World affairs were beyond my comprehension when bombs were dropped on Pearl Harbor in 1941. \u00a0\u00a0I have no specific recollections of that day. I was in first grade.<\/p>\n
I was aware that some of my brother Carroll\u2019s friends were joining the Texas National Guard, whatever that was.\u00a0 They were too young to join without parental permission. \u00a0I watched them sit on the large stump in front of the dairy barn and plead with my Dad as he milked the cows. I knew they wanted him to sign something.\u00a0 He did not relent.<\/p>\n
When my brother graduated from high school in 1939, he went to California where we had an aunt and uncle. He went to work for Lockheed Aircraft and trained as an airplane mechanic.\u00a0 Working on airplanes sounded glamorous to me. I believe they were working on the P-38.\u00a0 Just before the draft was initiated, he came home and enlisted in the Army Air Force.<\/p>\n
School children helped with the war effort.\u00a0 I remember participating in scrap metal drives.\u00a0 We were bused to areas of town where we scavenged for every nail and piece of metal we could find.<\/p>\n
War bonds were sold at school.\u00a0 We purchased stamps which were put into an album which we called books.\u00a0 When it was full, it was exchanged for a war bond.\u00a0 A full album valued at $18.75 \u00a0bought a $25 war bond which matured in ten years. I had several which were redeemed when I began college.<\/p>\n
Families were encouraged to plant a victory garden.\u00a0 My mother had always had a garden.\u00a0 During the war, it was enlarged.\u00a0 \u00a0We had a large pantry with shelves filled with food she canned.<\/p>\n
Some foods were rationed.\u00a0 Each member of a family was issued a book of coupons for food items.\u00a0 My mother worried about having enough sugar coupons to do her Christmas baking. \u00a0There was an electric churn in the milk processing house, and we had butter for our use.\u00a0 I saw oleomargarine for the first time.\u00a0 It looked like lard until a packet of coloring was added.\u00a0 The magic of turning it from white to yellow fascinated me.<\/p>\n
Gasoline and tires were also rationed.\u00a0 The milk delivery truck was given extra allowances for these two items.<\/p>\n
The house is still standing in Breckenridge where the first Gold Star Mother lived. The banner with a gold star represented a family member who had died in the war. This family kept a light shining on the banner.\u00a0 I knew that it was a symbol of sadness, and I looked for it every time we passed the house. As time went on, there were many other gold star banners.<\/p>\n
Camp Bowie in Brownwood and Camp Barkeley in Abilene, were located in dry counties (no alcohol sales).\u00a0 When soldiers had a pass to leave the base, they often came to Breckenridge to consume alcohol.\u00a0 When the bars closed, the MPs (military police) rounded up the drunken soldiers.\u00a0 The dairy was located one mile south of Breckenridge.\u00a0 The house and barns set back from a major highway (US183).\u00a0 It was not uncommon on weekends to hear the inebriated soldiers marching along the highway.\u00a0 The MPs would be counting a loud cadence.\u00a0 The soldiers were often noisy and rowdy.\u00a0 This was not frightening.\u00a0 It was more like, \u201cthere they go again.\u201d<\/p>\n
My brother\u2019s friends who enlisted in the Texas National Guard were in the 36th<\/sup> Division which was first to land in Europe.\u00a0 They were on the front lines and saw heavy combat.\u00a0 Several of them were killed in action.<\/p>\n Carroll was stationed at a base in Italy.\u00a0\u00a0 The men who kept the planes maintained and in the air knew the crew members of each plane.\u00a0 He told of sitting at the end of the runway as they waited for the planes to return from bombing missions.\u00a0 They knew who was out and would count the planes as they returned.\u00a0 As time passed and some did not return, there was sadness for the crew members who had gone down with their planes.\u00a0 This was the only time I heard him mention the war.<\/p>\n In 1984 Carroll and my sister-in-law were traveling with our cousin and his wife in Germany and Austria.\u00a0 The two men were standing across from the railroad station in Innsbruck, Austria, while the women shopped. Carroll told our cousin of being a crew member on missions flying out of Italy over the area. My cousin asked if he had been to Innsbrook before. Carroll answered, pointing upward, \u201cNo closer than 30,000 feet up there.\u201d \u00a0Carroll said he thought there should be some new apartment buildings behind the station. He told a story of being in a B24 on a raid targeting the railroad station.\u00a0 The bombardier in a plane behind Carroll\u2019s plane was late in releasing his bombs as the formation flew directly down the length of the tracks to pass over the station.\u00a0\u00a0 Carroll said that the lead bombardier in the flight commander\u2019s plane was the only one who really knew how to use their Norden bombsights.\u00a0 He would sight the target, and all of the bombardiers in all of the planes in the formation were to release their bombs on his command, \u201cbombs away.\u201d\u00a0 As Carroll told it, \u201cThe old boy (bombardier in the plane behind his) never did pay attention to anything.\u201d\u00a0 He was late making his release over the station so that his load of bombs fell into a row of apartment houses.\u00a0 The two men walked down the street to look into the street behind the station.\u00a0 Sure enough, there was a row of houses obviously newer than the others on the street.<\/p>\n At the end of the war, we knew when Carroll left for Breckenridge. We did not know the exact day or time he would arrive.\u00a0 I sat for hours on the front porch watching the highway.\u00a0 In those days the buses dropped passengers off at the entrance to a country home if they did not want to go to the bus station in town.\u00a0 I saw the bus stop and started calling out to my mother as I ran toward the highway. Even though Carroll had been sent school pictures, he was totally unprepared for how much I had grown while he was gone.\u00a0 (I was the tallest kid in the class from 2nd<\/sup> grade through 7th<\/sup> or 8th<\/sup> when the other children began to catch up.)\u00a0 He set his bag down, picked me up, and started weeping.\u00a0 My mother told me that it was because he was so surprised at how much I had changed.<\/p>\n The term PTSD was not used in those days.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s youngest brother and also a cousin Carroll\u2019s age had both been in heavy combat.\u00a0 Both of them returned to the dairy.\u00a0 I heard the term shell shock, but I did not know what that meant. My uncle disappeared every morning after breakfast and did not return until time for the evening meal.\u00a0 I was aware that my parents always seemed to know where he was.\u00a0 He was walking on the farm during those hours.\u00a0 My Dad would come into the house and tell my mother where he had seen him. I thought it unusual that my Dad seemed to look for lost cows every day.<\/p>\n My cousin painted.\u00a0 He started with the house and then painted the milk house and the barn.\u00a0 When he finished, my Dad bought a new supply of paint and he started over.\u00a0 I do not know how many coats of paint he put on those buildings.<\/p>\n My immediate family was fortunate.\u00a0 All of our soldiers returned home when the war ended.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" World affairs were beyond my comprehension when bombs were dropped on Pearl Harbor in 1941. I have no specific recollections of that day. I was in first grade. I was aware that some of my brother Carroll’s friends were joining the Texas National Guard, whatever that was. They were too young to join without parental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[235,230,231,233,234,232,228,229,227],"class_list":["post-799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1955-to-1972","tag-bomb-raids-over-germany","tag-food-rationing","tag-gas-and-tire-rationing","tag-gold-star-mothers","tag-shell-shock","tag-tx-36th-division","tag-victory-gardens","tag-war-bonds","tag-world-war-2"],"yoast_head":"\n