When You Ride Alone, You Ride With Hitler! by Bill Edwards - HTML preview

 

Even if he wanted to call Liz, long distance and local phone lines were jammed with calls from coast to coast. Even Amanda’s phone stopped working several times that day. While her house was jammed with people, Liz cleaned up the dinner dishes and served more than a few cups of coffee and tea that night. After all their visitors went home and things finally settled down, Liz went to her bedroom and wrote a long letter to George. She mailed that letter the next morning to a military address that he provided to her.

 

Chapter Five: Off To War

 

By December 7, 1941, my father had finally been able to leave the limousine business. Bill stopped driving and took on the role of dispatcher having procured enough clients to book his own work. A few relatives and a couple of the neighbor’s boys drove the fleet of limos that was eventually expanded to five. Arthur attended classes a few nights a week still trying to become a C.P.A. and worked during the day as a bookeeper for a photo processing company.

 

News of the attack on Pearl Harbor hit Bill and Lou hard. They knew that their only child would soon be headed off to war no matter what they said to him. They were right. As soon as Arthur heard the news about the attack, he began making plans to enlist in the military. As a courtesy and because he was a company bookeeper that could not immediately be replaced, he gave two weeks notice to his job and signed out of his classes.

 

Surprisingly enough, schools were open on Monday, December 8, 1941. Liz arrived at Theodore Roosevelt High School just as she had many times before and, on the surface, everything seemed normal. The morning light shown in through the windows of her classrooms during the first several periods of the day just like it always did reminding everyone that the world was still turning and that nature took little notice of the affairs of people.

 

Sometime during science class a voice came over the school’s speaker system announcing that the President of the United States was about to address the U.S. Congress and the nation. The radio broadcast was patched into the school’s public address system and before anyone could give the announcement a second thought, the voice of Franklin Roosevelt was heard. “Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy...” It wasn’t a long speech, but it was a powerful one.

 

After just a few more sentences, the people of the United States heard the President ask, or more correctly order, Congress to declare war on the Empire of Japan. Even before the president finished his speech, there was a ruckus in the room. Almost all the male seniors in that class quickly got up and headed out the door. That same scene was repeated throughout the school and, probably, in many other places that day.

 

Young men, and more than a few older ones, went to sign up for military duty. Recruiting offices were overwhelmed with lines of men three deep. Many began to arrive at those offices early on Monday morning well before the president’s speech in anticipation of what everyone knew was coming. The madness that the rest of the world was experiencing had finally arrived at our shores.

 

That December was crazy. Newspapers were being printed at a furious rate, but still sold out almost as soon as they hit the streets. Everyone had a radio on. Many small businesses placed their own radios near the doorway or even outside so that passers by could hear the latest news or war bulletins. A public eager to know what was happening jumped at any chance to read, hear or even see the news. Theaters that finally received updated news reels were often packed with people.

 

Things happened so fast. First we were at war with Japan, then Germany, and no one hesitated to try and do their part for a war effort that was still being organized. Before my mother knew it she was taking part in scrap metal collections, red cross classes and all kinds of civilian wartime activities. Her classes at school were half empty because so many of her male classmates left to volunteer for military service. Life was been put on hold for the war effort, but Liz still had no word from George.

 

Finally, in early January, she received a small stack of letters from George. Like her, he wrote his first one on that doleful Sunday and many more since. It just took time for them to arrive. He was involved in pilot training somewhere down south, but was certain he would eventually end up in the South Pacific. Although he longed to see Liz, it just wasn’t possible at that time and probably would not be for the foreseeable future.

 

Liz tried hard to keep her mind off of George, burying herself in her school work and volunteer activities for the war effort. She was asked to stay on at her part-time department store job after Christmas and did so. She recalls that time as being one of busy frustration. Adding to her woe was the steady stream of bad news coming from the South Pacific. We couldn’t get our act together there and Washington, D.C., seemed far more worried about Hitler than Hirohito.

 

Finally free from his night classes and having been given the go ahead to leave his job at the photo processing company after a replacement was found, Arthur signed up for military duty. His best bet was the Army and they gladly took him. Boot camp was fast and furious and time flew by faster than he ever imagined it might. Before he knew it, he was back in Jackson Heights for a brief leave before reporting for duty.

 

After spending time with family members and friends, Arthur visited with a few of the neighbors, then headed to New Jersey for his first assignment. He was disappointed to learn that he would be stateside for a while. His talent for math betrayed him. Arthur served under a Supply Sergeant responsible for handing out and keeping track of military gear and supplies. My father impressed the Sergeant and officers in charge with his accounting and organizational skills. Before he knew it, he was a Supply Sergeant himself and, much to his relief, was finally on his way to war.

 

Arthur’s first stop was Australia. It was terrific duty because he had little to do and lots of free time. As a Supply Sergeant preparing to go into the war zone, it was his job to organize a mobile operation that could move fast, keep good records and get supplies in and out as fast as possible. He personally picked and trained a small staff to accomplish these tasks and assembled what was needed to carry out his orders. This didn’t take long.

