PEACH BLOSSOM

Mama loves to work in the yard. It's finally warm enough.

BUMBLEBEE

APPLE BLOSSOMS?

Our Flowers and Birds

He is a red bellied woodpecker because the females have a red wash on their bellies. Today Julie told me that knowing the names of birds and flowers was sure indication of my age. Well, I'm just having a blast learning all about them with Mama. We have cardinals, finches, juncos,sparrows,and doves. Our flowers are hyacinth, forsithia, japonica, and jonquils.

The beginning of Mama's story

Born at Daddy Claude’s-- Mom Madie and Grandma Pat were there.
I was early (August 5,1924--really due early October) Was approximatelly 5 lbs.
Double crown-- not closed yet.
Grandma Pat said Mother would probably never raise me.
I was called “Little Edith”.

Mother and Daddy were living in Danville, Virginia--Daddy was working in the dye room at
Dan River Cotton Mills at Schoolfield, Virginia.
I think they were living at Cameron Ave and then Daddy was working at a gas station with
Buford Arnn (his first cousin) and we were living on Stokes Avenue.
I think I have a remembrance of me and Boots there--going to the store for candy and
cookies (or tidbits).

The early summer, perhaps June, of 1927 we moved to Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania.
Daddy’s oldest sister Lucille and her husband Fred and daughter Sylvia were living
there and seemed to think Daddy could get a job up there.
I have no idea how we got there, but I’m thinking by train.
Aunt Lucille had a housekeeping room at the home of Clarence “Happy” and Pauline Rings.
Uncle Fred was working for the American Bridge Company building bridges across the
Ohio or the Allegheny River.

As we approached the house, I remember seeing (I think we were walking) 2 boys about
the same age as me.
On this short street there were 4 or 5 houses and on the steps of the first house was Dick
Richards in The Ashburner Home.
His grand parents- and a single aunt lived on the first floor.
He lived on the second floor with his mother and dad, George and Ethel Richards and a
baby sister Nelda.
On the 3rd floor lived his aunt and uncle, Ruth and “Red” Clifford O’Connor.
On the steps of the next house was Ned Daugherty.
They were standing alone on their steps.
One was dressed in blue short pants and the other had green short pants--both
with white shirts.
I can still see them in my memory.

Mother and Daddy found a place to live uup on the hill on Clugston Avenue.
I do not remember any of that.
Carolyn was born on August 8, 3 days after I turned 3.
We didn’t stay there long, because by Christmas time we had moved to Church Street, I
think at Mrs Hacketts house.

When Carolyn was about 6 months old, Mother was homesick so Daddy
sent us back to Virginia for Christmas.
We went by railroad and I do remember some of that trip.
I had a new baby doll with me.
She had a china head and a long white dress.
I’m not sure whether she could shut her eyes or not.
I also remember that I had a burn on my left arm.
Mother had shredded a raw potato and but that on the burn and a bandage on it.
I have no recollection of being in Virginia, however I do remember the trip back home.
I was standing in the middle of the aisle and wetting my pants and watching the water run
down the aisle.
When I arrived home, Daddy had a red rocking chair for me.

Later, I remember walking with Mother and Mother carrying a baby and we were going
through an empty apartment to visit someone on the other side and as we walked through
the vacant kitchen I flipped the oven door open and hit my mother on the shin.
I didn’t mean to hurt anyone but she was sure mad at me!

We moved a couple of houses away and it was from there I started school.
Just before September my vaccination had scabbed and was sore.
My knee was scraped where I had fallen and I was a mess.
My Uncle George Dunn was visiting us and took me to the store with him and let me pick
out some penny candy. I chose a wax bottle of coke and -a little tin pan of candy with a
spoon that was 2 cents worth and I was happy.
He was a novelty to me.
He was rough talking and sometimes used language I never heard or would have been
allowed to use.
But I loved him!

