He’s about 21 in this picture. Graduated from Chaminade High School a couple three years prior. Played center on the football team for Fuzzy Faust. Loved to draw, especially figures. Maybe art school, or interior design was in his future. War got in the way of that dream.
On Sunday, 7 December 1941, Ted had the day off from Frigidaire, but was called in by mid-afternoon after word had gotten back to the East that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. He ground firing pins for weapons to be used by American troops when the war came. Nobody doubted that it would come. Nobody knew when. They were surprised when it came from the Pacific. Most everybody assumed that crazy bastard Hitler would do something first. People were surprised and angry when it came at Pearl. A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. It didn’t take him long to sign up for the Army Air Corps.
And then there was the girl. Gertrude. Yes, he loved her. She was his Honeybubble. But he didn’t want to anchor her to a distant hope of a life after a war when nobody knew when or what that might be. If there even was one. What would keep him from being a casualty? Gert agreed, but promised to write him every day, telling him of life here at home. At home without him.
She would make her war effort by rolling bandages for troop use and volunteering at the hospital at Wright Patterson. He thought she looked damned cute in the picture she sent of herself in that hospital volunteer outfit. She is standing out in front of her house, her profile to the camera. Her eyes are closed and her chin is upturned and a grin from ear to ear. Believe me, he had every intension of getting home alive.
After boot camp, he was selected to learn how to become a turret gunner. The mortality rate for gunners sitting inside glass bubbles on American bombers was extraordinarily high, but he didn’t think about it much. This was war, after all, and there were many dangerous jobs. He would do what he could. We’d all be happier than fiddies in a pond if we could just stay home. But, no. The world can’t seem to take care of its own business without US.
As he waited with the other guys for the bus to take him to gunner training, an officer came up and asked if anybody in line knew anything about butchering. He had spent time on family farms in Mercer county, Ohio, when he was a kid, and he helped out in his grandfather’s grocery store in Dayton. He was pulled from the line, and his military career was changed forever. He spent the rest of the war in the kitchen.
His time eventually came to ship out overseas to the European theater on the RMS Auquitania, sister ship to the long-lost German target, Lusitania. Radio blackout meant no communication with anybody all the way across. When they eventually entered Scotland’s Firth of Clyde, they were met with astonishment. Sub-hunting aircraft had spotted flotsam on the Atlantic days before that all in authority assumed was the remains of the Auquitania.
Ted’s duty station turned out to be Bury St. Edmunds, an airfield just northeast of London. He and the kitchen crew cooked for hundreds of guys a day, sometimes being called into the mess in the middle of the night. When the fly boys had to eat, somebody had to fix it. He prided himself as the first to create pre-packaged cake mix. He mixed all the dry ingredients prior, including dry eggs. All he had to do in a pinch was add water and the cake was in the oven in minutes, and on the table before the crew in no time. He worked hard to keep the guys happy. He concluded that as long as the guys bitched about the food, all was okay. When they got quiet he knew things were getting bad.
He always had a twinge when an Air Corps pilot turned over his wallet before heading out for a mission over the continent. If he didn’t return, the guys back at the base were supposed to spend the cash down at a local pub and toast those who didn’t return. He would never be able to hear taps again without tears.
Well, he survived the war at his station in England. He did get knocked down from the concussion of buzz bombs a couple of times, but nothing serious. After VE Day in May 1945, he shipped home and made it back to Dayton for a furlough. He and Gertie were married that July in St. Anthony’s church. She accompanied him to his next duty station in Florida, where he prepared to ship out to the Pacific. But the big bombs and VJ Day came in August. By Columbus Day he and Gert headed back home to begin a life, they hoped, that would be safe for the family they wanted to get started.
***
1 May 2010 marked the eleventh anniversary of my dad’s passing. He survived the war, but couldn’t get past the cancer. He left Mom and his seven kids to carry on.
Today’s elder idea: I want you to keep in communication with each other, love each other, and love hard. Love is the greatest thing that can happen to a family. So please stay together. It makes a beautiful family tree, and the fruit will be plentiful.
from ‘To my children’
written by Dad for his penultimate birthday,
8 February 1998
No comments:
Post a Comment