Gwyneth Blessitt Moore stayed in the army after the war ended. Her family was in New York, and on a trip home she made her way farther north to see Elinor. Not much had changed in the army since their time together at Camp Florence. The end of the war hadn’t altered race relations between whites and blacks in the military at all. It still functioned under Jim Crow, especially in the southern states. Gwyneth was stationed in Fort Bragg in North Carolina, which was a completely segregated base. There were separate barracks, hospitals, and recreational facilities for blacks and whites. “When we went to the movie theater, the black soldiers had to sit upstairs, and the whites downstairs,” she recalled. Yet Gwyneth enjoyed her time at Fort Bragg because she met her husband there, an African American soldier who also was stationed at the post.

During one visit, Elinor asked Gwyneth to write a letter to the American consulate in Vienna in support of Frederick’s immigration to the United States. She wanted her friend, who had been promoted to first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, to provide a character endorsement of Frederick, along with proof of income to help out with Frederick’s resettlement. Gwyneth obliged.

German immigration to the United States after the war was a complicated issue. Between 1820 and 1930, approximately six million Germans immigrated to the United States.25 After World War II, with the United States emerging as the world’s leading superpower, the nation had to get involved in the critical refugee crisis in Europe, and as an Allied occupying force, it also controlled Germany’s migration policy. Germans looking for a better life sought out their American relatives for visa sponsorship, but there were firm travel restrictions placed on German citizens, making it very difficult for them to leave their occupied state. There was also a quota system that the United States still followed: the 1924 Immigration and Naturalization Act had established a yearly quota of 25,957 visas for Germans.26