Winston S. Churchill Typed Letter Signed.

The Ninth United States Army — known by its radio call sign "Conquer" — was one of the principal American field army commands in the Northwest European Theater of Operations during the Second World War, activated just eight weeks before the Normandy landings in June 1944 and commanded throughout its existence by Lieutenant General William H. Simpson. Though perhaps the least celebrated of the American armies that fought in Europe, the Ninth's operational record was remarkable: from its arrival at Utah Beach in late August 1944, it fought through Brittany, the Siegfried Line, the Battle of the Bulge, the Rhineland Campaign, and the crossing of the Rhine, before racing east to reach the Elbe River, where it was halted not by German resistance but by Allied high commands' decision to leave Berlin to the Soviet forces. The Ninth Army Association, formed by veterans of the command following the conclusion of hostilities, served as the institutional custodian of the army's memory and esprit de corps — one of many such associations established in the immediate postwar years through which the men who had served together in Europe sought to preserve the bonds forged in combat and to honor the fallen among their ranks.