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Web Site Aids in Short Snorter Quest
 | By Kerry Rodgers, Bank Note Reporter
March 18, 2008 |
Regardless of their particular interest, the majority of paper money collectors have at some time or other stumbled over short snorters: bank notes emanating from a war zone that are usually pretty tatty and carry numerous, usually illegible, signatures. On most days eBay offers at least one such item that purports to carry the signature of someone famous such as Bob Hope or John F. Kennedy.
A quick Google search will provide a variety of explanations of the intended purpose and origins of genuine versions of these signed notes. Most, however, agree that the majority were signed by a group of comrades-in-arms about to enter into battle or reuniting after battle. Most importantly, a short snort of fire water was involved at some stage.
Regular readers may also be aware that these days this Kiwi is somewhat single-minded in his collecting interests. If it ain't Fijian I don't want to know despite the efforts of various dealers around the world to insist I should be collecting overpriced New Zealand rarities.
Today short snorters inscribed on Fiji notes during World War II are featured in my collection. Several wet weekends this past southern hemisphere winter have found me pouring over these tattered relics trying to interpret the scribbled and/or inebriated signatures. I then find a few hours are necessary, perched on the World Wide Web, to attempt to confirm or not my best guess as to their identity of a particular signatory. Many, but not all, turn out to be U.S. military personnel. As a Kiwi born five short weeks after Pearl Harbor, I find it particularly gratifying when I manage to pin down an individual signatory who contributed to the world I live in today.
The Web provides a rich source of information for my researches. Sites such as the Library of Congress prove essential in figuring out the movements of U.S. troops in the Pacific during World War II. For the American forces staging their strikes against the Japanese throughout '42 and '43, Fiji provided a safe and stable staging post - once the Battle of the Coral Sea had been fought and won.
Having satisfied myself that a snorter is probably genuine, I then try and ensure that any likely suspect was part of a unit that passed through or was based in Fiji at the appropriate time when they might have signed the snorter of interest. The fact that all Fiji notes were dated certainly helps. There is no point in fingering Sergeant Abe Simpson as a guilty party on a snorter dated 1943 if his unit passed through in '42, never to return. Admittedly, in the highly mobile circumstances of the war it is not impossible that Sgt. Simpson could have popped his moniker on a 1943-dated Fiji note at a much later time and in a place other than downtown Suva, but the date on a note can help reduce the possibilities.
Most of the Fiji short snorters I have obtained to date - that appear to be genuine - are five shilling issues of King George VI, Standard Catalog of World Paper Money No. P-37. The most recent addition to my collection came from Canada. It was advertised as, "Signed by American officers of the American Command at Fiji." I was successful in my eBay bid and anxiously awaited its arrival. It has proved very worthwhile. It was dated Jan. 1, 1942.
Brigadier General Barnett
The signatures were all in fountain pen ink, which was a great start. Ball point and felt-pen signatures on alleged World War II items don't do much for me. Unusually, most of the signatories included rank. There was a brigadier general, two colonels, a lieutenant colonel and a captain. These ranks helped narrow the field in identifying the usual indecipherable scrawls.
The brigadier general's John Hancock seemed particularly promising. It was almost entirely legible. I commenced a number of Boolean Web searches using different interpretations of the signature: Barrett, Bannett, Barreft, Barnitt, Barnift, etc., etc. My Beloved One is particularly good at suggesting likely names that have eluded me.
After a couple of hours, two or three possibilities had emerged, but nothing was conclusive. However, I was convinced that the guy was never a resident base commander in Fiji. The word following "Brig Gen" on the note was "Usa," but at this point I had no real fix on that last scribble following the actual signature. Readers may like to check out their own interpretation skills before reading further.
My suffering was shortened by accessing a Danish Web site that lists all the generals from both sides of World War II: www.generals.dk. It didn't take long to scan down the lengthy list of those who served under the stars and stripes and come up with the name James Washington Barnett as the most likely fit.
His bare service details were all that was given but were sufficient to confirm he had been a brigadier general. At the outbreak of the Pacific War he had been Deputy Chief of Staff Western Defense Command stateside. He rose to become that command's chief of staff before being appointed in 1943 to Assistant Commanding General of the 93rd Division. He appears to have served in that position for the remainder of the war when he took over as Commanding General U.S. Army Forces New Caledonia in 1945. He retired in 1949.
This total record served to make him a highly likely candidate. Intriguingly, the 93rd Division was one of the U.S. Army's black (segregated) divisions, but like the Kiwi Navy that had for years required British officers to command its ships, the black regiments and divisions in the U.S. forces were obliged to have white senior officers.
Many a Slip
One small cloud cast its shadow over this superb feat of deduction. In my searches on the Web I had encountered the short snorter Web site: www.shortsnorter.org. It opened for business on July 4, 2007. The site posted scans of short snorters with a view to link signatories back to families and/or units, and in identifying those WIA and KIA wherever possible.