 

One of the things that Arthur really wanted to do in his free time was go deep sea fishing while he was in Australia. He and two other soldiers found a boat to charter with a friendly and helpful captain and first mate. They were father and son. The group went out and had a terrific day of fishing. My dad caught a sailfish which fought with him for hours. He recalled it as one of the best experiences of his life.

 

After the boat returned to the dock, my father went to pay the captain and tip his son. They refused to take a dime explaining how grateful they were that the soldiers were in their country. My dad was touched by their appreciation and never forgot it. After he returned to his barracks, he made sure the captain received an extra ration of gas for his boat the next day. That was the last good time and found memory Arthur would have for several years.

 

My father’s wartime experiences were not turning out the way he thought they would after Australia. Arthur was bogged down in miserable conditions on one Pacific island after another. He spent most of his time far behind the front lines in drab tents or makeshift buildings making sure that food and supplies got to where they needed to go. He knew his work was important, but still wanted a chance to see some real action.

 

At one point Arthur’s mobile supply operation was moved up to within just a few miles of where American soldiers were fighting the Japs. His attitude about being more directly involved with the fighting was changing fast. He watched as hundreds of men came back from the front lines with horrifying wounds and injuries. He walked past the area where hundreds more lay dead as they awaited identification or burial.

 

Despite the morbid scenes that surrounded them, Arthur and the few men that worked with and under him still longed to take their turn at the enemy. Despite their enthusiasm, the reality that they might not ever see their family or friends again once they did get into battle was becoming more real each day as the number of dead and injured men rose experientially. However, as the unhealthy conditions they lived with also began to claim lives, all thought they would rather die in battle than due to disease.

 

Conditions in their camp kept deteriorating. Food was never fresh anymore and barely edible. It rained all the time and even a trip to the latrine meant trudging through foul smelling mud that was ready, willing and able to cause an infection in even the smallest cut or bruise. Although Arthur and his men went the extra mile to get out any fresh food and other necessities as soon as they arrived, everyone complained that desperately needed supplies were just not reaching them.

 

Chapter Five: Back In Finnland

 

Hitler moved through Scandinavia as quickly as he had through Europe. Finland was forced to cooperate with Germany. Hardly a willing ally, the nation was left with no choice and much was done behind the scenes during the war to derail Nazi attempts to use Finnish food or resources for the German War Effort. A perfect example of this was the actions taken by one of Amanda’s cousins whom I will call Marie.

 

At some time in 1944 a couple of German soldiers arrived on her farm. Her husband was away. It was just her, her two young teenage sons (they were twins) and the Germans. They arrived at the farm to assess the family’s ability to provide food for the Nazi war effort. Marie was a beautiful girl with long blond hair, blue eyes and a shapely figure. In short, she was probably what every Aryan male dreamed of.

 

After looking around her farm, the German soldiers sat in Marie’s kitchen writing down what they thought she needed to provide for the war effort. It didn’t take long to see that the Germans wanted more than just food. They told the twins to go to their room and started to make lurid comments and advances toward Marie. Expecting that something like this might happen, she and her boys had a plan already worked out in case it did. The twins kept a rifle in their room which was always loaded and ready for action.

 

Before the German soldiers knew what happened, one of the twins came back into the kitchen and shot at them. He kept shooting until one of the soldiers was laying dead on the floor. While he did this, Marie stabbed the other soldier repeatedly with a kitchen knife. In less than two minutes, the Germans were dead. Marie and the boys buried them somewhere in an isolated area of their property.

 

As luck would have it, no one ever came looking for the Germans. By the time of this incident the war was starting to look like a lost cause for Germany, so those in charge of the dead soldiers probably figured that they went AWOL. Marie and many other Finns took these kinds of actions during the war in the hope that they would survive it and preserve their national heritage.

 

Chapter Six: Everything Changes

 

George was an excellent pilot who wanted to fly a fighter or bomber, but the powers that be destined him to deliver supplies from point A to point B throughout the South Pacific theater for the duration of the war. He excelled at getting things to where they needed to be as quickly and efficiently as possible and that may have been what doomed him to duty he felt was drudge work.

Turnaround time speeded up as the war in the Pacific progressed. The day that would change his life and the lives of others he knew started out as a typical one for George. He landed his empty plane on some South Pacific island in the late morning. He barely had enough time to shave, shower and grab a hot meal before it was loaded and ready for take again less than two hours later.

 

The year was 1943. George and Liz continued to exchange letters, writing about their hopes and plans for the future. It was those letters that made George’s seemingly routine wartime experiences tolerable. He was shot at a few times while ferrying supplies, but the shots probably came from some bored Jap soldier hidden in the jungle of one of the many islands he flew over. Either way, the closest he came to being injured up to that point was when he tripped and sprained his angle while walking on the surface of a damaged airstrip.

