Letters From the Front: The Malcolm Thurgood Collection

A man is forced to leave behind his beloved wife and children to fight in a war. In a far-away place, he performs his duty but longs for home. It’s a tale as old as warfare itself, and here at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, the Malcolm Thurgood correspondence and remembrance book collection tells such a story with a combination of humor and heart-wrenching intimacy. The collection contains the letters of Sergeant Malcolm “Mickey” Thurgood (1914-1987), an artist assigned as a photographer for the Alsos Mission, back home to his wife Louise and young daughter Michaele—although the names we usually hear for them are “Angel” and “Bug,” respectively. In addition, NBLA’s Emilio Segrè Visual Archives contains a selection of photos that Thurgood took during his time in Europe which he sent home to his family. In this post, we will explore the Alsos Mission through the eyes (and camera lens) of a single soldier as well as similar letters from a man he would eventually befriend during the mission: scientific consultant Samuel Goudsmit.

What was the Alsos Mission?

Before diving into Thurgood’s letters, it is important to first know about the Alsos Mission, for which he served as photographer. The Alsos Mission was a division of the Manhattan Project (best known for the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos) comprised of a series of intelligence-gathering units tasked with learning first-hand how close Germany was to developing a nuclear weapon. Closely following, and in many cases simultaneously accompanying the Allied advance into Europe, the Alsos teams captured German nuclear scientists, located caches of uranium ore and other nuclear materials, and confiscated thousands of documents about German atomic energy research.

Thurgood was a relative latecomer to the Alsos Mission. By the time he joined the Mission in April 1945, they had already captured enough records and scientists in Italy and France to be almost certain that Germany was not anywhere close to developing a nuclear weapon. Therefore, Thurgood’s photos and correspondence only record the latter third of the Mission’s operations in Germany during the final months of the war and several months afterwards, including the capture and dismantling of the Germans’ failed nuclear reactor at Haigerloch. As Thurgood wrote in a letter days after VE Day: “I joined just in time to say hooray boys! You did a swell job!’”

As mentioned previously, the goal of the Alsos Mission was to collect as much information and materials as possible related to German nuclear research. As the Allies pushed further into Europe, soldiers with the Alsos mission accompanied them to seize research papers and, as pictured here, caches of uranium ore. Thurgood took this photo in April 1945 in Germany.

The Alsos Mission was commanded by Colonel Boris Pash, sketched here by Thurgood. Aside from the heroic presentation of Pash in this sketch, we can get a sense of Thurgood’s respect for Pash in a letter he sent to the mission’s scientific consultant, Dr. Samuel Goudsmit, after the war (most likely in 1947). Referring to an article that Goudsmit wrote about the Alsos Mission in Life magazine, Thurgood wrote:

While he seems to have been greatly admired by his peers in the Alsos Mission, Pash later became known (controversially) for investigating J. Robert Oppenheimer after the war for suspected Communist ties—he was depicted by Casey Affleck in the 2023 movie Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan. He also wrote a book of his experiences with the Alsos Mission.

Dr. Samuel A. Goudsmit, who Thurgood befriended during the mission, was tapped as a civilian to serve as the scientific consultant for the Alsos Mission. This photograph was taken by Thurgood in August 1945, three months after the war in Europe ended, perhaps why Thurgood notes that he was “satisfied with a job well done.”

Born July 11, 1902 in The Hague, he went on to study physics at the University of Leiden under Paul Ehrenfest, where he and George Uhlenbeck jointly proposed the idea of electron spin. After obtaining his PhD in 1927, he left the Netherlands to take a professorship at the University of Michigan where he taught for nearly 20 years—a move that, unbeknownst to him at the time, would eventually save his life as a Jew. During the war he worked for a time at MIT’s Radiation Laboratory before finally joining the Manhattan Project as the scientific lead of the Alsos Mission.

The American Institute of Physics holds the Samuel Goudsmit papers, which have been fully digitized and are available for viewing through our online repository .

