Wednesday, December 12, 2012
War Stories
World War II ended almost 70 years ago, and the stories are growing more and more distant for many of us. How are you connected to it? What can you learn? Please spend time interviewing family members (parents, grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles, etc) about their experiences during the war. Take notes, ask them to tell you their stories -- where were they? who did they live with? what was life like on a day to day basis? did anyone fight? did anyone experience discrimination? how? Ask them to elaborate and give specific detail. Even if you think you already know the stories, ASK!
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Dominick Smith--
ReplyDeleteAlthough the Second World War occurred relatively recently in terms of modern history, ending the same year that my father was born, I have always felt greatly disconnected from the time and the events that took transpired. Perhaps this is due to the enormous fundamental differences between life then and now, or the ever growing stream of events that brings us all further away from that time, or the shockingly real brutality of what humans being are capable of that is exposed by the event. Regardless of my inability to fully accept and comprehend the almost unreal events that occurred during World War II, I and almost everyone that I know would not exist if World War II had never occurred.
My mothers side of the family has lived in the Seattle area since before WWII. Due to its proximity to Japan, During WWII, Seattle and much of the West Coast was on high alert for a possible military invasion from Japan. Due to this, the large Japanese population across the West Coast was greatly discriminated against, and many people of Japanese ancestry were sent to internment camps. My great grandfather on my grandmothers side worked at a radio tower at an airport just outside of Seattle that was used to test new Boeing prototypes and military aircraft, so he and his family were especially mindful of a possible attack on the Seattle area. While I would like to say that my relatives took a stand against the discrimination of Japanese people during WWII, due to the real possible dangers faced by the citizens of the West Coast as well as the government propaganda that was disseminated throughout the country, the opposite was true. In high school, my grandmother won a government propaganda slogan contest with the slogan, ‘Slap the Jap right off the map.’ In later years after the war, when she and my mother made close friends with several Japanese families, she became ashamed of her degrading contribution to anti-Japanese sentiment. In my opinion, it is very important to learn about such things because it exposes the fact that our history and nation was by no means perfect during WWII, and it also shows an interesting parallel to the way that the Jews were percecuted by Nazi’s during the same time.
My Dad was born exactly 6 years after WWII had begun, which was also one day before it would end. As he grew up in England, he has many stories to tell of the lasting effects that WWII had on the country; most notably he told me of how kids would often swim and play in the ditches made by Nazi bombing campaigns over London. As I stated earlier, I would not be here if WWII did not occur. This is because my grandmother was a member of the Women's Land Army during the war and was assigned to work on my great grandfather’s farm. My grandfather was one of eleven children, and he was luckily not drafted to the war and allowed to work on his fathers farm. They worked together on the farm for more than a year, and the rest is history. At one point during the war, my grandmother and another girl that worked on the farm were talking to a few British soldiers that were about that were training for the Allied assault on Normandy, know as D Day. When a commanding officer happened to walk by and saw the soldiers talking to the two woman, he had my grandmother and her friend detained until the June 6 operation so that the clandestine mission would not be compromised. Times have definitely changed since the WWII era, but there are many lessons to be learned from the incredible and heart-breaking stories of that time.
The following story details the journey that my grandmother made during her escape from Nazi occupied Europe. While her story may be riveting, it should not stand out. Hundreds of thousands of other innocent civilians just like her made similar journeys. Their common desire to survive at all costs bonds these stories together. My grandmother was one of the lucky ones. As you read her story, please keep in mind the men, women, and children who were not as fortunate.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother, Katherine Stern, was twenty three years old when the Nazi regime continued their campaign into Austria. She was one of two children. Her brother Alfred and she were born to an extremely affluent family in Vienna. Her grandfather was President of the Vienna Stock Exchange, and her father started a successful textile firm. The Stern name was prominent in Vienna. As the Nazi’s continued their anhialation of Austria’s jewish population, my grandmother and her family knew that it was time to leave. The family of four first fled to Versailles. In an attempt to save some of the family estate, my gandmother’s father and brother went to Prague to liquidate business holdings. They never made it back, as the Nazi’s captured the brother and father soon after their arrival. The brother, Alfred, managed to escape and travel through Asia on his way to the United States. The father ultimately wound up at Auschwitz, where he died.