I walked to a school with other kids from the street..
We had to walk by the Catholic school, which was scary to me.
The teachers moving along in long black robes and white caps.
My teacher was Mrs. Garvin
I loved her very much.
She was old (possibly 40!)
Every 3 months we got 2 new student teachers from the state teachers college at Slippery
Rock, Pennsylvania.
The class was divided into 3 section-- mainly for reading skills---about 3 rows for each
section.
The Yellow Birds were the slowest to grab onto reading.
The Red Birds, better and
The Blue Birds-- the fastest learned when it came to reading--that was my place to shine!

I have always loved words.
By the time I was 2 I could recite The Night Before Christmas.
Each child was given 1/2 pint of milk at recess-- I’m not sure if parents paid for it or not.
I only know when I was absent sometime in February I sent word that Virgil Brown was to
have my milk.

It was in first grade that I was on a reading spree to read the most books.
The prize-- a pencil box with everything in it --pencils--sharpener--etc.
I didn’t win it, but I sure read alot of books.
Before the year was over, I needed glasses and have worn them ever since.

2nd grade I had Mrs Dias.
Carolyn had started to school.
By this time we had moved from Church Street.
Actually we moved to an upstairs apartment on Shaw Avenue.
It had wall to wall carpets and they felt so good.
I had chicken pox on my toes and they itched.
However we were only there one month because Daddy worked til 11 and his buddy’s
wife would bring her 2 over and spend the evening with Mama and when the men would
come in about 11:30 and walk upstairs and gather up the kids and wife and come back
downstairs and go home.
It was too much noise and too late to suit the land lady so she said we had to move.

That’s when we moved to Highland Avenue.
Highland Ave was the street joining the street of our first acquaintanceso we already had
friends at our new location.
It was on a hill overlooking the school.
Right after we moved to Highland Avenue Jean was born.
I wasn’t too happy with her birth-- I wanted a brother!
So I crawled under the bed and didn’t want to look at her!
That didn’t last long!

Mama has begun to write!

There has been much already written about our “meeting” and “marrying” September 9, 1943 – October 9, 1943, but not a whole lot about the following two years with the 78^th Division so I’ll try to fill in the gaps as I remember them.

I will begin with our wedding day which was exciting for me but much more exciting for Jess as I found out after the ceremony.

I had to work that day in order to get three days off – he had a three-day pass and we wanted to get to my home in West Virginia. So after work, I hurried home to get ready for my 8 o’clock wedding 30 miles away. I had been able to find a Navy blue suit with satin-binding trim and a plain white blouse and a jabot that softened the neckline. A taffeta Navy blue hat with a small veil completed my outfit. Oh yes, and Navy blue kid gloves!

Uncle Fletcher and Aunt Molly Smith drove my roommate and me to Camp Butner. My roommate, Irma Womble was my maid-of-honor.

When we arrived the chapel was pretty filled and someone, I think it was Johnny Somingo, was waiting at the entrance to guide me. Charles Pepe was Jess’ best man. I didn’t see him or Jess until after the Chaplain’s assistant had sung our two requested songs: “Because” and “I Love you, Truly” and they approached the altar with Chaplain Read.

Just as the Wedding March began several friends from my work arrived. I hesitated and was going to let them precede me to their seats when Somingo nudged me and said, “You go!”

Jess was dressed in his “dress greens” the winter uniform even though the date to change them was October 15^th.

After the wedding Uncle Fletcher took the Bridal Party out for dinner and then Jess and I went to his house to wait the time to take the bus to West Virginia.

Back to Jess’ exciting day? When he woke up he was told by the First Sergeant to pack a full field pack, throwing away all the extras he couldn’t carry, mainly, all electronic items (e.g., shavers, radios, etc.) and framed pictures and report to a specific place as soon as that was accomplished. He said to his buddies, “I can’t do that! I’m getting married tonight.” They told him to go see the Chaplain. He did and Chaplain Reid had the same orders.

So…everyone did what was ordered, ended up getting on trucks and began moving out in a convoy. Slowly they drove 15 miles or so and turned around and returned to Butner. It was the whole 78^th Division so that took quite a bit of time! The first Division alert they had. Returning to the company area they were all restricted to it for the rest of the day. That was one of the reasons we had a chapel full for our wedding.

