Wartime Record: John Twitchell's WWII Diary

On August 15th, 1945, the Second World War came to an end when Emperor Hirohito announced that Japan had accepted the Potsdam Declaration, guaranteeing his nation’s formal surrender. At 6 AM on the same day in Germany, a young Vermonter named John Twitchell recounted in his diary hearing the news over the radio, noting that “very few guys whooped or hollered, just discussion of points and possible discharge.” A little over a month later in an entry dated September 21st, 1945, he wrote “well, the war is just about over, excepting the final formalities…I have absolutely no idea when I shall get out, but doubt it will be within the next year.”

Born in 1926 in Burlington, Vermont, John Twitchell came from a long line of Vermonters who served in the military. His father, Dr. Emmus George Twitchell, had served as captain in the medical corps in France during the First World War, while his grandfather Marshall Harvey Twitchell, was a private in the 4th Vermont Regiment during the Civil War.

Twitchell joined the US Army in July 1944 after graduating from Burlington High School. In his time there, he was the editor-in-chief of the 1944 Oread, the school’s yearbook, was First Lieutenant in the school band, a member of the school’s Latin Club, performed in the Senior Play, participated in the school’s basketball, track, and baseball teams, and was Class Tax Collector. His classmates voted him both “Done Most for School” and “Most Likely to Succeed” at the end of the year, and his time in school was obviously important to him. In an entry dated January 10, 1946, he wrote: “Before I forget, I got my ‘Oread’ last night. Gosh! It was good to read it again. It sort of helps to relive the days at BHS again.”

In his initial entry dated June 22nd, 1945, Twitchell wrote that his father mailed him the diary and ran down his time in the service starting in July 1944: he went through basic training at Fort Hood in Texas (now named Fort Cavazos) in August, underwent specialized training in January 1945, and departed for Europe in March. After landing in France, Twitchell was sent to Belgium and then Germany. Along the way, he provided sporadic updates on the lives of his friends and family: Dan, Bill, Jack, Bob, Lewie and more, as well as accounts of the letters he received from his loved ones, and updates about his movements and fellow soldiers at the tail end of the war. Following Germany’s surrender to the Allied powers in May 1945, Twitchell references missing his family and friends, writing in an entry dated June 23rd that “the war certainly has split us up, but there will be a day of reunion. The tales we can exchange, and the times we’ll have doing it, will be something to look forward to, “après la guerre”.  

While in the Army, Twitchell was promoted to the rank of sergeant. After his discharge from the service in July 1946, he returned to Burlington to study at the University of Vermont, graduating in 1950 and returning to earn his M.D. in 1953. From there, Twitchell started a family and set up a private practice in the Queen City, which he ran from 1957 to 1971. He then joined the Given Health Care Center, helped to create what became the University Health Center, and taught as an associate professor of medicine at UVM. John Twitchell died at age 57 in May 1983.

In 2022, Twitchell’s daughter Nancy donated the diary to the Vermont Historical Society, where it is now in the VHS Library’s collection along with the papers of his grandfather, Marshall. Nancy explained to VHS that her father “once told me, ‘Intelligence is just a matter of caring,’” and that “He had a great sense of humor. He thought Burlington, with the lake and mountains, was the perfect place to raise kids [and] he loved telling us about our family history and our genealogy. He said he would have been a history teacher or an accountant if he hadn’t become a doctor”.

Wars are often defined by their larger defining events: the strategies and battles that carry one side or another to victory, the horrific losses that pile up, and the effects that linger in the decades and centuries that follow. John Twitchell's diary is a reminder that wars are fought by individuals, and it documents his excitements and worries, his thoughts on how the war was proceeding, and what he planned for his future when he returned home. This diary is an excellent snapshot of one Vermonter’s experiences as a soldier and his thoughts about the conflict he was part of. On March 2nd, 1946, the last entry in Twitchell’s diary ends with an apt line: “Grandma was waiting at the door and, at last, I had come all the way…Ah! I’m tired.”

You can read John Twitchell's diary in its entirety here. 

This article originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 2023 issue of our member magazine, History Connections. To get it and support the Vermont Historical Society, sign up as a member.