take a leading part in that event you know and then for one great future.”

When the Thirty-fifth Division, to which the artillery regiment was attached, staged a review for General John J. Pershing and the Prince of Wales, Battery D led the parade. Harry told Bess about it, but he was far more excited by what General Pershing said to him when he shook hands: The division would soon be on its way home. “Please get ready to march down the aisle with me as soon as you decently can,” he implored. “I haven’t any place to go but home [he meant Grandview] and I’m busted financially but I love you as madly as a man can and I’ll find the other things. We’ll be married anywhere you say at anytime you mention and if you want only one person or the whole town I don’t care. . . . I have some army friends I’d like to ask and my own family and that’s all I care about.” He added that he had enough money to buy a Ford “and we can set sail in that and arrive in Happyland.”

In her answering letter, the earliest that has survived, Bess made it clear that she was just as impatient as Harry, and was not fussing about the details. “You may invite the entire 35th Division to your wedding if you want to,” she wrote. “I guess it’s going to be yours as well as mine. I guess we might as well have the church full while we are at it. I rather think it will be anyway whether we invite them or not, judging from a few remarks I’ve heard.”

Her mother was obviously exercising her prerogatives in regard to the wedding.

Bess’ pride in her soldier is visible in the next paragraph. “What an experience the review etc must have been. I’ll bet the Bty looked grand and no wonder they led the Div. . . . Were you overcome at greeting the Prince of Wales? He doesn’t mean any more to me than the orneriest doughboy but I know I’d choke if I had to address him. It was splendid that you got to shake hands with Pershing.”

Then she went back to the most important thing on both their minds.

We’ll be about ready alrighty when you come and then we can settle the last details. Mary said Mr. Morgan [the oil speculator] had a job waiting for you and if you should decide to put in part of your time there, you’ll have another home waiting for you in Indep. for nothing would please mother any better. She said we could have either floor we wanted. . . .

Hold onto the money for the car - we’ll surely need one. Most anything that will run on four wheels. I’ve been looking at used car bargains today. I’ll frankly confess I’m scared to death of Fords. I’ve seen and heard of so many turning turtle this winter. But we can worry about that later. Just get yourself home and we won’t worry about anything.

She closed with a comment that compared her picnic test to Harry’s criticisms of some of his fellow officers. “It’s strange that such widely different things as war and picnics will so surely show a man up. I’ve liked lots of people ‘til I went on a picnic jaunt with them and you can say the same thing about several (?) men ‘til you went on a war jaunt with them, eh?”

Then the letters from France were replaced by telegrams:

ARRIVED IN CAMP MILLS EASTER AFTERNOON . . . NEW YORK GAVE US A GRAND WELCOME. GOD’S COUNTRY SURE LOOKS GOOD. HARRY.

The next day, Captain Truman headed for Tiffany and Company, on the southeast corner of Thirty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue, where he bought a beautiful gold wedding ring. Then he strolled down Broadway with two fellow officers and stopped in an ice-cream store for a snack. There, a pretty girl walked up to him and asked if he was with the Thirty-fifth Division. Captain Truman said his artillery regiment was attached to this mostly Missouri and Kansas division, and in response to another question, admitted that many of his battery mates were from Independence.

“Do you know Bess Wallace?” the girl asked.

“Yes - I do,” said the astonished Captain.

“Tell her Stella Swope was asking for her.”

The former heiress - she was the youngest daughter - strolled out onto Broadway on the arm of a sailor. What memories that encounter stirred, when Harry told Bess the story in a letter from New York. It evoked receptions and dances in the Swope mansion before tragedy devastated that family, a world of rustling silk dresses and casual sophistication and presumed wealth. Now Bess was about to marry a man who had never been part of that elegant world. A man who was not certain what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, except marry her. An ex-soldier who had a remarkably daring spirit concealed behind his modest, smiling demeanor. Who could guess in what unexpected direction he might take her?

For someone who regarded life with wary distrust, these thoughts were unsettling. But Bess had long since learned to put such thoughts aside, to live a normal life in spite of them. More than most people, she had already experienced the power of fate or destiny in her life. Everything, from her own deep feelings to the fortunes of war, had favored her union with Harry Truman. So, in obedience to the orders from the front lines, there was no delay.

At 4:00 p.m. on June 28, 1919, seven weeks after thirty-five-year-old Captain Truman was discharged at Camp Funston, almost nine full years since he began his courtship of Bess Wallace and six years since she accepted him, he waited at the altar in tiny Trinity Episcopal Church, a few blocks from 219 North Delaware Street. He was wearing a gray tailor-made suit with small black-and-white checks in the cloth. It had been made by his best man, Ted Marks, who had been a fellow captain in the 129th Field Artillery. Before the war and after it, Ted ran the best gentleman’s tailor shop in Kansas City.

It was a hot day, but Harry Truman was oblivious to the weather. “Never did we see such a radiant groom,” one friend wrote Bess after the ceremony and added an interesting comment on some feelings that Bess had obviously shared with her. “Methot you did quite nobly, Bessie, now twastn’t such a dreadful ordeal, was it.”

Bess wore a gown of white georgette and a wide-brimmed picture hat of white faille and carried an armful of Aaron Ward roses. Her bridesmaids were her two favorite cousins, Helen Wallace and Louise Wells. Helen wore blue organdy and carried Sunset roses, Louise wore yellow organdy and carried Sweetheart roses. Tall, handsome Frank Wallace escorted Bess up the aisle and gave her away.

The church was beautifully decorated with garden flowers in pastel shades. The altar was a mass of daisies, pink hollyhock, and pale blue larkspur. Tall cathedral candles cast a golden glow on this array of color. “Elizabeth Virginia Wallace,” the Reverend John V. Plunkett, rector of Trinity, asked the thirty-four-year-old bride, “Wilt thou have this man for thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love him, comfort him, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will,” Bess Wallace said.