Unable to communicate with the rest of the family, my grandmother and her mother were forced to move oneand save themselves. When the Nazi’s invaded France, her and her mother were forced to hide in any way they could. They hitched rides on freight trains, slept in barns, and found scarce amounts of food wherever they could. After barely eluding the Nazi’s, they boarded a freight ship and made their way to Brazil.
Once in Brazil, my grandmother taught herself Portuguese and secured employment at the Pan American Trade Corporation. She spoke English, French, German, and Portuguese, skills that were valued by her employer. After four years in Brazil, she earned enough money to move to New York City. It was there where she met her husband, Alfred Bachrach, who also fled Austria. Together they started a textile company in the city. They soon moved to Larchmont, New York, an affluent subburb of New York City. They had three children, and rebuilt their lives. After living in the same house for more than fifty years, she was moved to Newton to be closer to her family. In 2011, she died at the age of ninety six.
During World War Two my grandparents weren’t really doing much for the war effort. My grandmother on my father’s side was six when the war began, so too young to be doing more than going to school. My grandmother on my mothers side was 17 when the war began, and was going to college in Florida State College for Women, before going on to Washington University Med School later in her life. However, her brothers were actually part of the navy in the pacific during the latter half of the war. My grandfather on my mother’s side was 11 when the war began, and so was still at school when the war was going on. On the other hand, his brother, my uncle Brent, was a part of the navy and a hospital coreman in the pacific. It is likely that if there had been a land invasion into japan, he would have been part of the group of people storming the beaches alongside the assault troops. One thing that my grandfather did mention to me is that after the war ended many people where he lived, including his family, planted tomato gardens to celebrate the victory.
ReplyDeleteHaving ended nearly seventy years ago, World War Two can readily seem like an abstract, distant past event; at first glance, my connection to it seems limited to snippets on the History Channel watched during commercial breaks. However, through drawing on the wealth of experiences of my family members who lived through this period I was able to get a much better sense of their own personal connection to the overwhelmingly large and otherwise seemingly unapproachable topic that is World War Two.
ReplyDeleteMy relatives who lived through the period of World War Two had an interesting and diverse range of experiences relating to it; for my grandpa on my father’s side of the family, this experience was as a doctor in London. Having just graduated from medical school, he was completing his residency at Charing Cross Hospital and received many patients injured by the bombings. During these raids, because he was unable to abandon his patients for a proper bomb shelter, the hospital staff took cover under beds and tables. On a couple of occasions following these raids, he climbed to the roof and looked out across the city to see all the flaming buildings of the Blitz. However, later in the war the hospital and its operations were moved out to the countryside for safety concerns.
My gramma on my father’s side had an series of contrasting experiences. Growing up in New York City, she can remember how the English Navy arrived and how she attended the parties for them; many of which were organized by the United Service Organization. She often took them up to Harlem and to listen to Jazz, in general showing English service men around New York City. Following the close of the war and the enactment of the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Europe, she got a job in the United States embassy in Norway in August of 1948. At the time, Norway was quite a poor agrarian country, its otherwise weak economy having been devastated by the war. In order to help reconstruction, she served on a project that helped Norway build up its aluminum production infrastructure. Additionally, she comments that when she traveled across Europe the overwhelming sentiment was from everyone when they learned she was American was very positive--a stark contrast to current sentiment.
My Granny on my mother’s side offers a rather unique perspective as a very young girl at the outset of the war. She recalls that she happened to be on vacation in Florida when Pearl Harbor was bombed. The following day, she heard Roosevelt's famous address of this in a pub in North Carolina filled with farmers in overalls all gathered around an old-fashioned radio. Living in Pittsburgh, PA--which at the time produced a disproportionately large amount of the steel in the United States--sounds like quite an experience as the city scrambled to produce as many tanks and other military related machinery as possible. As a result of the city’s industrial importance to the American war effort, there was a certain level of fear that Pittsburgh would be bombed. As a result, as a child there were a number of drills in which sirens were sounded and blackouts where curtains were put up over every window. In what is a delightful contrast to the grim world events, she says that with the black draped windows and all the lights off in her house, her school friends from first grade got together and told ghost stories. Lastly she recalls overwhelming nationalism in response to the war and a sentiment that if ever there was a war worth fighting, it was this one.
