"My Sweetheart Is Somewhere in France"
by Elizabeth Spencer
Sheet music courtesy of Clarence Johnson |
"My Sweetheart is Somewhere in France" is the icing on the cake. The singer is a young lady reading a letter from "somewhere in France," the only location censors would allow on letters coming from the war zone. "When he whispered goodbye, I tried not to cry," she says—first because he was doing his duty and thereby she was doing hers. The military tempo and sound of the song settles the state of expectations for the women left behind. But the emptiness of "somewhere in France," represents the extreme limits of what Americans understood about where the war was being conducted, what was really happening there, and how much information was necessary for their comfort.
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