John Steinbeck in 1939 Born

General Edwards Presents Medal

Mrs. Ira Henry of Sound Beach was presented the Distinguished Service medal from the War department today in honor of her son, Captain Clifford W. Henry for bravery under fire during the World war. The medal, recommended by General Pershing, was presented by Major General Edwards.

Captain Henry, who during the war was a lieutenant with Co.F, 102nd infantry, captured the town of Vignuelles, nine kilometers inside the Hindenburg line on September 13, 1918. Lieutenant Henry and 50 of his men were killed the next day by a terrific explosion in the town. Captain Henry was a graduate of Harvard University.

The Bridgeport Telegram, July 4, 1927.

Henry repeatedly advanced in front of the platoon he commanded, drawing machine-gun fire so that the German nests could be located and wiped out by his men. Although wounded in the leg in this effort, his death was the result of shrapnel wounds from an air bomb dropped by a German plane.^[65] He was awarded the French Croix de guerre avec palme for his acts of heroism. From the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, he was presented with the Distinguished Service Cross and an Oak Leaf Cluster in lieu of a second Distinguished Service Cross.^[62][66]

Clifford Henry was the great love of Margaret Mitchell's life, according to her brother.^[67] In a letter to a friend (A. Edee, March 26, 1920), Mitchell wrote of Clifford that she had a "memory of a love that had in it no trace of physical passion".^[68]

Mitchell had vague aspirations of a career in psychiatry,^[69] but her future was derailed by an event that killed over fifty million people worldwide, the 1918 flu pandemic. On January 25, 1919, her mother, May Belle Mitchell, succumbed to pneumonia from the "Spanish flu". Mitchell arrived home from college a day after her mother had died. Knowing her death was imminent, May Belle Mitchell wrote her daughter a brief letter and advised her:

Give of yourself with both hands and overflowing heart, but give only the excess after you have lived your own life.^[69]

An average student at Smith College, Mitchell did not excel in any area of academics. She held a low estimation of her writing abilities. Even though her English professor had praised her work, she felt the praise was undue.^[70] After finishing her freshman year at Smith, Mitchell returned to Atlanta to take over the household for her father and never returned to college.^[69] In October 1919, while regaining her strength after an appendectomy, she confided to a friend that giving up college and her dreams of a "journalistic career" to keep house and take her mother's place in society meant "giving up all the worthwhile things that counted for—nothing!"^[71]

Marriage[edit]