Alsos from the photographer’s lens: Thurgood’s letters home

While Malcolm Thurgood’s letters tell us little about the actual operations of the Alsos Mission—such information would have been highly classified—they do tell us a lot about his feelings while he was there and the people he served with. The following pamphlet page found at the beginning of his letters describe the restrictions to which Thurgood was bound in his writings home:

Despite the restrictions, through Thurgood we are able to get a glimpse of a typical soldier’s life in the Alsos Mission, although Thurgood himself was rather unique even amongst Alsos operatives. His papers prove an especially vivid source because, as we have seen and will see even more, Thurgood was a trained artist who did not hesitate to both write and sketch about his experiences.

Before even being assigned to the Alsos Mission and setting off for Europe, Thurgood was writing home to his “Dearest Darling Angels” about his time in the military. He was shuffled around several military bases in the US throughout 1944 and early 1945—here he writes from Indiantown Gap, PA, about his experience peeling potatoes for two hours and playing cards with his fellow soldiers.

From Thurgood’s letters, we can tell that sometime between March 16 and April 5, 1945, he was deployed to Europe, starting in either England or Scotland—he sent letters from both places but it is not entirely clear where he landed first. Here he writes home about his experiences from “Somewhere in Bonnie Sco’land,” admiring the landscape and architecture, if not the weather.

By April 9, 1945, Thurgood had crossed the English Channel and found himself in a liberated Paris. Finally learning of his new assignment with the Alsos Mission, he wrote to his “Dearest Darlings”:

Before heading out to the front, however, he seems to have had some time to enjoy Paris and take some photographs. He began the same letter expressing his excitement: “Yes, I’m in Paris in the Spring! And that combination is really something to behold though it would take reams to try to explain my reaction.” He then goes on for four more pages describing everything he saw in Paris, from the mademoiselles who “still bravely try to maintain Paris’s prestige as a fashion center by wearing the cock-eyedist hats the world ever saw,” to the “antiquity of the gingerbread buildings” and much more.

Thurgood’s time in Paris was not to last, however, and he was soon off to the front in Germany—though not without the occasional luxury, as we can see here. In addition to the lovely, though perhaps intentionally vague, depiction of the mission’s “home base,” this letter also provides an insight into a soldier’s reaction to major events of the day, namely the deaths of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and beloved war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who was killed in the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945:

When viewed with an outsider’s perspective from the future, it’s remarkable that such a major event as the death of the President was nearly an afterthought compared to that of Pyle. However, considering that Thurgood likely read Pyle’s articles along with his fellow soldiers on a regular basis, the loss would surely have felt much more personal. This is a common thread in Thurgood’s letters—events that in 2025 are seen as key turning points get only brief mentions from him, whereas matters closer to home could get up to several pages .

Thurgood had only been in Europe for about a month before the Germans surrendered on May 8, 1945, as described in this letter. Nevertheless, his work was not yet over. As he writes here, “I have no idea at all as to the effect this big news will have on me personally.” The Mission still had much work to do in claiming nuclear research and material, as well as, in part at least, determining the fate of many captured German scientists. As the photographer, Thurgood would have been the one to document much of this activity; he did not return home until six months later in November, as we will see.
Three days after this letter, Thurgood wrote another letter from which we can get a sense of his eagerness to finally return home. He concludes the letter:

Luckily, “Daddy Longlegs” got his wish—he would not miss any more of Louise’s birthdays (at least not due to being in the military anyway). He sent this letter home to his “angel baby darlings” to announce his imminent arrival from Fort Myers, Virginia, on November 14, 1945. Aside from a telegram informing them which train he would be arriving on, this was the last letter that Thurgood sent home during his time in the military. One can only imagine what a happy reunion it was at the train station.

