Photo By Richard Goldenberg | Army Soldiers of the 42nd Infantry Division’s 222nd Infantry Regiment Glee Club...... read more read more
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A year after arriving in France, fighting across Germany, liberating the Dachau Concentration Camp and occupying Vienna, Austria, for post war duties, 60 Soldiers of the 42nd Infantry Division’s 222nd Infantry Regiment celebrated Christmas 1945 by singing.
The Soldiers belonged to the 222nd Infantry Glee Club and their singing took place in the Great Hall of Vienna’s Konzerthaus. The Christmas night program, called “Silent Night, Holy Night,” was one of the highlights of the glee club’s six-month existence.
The 222nd Infantry was part of the American occupation force in Austria’s capital and the regimental glee club, encouraged by music loving officers in the 42nd Division, was part of the various activities taken up by American Soldiers still overseas after the war’s end.
In 1945 the 42nd Infantry Division, which had been a National Guard division in World War I, was comprised of draftee Soldiers.
It returned to its National Guard roots in 1947 by becoming part of the New York National Guard.
Today, the 42nd Infantry Division is a key component of the New York National Guard, which recently returned from a 10-month deployment to the Middle East.
In the years prior to World War II, men’s singing groups, or glee clubs, were a big thing on college campuses. When those students joined the Army their interest in group singing came with them.
One of those Soldiers, according to the New York Times, was an accomplished organist named John Low Baldwin, who was the choir director at St. John the Divine Church in New York City.
He joined the 42nd Division in 1943 and the Army, recognizing his skills, put him in charge of a 200-man singing group.
The 42nd glee club was planning to go on a war bond tour to raise funds for the war. But heavy casualties after D-Day resulted in Baldwin and the infantrymen of the division’s 222nd, 232nd and 242nd Infantry regiment being sent to France as Task Force Linden.
The division’s infantrymen, without their engineers, artillery and other supports, fought back against a German attack called Operation Nordwind. They then went on to battle their way across Germany, taking Wurzburg, Nuremburg and Munich and liberating the infamous concentration camp at Dachau.
The division was sent into Austria —which had been part of Nazi Germany— to share occupation duties with the British and Russians.
With the fighting over, Baldwin was tasked to put together a new glee club to raise morale and the 222nd Infantry Glee Club was born.
The Glee Club was part of a wider division effort to encourage Soldier education and activity during occupation duties.
“Eight Rainbow men are studying with some of the world's finest music teachers at the Mozarteum in Salzburg,” noted Maj. Gen. Harry Collins, the 42nd Division Commander in his year-end message of 1945. Collins also noted “the 222d Infantry Glee Club conducted a music school in Vienna, sponsoring the appearance of talented artists, popularizing classical music, and providing instrumental and vocal Instruction.”
One of those singers was Robert Messinger, a music student at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, and Kingston, New York native. Messinger was drafted in 1943.
Messinger, already in college according to his 2008 obituary, enrolled in the Army Specialized Training Program. Soldiers in this program served as Soldiers while attending college classes to learn technical skills and were prepared to become officers.
But when ground combat in Europe opened up holes in American combat forces fighting in France and Germany, the program was ended. 73,000 ATSP Soldiers were sent to combat divisions as new replacements.
Messinger served in Holland and the south of France before assignment to the 42nd Division in Austria. When he heard about the glee club he sought out Baldwin and signed up, according to his daughter Nan Lansinger.
Singing in the glee club seemed a lot better to him than standing guard duty, according to Messinger’s daughter.
“He called their office and within a week, he became a member of the chorus,” she said. “They lived in three private homes in Vienna, rehearsed every morning, went sightseeing in the afternoon, and prepared and performed several nights a week for various affairs.”
Other nights they went to the opera and other events, she said.
The Christmas Concert, presented by the United States Forces in Austria Special Services —the predecessor of today’s Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) office—was one of the biggest shows, Lansinger said.
Local citizens were invited as well as American Soldiers. Singers from the famous Vienna Boys Choir performed with the Americans.
Her father was one of the soloists that night and it was a great experience for him, Lansinger said.
In the diary he kept, her father wrote: “Great experiences with a great conductor.”
In the spring of 1946 the 42nd Infantry Division was inactivated and Messinger went back to college to finish his music degree.
He taught briefly and then went into business but stayed involved in music groups until his death.
Baldwin went on to be a music professor at several colleges and to conduct the 130-member University Glee Club of New York City for 39 years before dying on New Year's Eve 1999.
| Date Taken: | 12.16.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 12.16.2020 12:24 |
| Story ID: | 385112 |
| Location: | VIENNA, AT |
| Web Views: | 527 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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