Old Missoula

Officer Leads Life of Riley At Swank Mediterranean Hotel, at Least Temporarily

Casablanca – city of the beautiful name and fateful history, is no place of romantic memory to Lieutenant Elwood Nelson of the Army air forces, now sojourning – if the word may be permitted – in sunny Tripoli or some such spot in the Mediterranean.

To Lieutenant Nelson, Casablanca was “rainy, wet, cold and damp plus being muddy.” A recent shortening of “our line of work,” has tossed the officer into a nifty arrangement, which may not last, but which he is going to enjoy to the limit while it does. In a recent letter to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. C. E. Nelson, 601 Plymouth street, he said – “Just a few lines to let you know I moved and to tell you of my new living conditions, etc. Due to barracks shortages here the Army has taken over the biggest (and swankiest) resort hotel in town. And though it may sound funny, I now live in a steam-heated, dry hotel room with maid and porter service and the shore of the Mediterranean Sea about 60 feet from my window.”

Lieutenant Nelson, who has been overseas long enough to have become somewhat bored by posing for his picture in front of the pyramids or the Sphinx, and who has made casual reference to practically every North African and Mediterranean city in recent months, wrote that he is still close enough to many of these places to do such shopping as he hopes to do.

Christmas at his ritzy bisto (sic), despite its very American menu, which he sent home, and which was festive with Yuletide cover decoration, didn’t seem like Christmas, he said, “Not much spirit here, everyone being a ‘foreigner’.”

As a big treat and through a special piece of good luck, Lieutenant Nelson said that he bought a case of American beer, “which I am carefully consuming.”

Lieutenant Nelson, a flight section pilot, has been overseas for about a year. He was graduated from the State University in law shortly before he went into the air forces. He is a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

Until his recent move, he was stationed in North Africa, with Casablanca as his base.

 

The above article appeared in The Daily Missoulian on January 12, 1945.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/349164792

 

Lieutenant Nelson was one of thousands of Missoula men and women fighting in WW2. The area produced an unusual number of pilots for the war.

No reference to the movie Casablanca appears in Nelson’s letter probably because it wasn’t released until 1943. President Roosevelt, De Gaulle, and Winston Churchill met there in 1943, while planning the invasion of France.

Often picked as the best movie ever made, Casablanca was not filmed in Morocco, but in Hollywood, and was not based on real incidents.

Elwood Nelson grew up in Missoula, attended high school there and graduated from U of M before joining the service. He learned to fly while in Missoula before joining the army. He returned after the war, becoming a pilot at Johnson Flying Service. He wrote a tribute to pilot Dick Johnson in The Missoulian upon learning of his death in 1945: “He was a wonderful man and a fine flyer. He used to sit around and listen to us ‘beginners’ prattle about flying without ever saying a word – he who had been flying for years and thousands of hours, had probably forgotten more about flying than we would ever know.”[1]

He became a flight instructor in 1946. Flying a helicopter, Elwood was involved in several rescue efforts himself, while a pilot for Johnson Flying. He was an avid hunter, and was a board member in the Western Montana Fish & Game Association. He later became a pilot for Rosenbaum Aviation in Michigan and, according to his obituary, retired in 1979. He married Nancy Collins of Missoula in 1955. He had three children, a son and two daughters. He died in Missoula in 1987.