The bus left about 2 or 3 a.m. and so we walked to the station from Uncle Fletcher’s. Shortly after we began the ride Jess went to sleep! Once he woke up and said to me, “If they ask you if you have a canteen cup tell them, ‘Yes’,” and promptly went back to sleep. I never found out what he meant and he didn’t remember saying it!

We arrived at my home in Princeton, West Virginia around noon. This was the first meeting of my family with Jess, except for my Daddy who had come to North Carolina the previous weekend (Sunday October 3^rd) to convince me we should not get married so soon! But, October 1^st and 2^nd had spent the time making arrangements with the chaplain getting the licenses, rings, music and a place to live, not saying much but grinning all weekend. That whole weekend is a story in itself. I’ll write that sometime.

The time at home was good. They all liked him and Mother had a wonderful dinner for us.

That evening (Sunday) we went to church and Jess heard the gospel presented in a clear, understandable way. When the altar call was given, he came under conviction and my youngest sister Jean (12 years old) looked at him with tears in her eyes and he told me later, it was as if she said, “Why don’t you go?” And so he did. He accepted Christ as His Savior. I followed him to the altar and after prayer we had our marriage dedicated to the Lord before we had ever spent the night together! That was a wonderful gift to me from the Lord.

Jess was a corporal making $66 a month. I was working at the Martin-Fairchild Defense Corporation making about $30 a week. The place we rented was a room with kitchen privileges and a bathroom shared with another couple - $35 a month! What is meant by kitchen privileges? Well, there was a shelf in the cupboard with a set of dishes (service for 4) for my exclusive use. There was a designated shelf in the refrigerator, too! The kitchen was shared by the landlords (husband and wife and two teenagers) and another couple with a baby who were renting a room like we were. There was a wood stove in the kitchen kept hot all day and that was to cook on. There was also an electric hot plate, but that was for evening for heating for the babies’ bottles or other emergencies! As soon as I fixed a meal and we ate, I was obligated to wash my dishes and put them away! We could also use the living room any time we wanted to.

This was a family home and was being shared out of a kind heart and a way to make expenses. The landlords had moved their bedroom to an enclosed back porch. We had a lovely bedroom with a fireplace. Besides us there was another couple on the same first floor. Upstairs were two apartments, one for the landlords’ son and wife, another for a school teacher, his wife and two-year old child (_______ , Ardis Miller and Myron, who gave me my nickname of Nee). They were from Menomonie, Wisconsin.

This is the setting for my first disastrous company meal. (If only I had know I had married a man with the gift of hospitality!)

The chaplain had not accepted any money for performing our ceremony. He said a dinner by the bride would be great! One Thursday Jess asked “Could I invite some guys for dinner?”

I said, “Sure, when?” He said, “Saturday.”

Naively I said, “OK, invite the chaplain, too.” Then I said, “How many?”

He thought awhile and said, “Fourteen.”

I said, “OK,” thinking, “I’ll just fry some chicken,” although I never had. But at nineteen, it didn’t seem hard!

So, I asked Mrs. Long to teach me how.

She told me to get 2-3 hens – cut them in pieces – and cook them in water to make them tender. Drain and dredge in seasoned flour and fry ’til brown! I must have cooked them too long or something! They were tough as “whit-leather,” as my dad used to say, (whatever whit-leather is!). I don’t remember what else I cooked but Mrs. Long lent me more dishes for the table.

The Lord tried to save me from this disaster by sending several inches of snow restricting all the soldiers to the base.

But my darling was already at home for the weekend and felt sorry for me so he walked into town and invited strangers (soldiers) at the USO to come for dinner. I’m glad none of them knew us – they were kind but never got in touch with us again. I never did get a chance to cook for the chaplain because they were all off on a bivouac during Thanksgiving.

I did have some of the Company A guys for dinner from time to time as I learned how to cook.

