Lockport, La. – Clifton Detillier joined the Army in 1941.
Just 20 years old at the time, he said goodbye to his wife, who was expecting their first child. He left Lafourche Parish for Camp Livingston in the northern part of the state.
“We happened to be the 785th Tank Battalion and I’d say about 50 to 60 percent of us were from down the bayou or from Mathews or Raceland,” says Detillier.
Training for war meant grueling, hard days of drills and miles of marching. Long, lonely nights followed, far from home.
“It wasn’t easy to write letters but we took time to write them,” Detillier says.
He made friends with the other men in his battalion. One stood out, a soldier so homesick he couldn’t sleep at night.
“I really mean this, he was miserable,” says Detillier. “I’m the type of man that just can’t take that. I went to see the captain about it and I told him how he was doing and I said, ‘If y’all don’t do something for him, I think he’s going to pass away.'”
The soldier didn’t know how to read or write but he had an envelope with his address. Detillier offered to write a letter home for him.
“I started off with “Dear Sweetheart’ because he was drafted on the day they were supposed to get married,” says Detillier.
Detillier moved to the Broadway Rehabilitation Center in Lockport a few months ago. He shared his war stories over lunch one day and a woman at a nearby table overheard.
“He said 1942, that’s when he had to leave,” says Beaulah Comardelle. “I said, that’s when they took my boyfriend away, 1942 the same year. I said, he left from Des Allemands. Mr. Clifton says, I left from Lockport.”
Beaulah Matherne’s boyfriend was just 18 years old when he was drafted. Norris Comardelle dropped out of school in the first grade.
“The daddy died, their last one was a year and they was just teenagers then but they had to fish crab to make a living to feed the little ones,” she says.
Comardelle left for the Army on the day he and Matherne were supposed to get married. He sent three letters home during his short time at basic training.
“He wrote, ‘For his sweetheart’ and he was saying how lonesome he was and everything, what they were doing to him and stuff like that,” she says.
Comardelle married Matherne after his honorable discharge in 1942 and the two raised a family. He passed away in 1983.
Beaulah kept his letters from boot camp, one of them in a frame in her room at the nursing home.
She and Detillier began swapping stories. “All the stuff he told me what he was doing with the letter and all that, I said, well all that’s on the letter I got,” says Comardelle.
“She went to get it and brought it to me and, make no mistake, that’s my writing because I didn’t write too good,” says Detillier.
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