I touched base with webmaster Tom Sparks. He had a quick squizz of scans of my snorter that he has now posted on his site. He pointed out that there could be some glitches in the information given on the Danish Generals site. The next name listed after James Washington is Allison Joseph Barnett, who is also given as Assistant Commanding General of the 93rd Division. An extended bio and photo of Allison Joseph appears on the Web site of U.S. Army Officers 1939-1945 at www.unithistories.com. This site, however, posts even fewer biographical details for James Washington than does the Generals site. It sure raises questions about whether James was ever connected with the 93rd.
Tom's coup was identifying that last word following Barnett's signature on the snorter. He reads it as "ComGenGuadal," possibly standing for Commanding General Guadalcanal or similar. A Google search turned up "COMGENGUADALCANAL" as a valid command group. However, to date neither of us has been successful at tracking any more information on either of the Barnetts and their possible association with Guadalcanal or action elsewhere in the Pacific theater.
Colonel Howie
A likely ID on the colonel's signature on the snorter's back proved a little easier. My initial interpretation came up trumps.
Col. Robert George Howie served as base commander at Guadalcanal from 1943 to 1946. Like General James Washington Barnett, he had battlefield experience from World War I where he was wounded in action and awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. Although he had held the battlefield rank of captain, he reverted to first lieutenant on demobilization.
During peacetime he was a trainer at Fort Benning in Georgia, where he was involved in developing a low, motorized, two-man, mobile machine gun platform called "the belly buster."
Both Howie and Barnett moved into and through the Pacific theatre of the war in 1943. Both were of a similar age and military background. It is conceivable that two such men of senior rank met up in Fiji before heading west to the front. Or maybe they met at Guadalcanal, where one produced a Fijian note he had picked up on the way though. Whatever the case, I have few reservations in confirming the identity of both signatories, despite the inadequacy of details on Barnett's precise role in the Pacific campaign.
Identifying the remaining signatures on this one snorter is a work in progress. Their illegibility is not helping, but that is all part of the chase. And the Web renders the job just that much easier than in the bad old days when all we had to use were books! Any and all contributions and suggestions will be gratefully received by this Kiwi.
But There's More!
As a result of touching base with Tom Sparks, I met up again with that mother-of-all-short-snorters, the Harry Hopkins British 10-shilling note dated July 25, 1942. I had vague memories of having encountered reference to it at sometime in the distant past. Grunty scans of it are now posted on Tom's site at http://www.shortsnorter.org/Harry_Hopkins.html.
This snorter has been confirmed as the real McCoy. It carries the signatures of many of the major players on the Allied side of World War II - from Patton and Eisenhower to Churchill and Roosevelt. It also bears the signatures of numerous others, including several WAACs.
For those who want to see how this snorter was checked out by professionals with extensive resources and some of the pitfalls involved, try the History Detectives Web site: http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigations/502_shortsnorter.html.
This ultimate short snorter belonged to Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt's personal envoy, advisor and confidant during World War II. Its current owner, Gary Schulze, has kindly provided the images shown here and the story, as he understands it, of this remarkable and historic note.
Those of you up-to-speed with World War II history will have quickly figured out that all the signatories identified on Harry's note cannot have been together in London on July 25, 1942.
Hopkins was certainly attending a conference in London at this time trying to hammer out appropriate strategies to fight the war in Europe. While there he received a wire from Roosevelt agreeing to Churchill's preferred plan to launch the first joint Allied attack on the German military machine in North Africa - Operation Torch.
At the conclusion of this conference many of those present signed Harry's proffered snorter. These included Ike and Averill Harriman. Interestingly, two signatures are notably absent from those attending. They are those of General George Marshal, U.S. Army Chief of Staff, and Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations. Both were vehemently opposed to the African decision and wanted the first strike to be against the Axis to be in mainland Europe.
Six months later, Harry took his 10-shilling note to the Casablanca Conference. There he added the signatures of Churchill, Patton, Alexander and Mountbatten. Roosevelt's signature was picked up at Trinidad en route to Casablanca. Since Roosevelt did not want his secretary of state to attend the Casablanca Conference, he talked Churchill into not bringing Anthony Eden, the U.K.'s Foreign Secretary. Hopkins collected Eden's signature later in Washington, D.C.
Serendipity
The unidentified signatures on the snorter have always been something of a puzzle. While compiling this article in September, Tom Sparks e-mailed to relate how serendipity had just struck him more than a glancing blow. Out of the blue he received an e-mail from Linda Williford in Florida. She had been Googling on the Web and stumbled over Tom's new site.
She wrote, "I can identify one of the unknown signatures on the Harry Hopkins short snorter. D. Ray Comish was my father. He was a flight engineer for Pan American Airlines and was part of the crew that flew Roosevelt and his entourage to Casablanca aboard the [Dixie] Clipper."
Both Tom and Gary were stoked by this revelation, even more so when Linda offered to make a trip to her safe deposit box to check out her dad's own short snorter from the Casablanca trip. It is signed by many of the same folks and also comes with backup documentation. All concerned await developments with eager anticipation.
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