Dem
47
GOP
53
Today, we have a reminiscence from reader N.J. in San Francisco, CA:
I have four grandfathers that served in World War II and memories from a couple great uncles. My biological father's biological father died testing B-29's in New Mexico, before my father was born (Note: While not directly related to my grandfather's B-29 crash, Barry Siegel's Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets is an interesting read.). My grandmother, a middle school science teacher, remembered that he loved to fly. Her second husband, and my second grandfather, had served as a navy cook on a minesweeper in the Pacific and became an English professor. He and I enjoyed Scrabble games on vacations with my father's family.
My mother's father, grandfather #3, was at a military college when the war broke out for the U.S. The class ahead of him enlisted en masse. His class was encouraged to keep studying and he finished his degree in the service, having been transferred to the east coast. He and my grandmother met at a college dance where the chaperones lined up the young ladies and the men by height. My grandfather enjoyed the evening enough to declare to his roommate that he had met the woman he was going to marry. Due to the wartime shortage of housing in the D.C. area, they lived in a converted chicken shack in Arlington, VA, while he served in the signal corps. The chicken shack apartment was still there in the early nineties when I drove by.
My fourth grandfather came by way of my Boomer (a.k.a. "Me" generation) parents heading separate ways 4 years into their shotgun teenage marriage that managed to survive 3½ years of them both graduating from college and me being a newborn/toddler. My mother met a man in early '68 that I've been calling Dad since I was four. Dad's father had graduated with an art degree before the war started. He spent the war years painting airplane insignias on sub-patrol planes based in Puerto Rico, where he met my dad's mother. After a decade-plus working as a commercial artist, he returned to working for the military, illustrating medical textbooks and presentation materials. He also sent me and my cousins wonderfully wild, hand-painted birthday cards.
One of my Dad's uncles had closer brushes with the more infamous horrors of World War II. During my great-uncle's early days in the army, while standing with other conscripts at the train station of his mid-size rural town, a friend called him over from where he had been lining up. Shortly thereafter, the bags of the fellows he had been standing with were stamped "Corregidor." So he missed that version of hell. Instead he went on to drive a tank in Patton's army and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He recalled sitting on a wall, talking to a friend one moment, and the next moment the friend fell forward dead from a sniper bullet to the head. My great aunt said that for years after the war, my great-uncle would stick close to walls, and avoid open spaces when they went into town.
The last service vignette comes from another uncle of the same family. The brothers had a band before the war, and this uncle was a trumpet player. The trumpet-playing brother was in the infantry and had bugle duty one morning. As I recall him telling it, he got a little too jazzy with his rendition of "Reveille" and was quickly busted out to the supply corps.
Of my three grandmothers, one lost her husband while still pregnant and was a single mother of two for a few years before marrying again. The other two were war brides who married their soldier husbands and transformed their lives. For my Puerto Rican grandmother, it was particularly difficult, since she left Puerto Rico pregnant to stay with her in-laws in rural America and give birth while her husband was still serving in Puerto Rico. My other, closest grandmother looked back on the war-bride experience in her seventies or eighties after attending a reunion. Getting married to someone out of the blue and heading off for places unknown? "It was just what you did."
Thanks, N.J.
Note, incidentally, that we are going to do "Never Forget" stories for one more week. Thereafter, we are thinking about doing something similar, except with immigration stories. So, if you care to share roughly 500-1,000 words on your own story of immigrating to America, or on the story of one or more relatives/friends, please send them to comments@electoral-vote.com, with subject line "Immigration Stories." (Z)