Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

The War Ends and a Career Begins....Ralph 
Holliman, Part V 
by his nephew, Glenn N. Holliman


We continue our story of William Ralph Holliman, b. 1924, the seventh child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman.


By September 1944, Ralph Holliman, an enlisted man in the U.S. Army Air Corp, was stationed in Creil, thirty miles north of Paris and headquarters of the 9th Air Force.  He made sergeant, a rank which allowed him to miss the draft for infantry during the Battle of Bulge in January 1945.  On V-E Day he joined thousands in Paris to celebrate the conclusion of the conflict in Europe.


Ralph mailed this Mother's Day message to his mother, Pearl Caine Holliman, who saw three of her four sons serve in Europe.

In August 1945, Ralph was about to leave on a troop ship in Marsaille, France for Asia via the Suez Canal, when the Atomic Bomb was dropped.  The ship never left for the Phillippines, but instead turned to the USA.  As with millions, the Holliman brothers  came home, along a new brother-in-law, Walter Cornelius, Virginia’s husband.


Ralph survived the war, fortunately missing combat and Nazi bombs at his air bases.  His administrative talents were honed in the Army as the letter below suggests.  These abilities would serve him well in his civilian career.  

Now home to resume education, career and family....