Harriet Pinkston Engelhardt

Harriet Englehardt grew up in a prominent familiy. She attended Hollins College and Black Mountain College in North Carolina. | | After the war began, she worked as an airplane mechanic at Maxwell Field in Montgomery. She had an adventurous spirit and in October 1943 went to Canada to work with the Royal Canadian Air Force. She then joined the American Red Cross in May 1944 and was sent to Europe, arriving on 18 August 1944, to operate a Clubmobile, making coffee, frying donuts, and putting on movies and shows for U.S. troops in France and Germany. She was the driver of such a clubmobile which closely followd U.S. troops across Europe. She endeared herself to the Japanese-American combat troops. | | "She and her group bedded down in pup-tents and trucks and slogged through mud and battled bees just like the GI’s they served,” a Red Cross Bulletin said. “She went so close to the front, sometimes she was flagged down by Germans eager to surrender.” | | She was killed in a jeep accident near Munich, Germany. She lost control of the jeep she was driving in a heavy rainstorm less than a week before she was scheduled to return home. | | After her death, her parents received a letter from the men of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, a unit of Japanese-American soldiers who distinguished themselves on the European front. | | “Our battalion was one of the first to learn of your daughter’s death and it was a great shock to all of us,” their letter read. “We really thought the world of our three Red Cross girls, Hattie, Phoebe and Mary, who used to bring us doughnuts and coffee. We extend to you our deepest sympathies. Your daughter did more than her share for our country during the war. We know for we were here and saw. May God bless you all.”