A different view of Alsos: Dr. Samuel Goudsmit

Malcolm Thurgood’s are not the only letters home from the Alsos Mission held at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives. Assigned as the scientific lead for the mission, Samuel Goudsmit also wrote several letters to his wife and daughter during the mission. Goudsmit and Thurgood wrote about many similar things—their love for and desire to be reunited with their families foremost among them. However, while Thurgood’s letters often take on an almost cheerful tone—he often writes of the excitement of adventuring in new places and making new friends—Goudsmit’s letters often are more serious and somber. Aside from his heightened responsibilities as primary scientific officer, Goudsmit was different from Thurgood in that he was no stranger to Europe. As mentioned previously, he was born and educated in the Netherlands and had many friends and family members throughout Europe, so there is none of the adventurous wonder present in Thurgood’s letters. While both Thurgood and Goudsmit witnessed firsthand the devastation the war brought to Europe, only Goudsmit’s letters reflect the deep distress he felt upon seeing it. On November 30, 1944, he wrote to his wife from France:

Also unlike Thurgood, Goudsmit was Jewish. He writes occasionally about the hope of finding his and his wife Jaantje’s family members, including his parents who were sent to concentration camps, as well as his small efforts to assist several unrelated Jews he encountered. One can only imagine how much this would have compounded the enormous stress he felt in his role. On September 29, 1944, he wrote:

He never did find his parents alive. While I found no mention of it in his letters home (they stop in September 1944), he later wrote in his book describing his time in the Alsos Mission, first published in 1947:

Life after the war

Goudsmit and Thurgood became friends during the war and kept up some level of correspondence afterwards. In Goudsmit’s book, he praised the Alsos team members while directly calling out Thurgood:

“Several years” after the war (the exact year was not written), Thurgood wrote to “my S.A.G.” with the pleasantries of a family update, the hope that his family could get together with the Goudsmits for an unnamed event, and a conclusion in which Thurgood wrote that he was “not quite 20 lbs heavier but considerably more than the 3 shades grayer.”

In a 1947 letter to Goudsmit, Thurgood even expressed his regret that he couldn’t have provided his services as an artist for Goudsmit’s book:

We do not have any records within the Thurgood collection itself to indicate what exactly he did after he returned home to his beloved family in Indiana. From other records however, such as his two letters to Goudsmit and from his obituary, we can piece together a little more. Shortly after Goudsmit’s article about the Alsos Mission came out in Life magazine, Thurgood seems to have been able to “bathe in reflected glory” which he “enjoyed immensely” due to his involvement in the mission:

Goudsmit may have been slightly concerned about Thurgood’s enthusiasm with regard to the continued need to maintain some level of secrecy. In response to the previous letter, Goudsmit stressed: “At any rate be careful with what you give to the press. Use your own judgement, which you have already done, as I noticed from your letter.”

Eventually the Thurgood family relocated to Austin, Texas, where Malcolm taught art at the University of Texas for many years. He passed away in Wimberly, Texas, in 1987 at the age of 73.

Thurgood’s letters provide a reminder that the scientific enterprise depends on the support and teamwork of people who are not scientists. At NBLA especially, any mention of the Alsos Mission quickly (and justifiably) brings to mind the physicist Dr. Samuel Goudsmit. As Dr. Goudsmit himself wrote in his own book, however, the Alsos Mission would never have been as successful as it was without the extraordinary teamwork of “the whole outfit—the drivers, mechanics, agents, clerks” and more. Science is not much different today, even outside wartime, and we would do well to remember that even an artist like Malcolm Thurgood has their place in it.

References and Further Reading

“Alsos Mission.” ahf.nuclearmuseum.org. Atomic Heritage Foundation, June 6, 2014. https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/alsos-mission/ .

Ashworth, William B. “Scientist of the Day – Boris Pash.” lindahall.org. Linda Hall Library, June 20, 2024. https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/boris-pash/

Ashworth, William B. “Scientist of the Day – Samuel Goudsmit.” lindahall.org. Linda Hall Library, December 4, 2024. https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/samuel-goudsmit/

Goudsmit, Samuel A. (Samuel Abraham). Alsos. Los Angeles, CA: Tomash Publishers, 1983.

Pash, Boris T. The Alsos Mission. New York: Charter Books, 1980.

van Calmthout, Martijn. Sam Goudsmit and the Hunt for Hitler’s Atom Bomb. United States: Prometheus, 2018.