Next: during the war, my Grandpa on my mother’s side of the family was attending Exeter Academy. He read about the latest happenings on the war front in the newspaper every weekend. He graduated in the summer of 1945 and his draft date was set at September 3, 1945, however following the dropping of the atomic bombs in August, the war ended. However a final interesting story is that of his father--my great-grandfather.
Part Two
ReplyDeleteHis father at the start of the war was the head of the Chemistry Department of Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Additionally, to make ends meet, he worked at a company called Kusel and Esser where he helped design sights for bombing for aircraft and optics for the large guns of Navy vessels. He however was displeased with his effort and tried to enlist in the Navy, whereupon he was rejected because he was viewed as more helpful to the nation as a scientist. So, he moved to Massachusetts and the Rad Lab at MIT where he helped develop one of the world’s first radar systems. In order to make the machine rotated, he went around to a number of local circuses and ended up finding and buying a merry-go-round. The radar that was designed had two parabolic dishes, mounted at the equivalent of 10 and 12 o’clock hands and as a result, got its name as the V-Beam. His team then moved its operations out to Ipswich, MA to test it on a landscape overlooking the sea as it was similar to the locale in which it was to be deployed. Also mounted on a merry-go-round with the horses taken off, one was used in the invasion of France in 1944. It could see thirty to forty miles out which was hugely powerful at the time and its information was used to relay instruction to the antiaircraft gunners so they knew where to fire their proximity fuses to try to take down enemy planes.
It seems like everyone who was alive during World War II has a story to tell, and my grandparents are no exception. On Barbara’s side of the family, there’s Grandpa Bruce and Grandma, and on Lisa’s side, we have Grandpa Les and Nana. Each of these people had a different perspective on the war: Barbara’s parents had more traditional stories, whereas Nana and Les’ experiences were more, how you say, “glitzy.”
ReplyDeleteLet’s start with Nana. She performed in USO shows as a singer and dancer here in the US. Funny story: I had known Nana my entire life, but did not hear until the other day that she “had a beautiful singing voice,” in addition to being an actress and a dancer. (That last part I knew). She also entertained soldiers on leave at the Stage Door Canteen in NY, and, as it turns out, was actually honored by the American Theater Association for her volunteer service during the war. Lastly, on more of a side note than anything, I remember she would tell stories about having to draw “blackout curtains” every night in New York, so bombers wouldn’t have a clear target if they were to fly over the city.
Then there’s Les. Believe it or not, Grandpa Les was a famous radio/TV star when the war broke out. Consequently, when the draft was instituted, he became part of the Armed Forces Radio Service in the China/Burma Theater, meaning he would provide information and entertainment to the troops. There were actually publicity photos of him in uniform, but he ran radio operations in Bhamo, Burma for a significant portion of his service. In addition, he was also trained as a sharpshooter and ended up being awarded a bronze star for his service. This brings me to another point: Les is the only one of my four grandparents who left us souvenirs from his time during the war. We have his bronze star (currently located in Lisa’s jewelry box), but we also have a gorgeous sword that he got while in Burma. So, another funny story: he actually traded Nana’s Instamatic Polaroid Camera to the “Ktchin” Chieftain* for a ceremonial sword made of ivory and silver. Needless to say, Nana was pissed. off. when he came back, but we’re pretty happy he swapped the camera for a sword.
Now there’s Grandpa Bruce, whose military record (or something) I actually found. It says he was a member of the 6th Signal Center Liaison Team, and served as a cryptographer in the European Theater for 23 months. Now, two things: one; I learned that “enciphering” is a word. Two; I have (drumroll please...) another funny story. Apparently, over the course of a few nights, german spies had begun to infiltrate one of the team’s outposts. So in order to tell whether or not someone was an American, any incoming person would be asked a series of questions about baseball -- if they could answer them correctly, it meant they were an American, wrong and they were a German. (Super sophisticated, right?) As a result, my grandpa could never go out at night because he would not have been able to answer any question pertaining to baseball. (We see now who I take after).