By Thanksgiving I had quit my job. It was too hard commuting. From about November 15th to December 8^th the 311^th had been on a Marine Base at Parris Island in South Carolina for maneuvers so I had plenty of time to get to know the people in the house. I had our room decorated for Christmas when he arrived home in early December. Transportation was the City Bus! He was able to get a 3-day pass to go to West Virginia for Christmas.

Early in January the whole Division went to Tennessee for 2 ½ months of continuous training with the 106^th Infantry Division, the 26^th Infantry Division and the 17^th Airborne and they fought each other across the Tennessee hills and rivers in typical tactical situations. This was east of Nashville between Murfreesboro on the South and Gallatin near the Kentucky border. Each maneuver was cold and wet and muddy. From weekend to weekend they fought, ate and slept in the same clothes! This was training them for their time in Belgium.

Jess had been able to find an apartment there so I soon followed and lived on the Gallatin Road. More about that later…

In judging the effectiveness of our contesting divisions the umpires gave the 78^th Division Distinctive Praise and highest honors for performance in the maneuvers. They were over about the 1^st of April and most of the 78^th Division convoyed to Camp Pickett, Virginia. Jess got a 30-day leave and we went by train to Oakland, California where I met his mother and grandmother. That was our honeymoon.

He returned to Pickett alone. Camp Pickett was on 46,000 acres near Blackstone, forty miles Southeast of Richmond. After feeling fully qualified as topnotch from maneuver training they expected to go as a unit. But since the army was stockpiling replacements for the impending invasion of France there was just enough time for our qualified replacements to take leave home and ship overseas into the replacement depot. Most of the senior NCOs and officers stayed to train, so Jess said, “Come back.”

And, I did.

When I arrived he had a room for me in Crewe, Virginia. We stayed there a couple of weeks – we had to go out for meals. I remember once he went out and brought back breakfast on a tray. He had to leave a $20 bill to make sure he would return the dishes and tray.

I met two of the lieutenants’ wives there and went to breakfast with them a couple of times. (They were college graduates and kept talking about “Ellis Shoe.” I thought that is a shoe factory or someplace they had worked but it really was LSU in Louisiana, where they had gone to school. It was their southern accent that threw me!) I had never gone to restaurants much before and so I was surprised that I didn’t have to order just what was on the menu – I could order just toast, or toast and bacon, etc. I caught on fast!

Soon Jess found us the playhouse (literally a child’s playhouse) in Wilson. It was in a rural community nearer to camp and we could rent it for $5 a week, and either cook in the kitchen of the big house or eat with the family. He ate most of his meals at the base and we cooked out at our house a lot.

After living there awhile, the teenage daughter of the owners was not very nice to me. By that time I was pregnant and probably overly sensitive and Jess found another room for a week or two. Then we moved in with Paul and Dorothea Hunter. They had two rooms above the garage and bunk beds in the kitchen. We managed fine on the bottom bunk. The soldiers spent time on bivouacs and long days training. When they were away from camp, Dorothea and I would put the clock in the drawer and eat and sleep when we felt like it. Every day when the guys went to camp we didn’t know if they’d come home or not. Dorothea had their car at the house. One morning about 10 o’clock she received a phone call from us to come to camp before 1 o’clock if we wanted to see them before they left camp. We went early and the area around the company was sectioned off and so we couldn’t get close to the barracks. As soon as the noon meal was over they were supposed to come where we were but a meeting was called for the noncommissioned officers (sergeants, etc.) so we had to wait a little longer…in the rain. Finally, they came and we had a little time to embrace and kiss goodbye and cry, and then they were called into formation. They hadn’t been able to tell us when of where they were going. Later Paul contacted Dorothea and she drove to Camp Kilner, New Jersey and was able to see Paul again. I took a bus to my parents’ home in West Virginia, got a reservation on a train and went to California to live with Jess’ mother while he was gone. Reservations had to be made thirty days in advance so I was able to spend a month with my family before going to California.

