By DOUGLAS PERRY | oregonlive.com | Published: April 13, 2021
PORTLAND, Ore. (Tribune News Service) – “Sudie, I might say with little or no compulsion that I miss you hellishly and I’ve had enough of tramping around Europe.”
This was how Elliott R. Corbett II began the last letter he wrote to his girlfriend, Ellen “Sudie” Zinsser. Sudie never heard from him again.
Elliott, a 22-year-old U.S Army “bazooka man” and scion of Portland’s most-prominent political and commercial dynasty, disappeared in November 1944 during the Battle of Hurtgen Forest.
It would be months before his family — and Sudie — knew whether he was dead or alive.