For Memorial day I thought I would share the following from my mother (1937-2022, in the front of the picture) of her memories as a child during WWII. Her brother, cousin and two future brothers-in-law came back from WWII (photo is family celebration of her cousin’s return), but she mentions the “gold stars” in her neighborhood who didn’t, and I didn’t realize this tradition - started in WWI - is where the term came from.
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For any American, indeed almost anyone alive anywhere during WWII, it is “The War”. The atmosphere in the whole country was completely different that it has been during any other conflict I have lived through since.
Everyone was involved, and every aspect of life was affected. Most families had someone in the Armed Services. The draft was in effect, and men from eighteen to forty were eligible to be inducted. Rationing was in force for gasoline, leather, sugar, rubber, nylon and meat. Every person, regardless of age, received a ration book, which consisted of pages of stamps which were used when a rationed item was purchased. I remember that I had my own book.
No autos, non-military trucks or appliances were produced – all factory production was directed to war materiel. Clothing was scarce as the factories were producing uniforms and boots for the troops. There were no nylon stockings as it was all being used for parachutes.
Travel was very difficult. The trains and railroad tracks were mostly used to move troops and equipment. Even if you could get on a train, if a troop or equipment train needed to get by, the passenger train was diverted onto a siding for however long it took. The passenger trains that did run were standing room only because men on leave and wives were going wherever they had to. If you went anywhere near a railroad track you would see long olive-colored trains filled with men in uniform, or flatcars full of tanks and guns draped in tarps. Everyone would get out of their cars to wave to the troops. The one time I got on a train to see my father working in the munitions factory at Red River Arsenal, just outside Texarkana, we passed a troop train and there was a lot of waving and yelling going on between the trains.
Not everyone had a car, but highway travel was almost impossible anyway because of the shortages of gas and tires. Also there were long military convoys of large trucks carrying troops and equipment that always had the right-of way.
There were regular air raid drills, and air raid wardens would come by your door if you were showing any light at all.
Most houses displayed a small stars-and-stripes banner in the front window. They were about six inches by eight, and most had a blue star, as ours did, to indicate that someone in that household was serving. There were several with gold stars in our neighborhood, which meant a person from that house was not coming back.
One thing that stands out to me were people coming and going at all times of the night and day. When recruits were still training in the States they were given short passes to come home. With transportation so uncertain there was little advance notice they were coming. My brother in the Army Air Corps would appear it seemed always at night, and we all got up, and often he would show up with other boys from the area, who would sometime sleep over until they could get to their own homes the next morning.
All correspondence from anyone that was “overseas” had to be on thin blue paper that folded into an envelope, and would be censored by a heavy black pen. The men were not allowed to disclose exactly where they were – “Europe” or “Pacific” was about all the info the folks back home could get, perhaps what ship, but not where it was located. There were of course no phone calls, and most of the men were gone three or four years.
In April of 1945 when I was in third grade the students from the three schools (all were on one campus) were called into the horseshoe drive in front of the main building, where the flag was lowered to half-staff, and they announced that President Roosevelt had died. It was a blow to everyone; he was the only president most of us could remember, and we heard him many times on the radio during the War.
The War ended in 1945. The men came home and everything started to return to normal.
It was, indeed, another time and place.