The division arrived at Camp Kilner on October 2^nd and left October 13^th on the Carvenon Castle, a former British merchant marine ship. Dorothea to see Paul a couple of times before they left and then she drove home to Texas. It took them fourteen days to cross the ocean and Jess wrote that the voyage was terribly crowded and uncomfortable. They landed at South Hampton on October 25^th and were taken to Bourne???, England, a resort town. They lived in hotels that had been nice but had deteriorated somewhat since the troops took over! In mid-November they started moving to France and probably had Thanksgiving there. It rained all the time…it was like a big mud puddle. They left there on November 26^th for Belgium by boxcar (the kind called 40/8’s, meaning it could carry 40 men and 8 horses). They could hear but not see the German buzz bombs on their way to England. December 7^th they moved to Ratgen, Germany and by the 9^th they went to the front lines in the Huertgen Forest, along the Siegfreid line which was designed to keep tanks from getting through - concrete blocks of cement shaped like pyramids 2-3 feet high, stretched across a whole field. (Jess took me to see them in 1963 while we were stationed in Germany.)

There was snow on the ground and it was cold and wet. They were there from December 16^th (the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge) until the end of January. It ended on January 25^th – the day my first baby was born – Marie – Jess didn’t know about her until February 14^th – the mail several at one time and then days with none. He talked about how miserable it was in the Huertgen Forest – snow – mud – rain. They dug foxholes trying to get out of the cold but they soon filled up with water and mud. He said it was terrible when the shells come in – sometimes they would hit someone, especially someone on watch. He said they were all scared, wet and crying. He was always asking me to send him new underwear. I think they just added it on to what they had! When they did try to move out of the foxholes, they would put white sheets around them if they had them so they couldn’t be seen in the snow.

The Huertgen Forest battle area was heavily forested…jungle-like. Old trees and dense brush and swamp, and the rocky and steep slopes made foot movement very difficult. There were deep valleys. The roads were few, underdeveloped, narrow and twisting. All this made it difficult for armor and other vehicles, and presented a problem for accurate air support. This also created problems for the Germans because of not being able to know where and how many Americans there were. But to add to the American problems, the weather was unusually bad the whole autumn of ‘44’. It had been raining for over six weeks by November. It made bottomless ribbons of mud out of bad roads.

On January 28^th the 9^th Infantry Division attacked the positions near Monshau, opening the way for the 78^th to seize Schmidt on February 7^th. Consequently, some of the Company “A” men were in several of the houses. Sometimes the owners would still be there, too. The lady of the house would offer to cook and clean for them if they would let her stay. And usually, they would let her – they would use the house as a “base” while they checked all around for German soldiers or stocks of ammunition. I’m sure she wanted to protect her furniture, etc. The GIs probably wouldn’t be quite as destructive as they could be if she was trying to serve them.

It was probably in a setting like this that CO “A” heard there was a barrel of beer and tried to send Phil to bring it to them when he refused – saying he wouldn’t touch the filthy stuff! Jess had made a commitment to trust the Lord for salvation but he hadn’t had time to know how to live the life and he was impressed by Phil’s courage with the guys.

On March 8^th, the 78^th Infantry Division participated in the securing of the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, the last standing span over the Rhine River.

The weather channel recently had movies on “When the Weather Changed the World” and one of them was the Battle of the Bulge. It really showed the snow – cold – and the mud! That was what the guys at the reunion all talked about. Paul told of the day something happened and he got the order to move out – so he yelled at his section, “Follow me!” He went a ways and looked back and no one was coming. He said they were hunkered down behind a pile of manure and he yelled at them with his arms opened, “Come to mama my little chickens! I’ll take care of you!”

Usually when the guys were together they recalled the funny things instead of the gruesome. When the war was over in May, everyone was delighted but they couldn’t all come home at one time so they developed a “point” system and during the long time, I’m not sure exactly what they did. It was October before Jess got home. He was in New York by our second anniversary (October 9^th) and called me on the phone and talked about forty minutes! (That was very special then.) Because his home was in California, they decided to send him home by plane instead of by train, so he’d get home sooner. But the weather interfered and he didn’t get home for a week!

His mother and I took our little 9-month old darling to the air base in Marysville, California to meet her daddy and she took her first alone steps to him and he was delighted.