Lastly, there’s my grandma, who had a relatively unique perspective on the war: it did not affect her. During WWII, she was attending an all-girls college, so no one within her immediate circle of friends was drafted, and the most she really had to do was ration things.
I feel as if there’s some sort of jingle I should make to wrap up this one-page wonder, but this will have to suffice: So that’s our story, there you go, I’ve weaved my tales to-and fro, but now this chapter comes to an end, I hope I’ll get to write some more my friend.
*I write it phonetically because I have NO earthly idea how one would would go about spelling the tribe’s name correctly
Grace Brescia ––
ReplyDeletePart One.
Prior to our Monday night family dinner, I knew almost nothing about my family’s connection to World War II. Talking over homemade pizza and salad, I listened to my parents reminisce about their parents lives during World War II. However, before I begin retracing the details, I knew a few facts prior to dinner. I knew that my grandfather was a highly praised Marine. I knew that he served his country for many years and fought in many battles in many different countries. But that’s where it ends. Basically I only knew the basics.
Throughout the meal I learned more and more about not only my grandfather who was in the military, but also about what it was like on the homefront during the war. But, I must say, the battle-war stories are slightly more interesting to me, so I’ll start there.
My grandfather, Major General Arthur J. Poillon, was born into a big military family.
My great-great grandfather, great uncle, and grandfather all served in World War II. When my mom was a kid, she moved from military base to military base, ending up in about thirteen different states before she went off to college. When my mom was very little, my great-great grandfather served during the end of World War I, earning himself a Distinguished Service Award in the time between the end of the war and the between of the second world war. He also utilized that time to train his son – my great uncle – for combat. They both served during World War II. My great uncle lost his life during the war prompting my grandfather to enlist in the Marines as soon as he turned eighteen.
During our dinner, my mom reminded me of a conversation I had with my grandfather about the atomic bombings in Japan. I believe I asked him about his opinion on the bombs and if it was the right or wrong thing to do. He responded by saying something along the lines of, “Personally, since I was stationed in the Philippines, if the bombs were not dropped, I would have been deployed first to Japan because the Marines have to secure the island first. So on a personal level, I was relieved that the bombs were dropped. However, in the sense of morality, I think it was completely inhumane.”
My grandfather passed away last year, but my step-grandmother’s son, along with his wife, are both enlisted in the army, continuing the legacy.
Now completely switching family members, my grandparents on the other side were about ten years younger than my grandfather who fought in the war. Both of my grandparents lived in separate parts of Connecticut during World War II. It was fascinating to learn what kinds of everyday activities both my grandparents took part in during the war. For example, my grandpa picking up scrap pieces of metal, because that was what was used to build the airplanes during the war, was considered a chore. My grandma, who lived in a town right on the water in Connecticut, had “black-out shades” that had to be closed as soon as the sun went down. It was a worldwide procedure used by many countries to prevent attacking Air Forces from being able to tell what places to bomb. Hypothetically, if everyone used the “black-out shades,” the aerial view would be black, making it hard to determine what was actually on ground level.
In school, both my grandparents went through “Air Raid Drills.” The procedure that was only practiced during the war sounded similar to fire drills that we practice. At home, the food was rationed, limiting the amount meat, fat, fish, cheese, sugar, flour and coffee my grandparents families could receive. I searched for pictures depicting what a food ration might look like World War II, and it came pretty close to what an average American might order for dinner these days. My grandpa had a family of six and my grandma had a family of five, so seeing the small amount of food that was available to families during the war is pretty shocking.
Part Two.
ReplyDeleteIt was incredible to review my family's roots and connections to World War II. Just by having a twenty-minute conversation, I learned so much more history about my grandparents and what life was like when they were kids. It was fascinating for me learn and compare what life was like for my great-great grandfather, great-uncle, and grandfather on the battlefield during the war to my grandpa and grandma in Connecticut on the homefront side.