Harwich Vet Who Heralded V-E Day Becomes Celebrity In France

by Alan Pollock

            EAST HARWICH — Though it often passes without even a mention in the U.S., the anniversary of V-E Day is a national holiday in France.  The day combat officially ended in Europe is profoundly important to many French citizens, particularly those old enough to remember the war.

            In 1945, one of the first people to learn of the German surrender was Harold “Hal” Tately, now an 84-year-old retiree living in East Harwich.

A cryptographer

            Tately was 19 when he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was assigned to the Signal Corps reserve in Boston.  But at the time, there was a glut of signal corps workers, so the young man from Brockton was given one of the Army’s famous aptitude tests to choose his new vocation.  The test indicated that Tately would make a good cryptographer, though he admittedly was never particularly interested in codes or puzzles.

            After training in New Jersey, Tately was assigned to the 3104^th Signal Service Battalion, and he was shipped out to England where he began his hopscotch journey to meet the rest of his unit.  After coming ashore at Omaha Beach in July, he traveled from city to town, reaching Le Mans, Paris, and ultimately Reims in September.  It was here, near the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force, that the 3104^th had its base of operations.

            Tately was one of several security-cleared cryptographers who worked around the clock in shifts, decoding all kinds of military messages.  He worked in a sealed code room off the main message center, a room protected by armed guards.  As wartime assignments went, it was a good one.  No one was shooting at you, Tately remarked, “and you knew so much that was going on.”

            The job was very simple: receive the encoded messages and type them into the SIGCUM code machine, a teletype cipher equipped with five wheels with letter codes on them.  The code was tough to crack; variants of SIGCUM continued to be used through the 1960s.  The machine would then feed out the decoded message printed on paper tape, which the cryptographers then proofread and assembled into logical order—since messages often began in the middle to throw off would-be code-breakers.  The assembled message was then re-typed and sent to its recipient.           

The German Surrender

            Most of the messages Tately and his buddies decoded were far from titillating.  For the most part, the messages described personnel movements, punctuated by the occasional message that a member of the nearby 101^st Airborne had been picked up in town for drunkenness.  By design, it was hard to get any really useful information from most of the messages.

            “Nowhere in the service did you ever know the whole, big picture,” he said.  “You probably would’ve known more reading the paper sitting in New York.”

            But that changed early in the morning of May 7, when Tately was one of several cryptographers working the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift.  By random draw, Tately was the man who received the message indicating that German Chief of Staff Alfred Jodl had just signed surrender papers at supreme allied headquarters across town.

            The message instructed the recipient that “due to difficulties of communication, there may be some delay in similar orders reaching enemy troops, so full defensive precautions will be taken.”  The message also states that “no, repeat, no release will be made to the press pending an announcement by the heads of the three governments.”

            According to the message, the news would be released to the press in two days’ time, but must be kept secret until that time.  Though he was secretly elated, Tately kept the news to himself.  But he knew the historic value of the message, so instead of putting it into the burn box to be destroyed, he kept the papers.  There was no harm, he reasoned, since the whole message would be front-page news in a couple of days.

            Once the celebrations quieted down, U.S. military units began the process of demobilizing, and soldiers like Tately were loaded on ships for their next assignments in the Pacific Theater.   There, the fighting was still intense, and American GIs expected a prolonged, tough struggle against the Japanese.

            “We were just going by the Rock of Gibraltar when they announced that Japan had surrendered,” Tately recalled.  “Everybody hollered and was happy.”  Instead of heading for the Philippines, the ship was diverted to Boston, and crews broke out all of the fresh produce that was being rationed for the long trip.  Tately got 44 days’ leave and then finished out his service in the states until his discharge a few months later.  He went on to earn a degree from Boston University under the GI Bill and a successful corporate career.  As for the victory message, it remained locked up for decades in a safety deposit box, all but forgotten. 

Return To Reims

            Tately’s grown son, Chuck, took a strong interest in his father’s service in the Army, particularly when he learned about the V-E Day message. 

            “He’s been trying to get me to go to Europe for a long time,” the elder Tately said.  On one trip, Chuck went to Reims and visited the Museum of the Surrender, a shrine to that day in 1945 when the fighting officially ceased in France.  Located in the red brick building used as the supreme allied headquarters, the museum is filled with artifacts—including the entire Eisenhower war room, just as it was on V-E Day.  But the museum didn’t have a copy of the V-E Day message, and officials there didn’t think any copies still existed.  They were thrilled to know Tately had saved one, and invited him to come visit.

            It was earlier this month that Tately and his wife, Dorsi, went with Chuck to Europe.  A television writer and producer, Chuck thought the trip was worth recording, and so he rented a camera and related equipment to document the journey.  He lined up a number of surprises for his parents during the trip, but the biggest surprise was the reception they received in Reims.  Hal Tately was treated like a returning hero.

            When they arrived at the Museum of the Surrender, Tately was brought up on stage and bestowed with honors from the mayor and other dignitaries.  Posted in a display case was the V-E Day message, which he has agreed to lend the museum for a year, and alongside it was Tately’s life story.  Strangers crowded him for autographs, and the story made the top of the seven o’clock television news.

            Tately said he couldn’t help but feel that their enthusiasm was a bit misplaced, since it was only by chance that he was the technician that received the famous message.

            “It could’ve been any joker.  I was just a cryptographer.  I didn’t bomb any cities,” he said.

            But in the course of the visit it became clear that the French enthusiasm for Tately and his document was really something more profound.  It was an expression of deep thanks for all the Allied soldiers—but particularly the Americans—who liberated their country from oppression.

            Tately warned people to ignore the “baloney” about French people being anti-American because of the war in Iraq.  While many in France oppose the war, they don’t apply that distaste to American people, he said. 

            “They really are very, very thankful,” Tately said. 

5/22/08