 

As he prepared for yet another dreary flight, George was concerned. His concerns grew daily as commanders, desperate to supply their troops on the front lines, regularly overloaded older and poorly maintained aircrafts. Regardless of the size of the load or condition of the plane, they expected him to fly his cargo to its destination without incident. The best planes were sent to Europe. Whatever was left or could be spared was sent to the Pacific. Most of these aircrafts were in terrible shape and there were simply not enough parts or people to correctly repair them.

 

As he started taking off, George could feel his aircraft straining under the weight of the overloaded supplies. The engines were spitting and shuttering, but he was used to that. After making a few adjustments, the engines evened out and began to lift the plane into the air. Just when everything seemed fine, the engines acted up again and the aircraft began to lose altitude rapidly. Before he could do anything else to try and solve the problem, George’s plane rammed into a hillside.

 

George and Liz were not married nor even officially engaged, so word of his death took some time to reach her. After his parents were informed, they wrote to Liz to give her the tragic news because they didn’t have her phone number. She called them after receiving the letter and they invited her to attend a memorial service for their son that took place in a church near their home. Neither Liz nor George’s parents knew exactly how he died. That changed after Liz and his parents received letters from Robert, a friend of George who was also a military pilot ferrying supplies around the Pacific.

 

Robert witnessed the horrendous crash of George’s aircraft from the runway as he prepared to take off in his own plane. He wrote to Liz and George’s parents at the first opportunity he had to do so and explained what happened. He felt that they had the right to know how he died. Robert and George made a pact before his death and exchanged the names and addresses of their parents and girl friends. They both agreed that if one of them died, the other would write to those that survived them and, if possible, explain how they met their end.

 

Although I am not sure how it was arranged and my mother never elaborated on the matter, but George’s body was eventually shipped home and he was buried with honors in a church yard somewhere near his parent’s house. My mother was unable to witness the burial when it occurred, but later traveled to his grave site and took a photo of the gravestone. That photo is the final photo on the last page of that small album that told the story of Liz and George.

 

Liz hid the pain she felt after George’s death well. She cried for many nights after he died, but during the day she was all about moving forward. She graduated high school in June of 1942 and started college at New York University the following fall. Her grades were excellent and she found full time employment as a secretary and typist in Manhattan. That meant a lot of subway rides, but it also meant more money than she could earn in the Bronx or Queens. She did all of this and still hadn’t yet turned eighteen.

 

Between gas rationing and food rationing, my mother was thankful for subways and the abundance of restaurants that surrounded her workplace. Those establishments never seemed to be short of food as long as you had the money to pay for it. She did, and often brought home take out for her parents when the food rationing stamps made getting things like meat a bit difficult. Of course they did live in the Bronx, which meant they could get the things they wanted if they were willing to deal with black marketeers.

 

An entire closet industry and black market of fake and real rationing stamps and much-desired food items like meat quickly materialized in the Italian neighborhood that surrounded their building. If you had the cash, you could get just about anything you wanted. It was all about supply and demand, and the world war certainly created opportunities and a market for all kinds of things that people needed, but couldn’t easily obtain.

 

That statement is not a moral judgment about Italian Americans, because the vast majority of them played by the rules. It was just a fact of life in my mom’s Bronx neighborhood, just as the Irish and Jewish mobs did business and had their own black market in their neighborhoods. New York was always like that. It was a place where if there was a shortage of something, or a  demand for illegal or semi-illegal products, some mobster was willing to risk jail for the chance to get people what they wanted if the money was right.

 

Liz and her sister Helen treated themselves to regular trips to the Paramount Theater in Manhattan where many of the nation’s best big bands, singers and musical acts performed. It was something special for them to see the acts that they heard on the radio like Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, the Andrews Sisters and so many others. It was uniquely American music that Americans couldn’t get enough of during the war.

 

More than a few guys asked Liz out during the war, but she couldn’t get George out of her mind. She didn’t date, but occasionally danced with military men at USO events. Most of them were either stationed stateside or in New York on leave, or for a few days stopover. She liked to dance and knew that spending a couple of minutes on the dance floor with a lonely or homesick military guy could make their day, or even their week.

 

My father’s daily existence in the Pacific was no less frustrating than George’s had been. Always being pressed for fresh food and supplies, he couldn’t provide to others what was not being given to him. To make matters worse, most of the islands he ended setting up shop on had already been picked clean by the Japs. The local people barely had enough to eat and almost nothing to share. His salvation was the deals he was able to make with sailors and officers from the Navy.

 

The Navy was better supplied than the Army or Marines. The food was fresher and more plentiful, though still not really enough to be shared. However, my father excelled at getting Red Cross packages and lots of things from pilots and people on the home front. Those deliveries contained all kinds of stuff that could be traded including cartons of cigarettes, lighters, records, record players, radios, candy, gum and all kinds of things including the occasional case of booze. Once he had a sufficient stash of tradable goods, he cut deals with Navy guys for fresh food and other staples.

 

Mail call was always a big thing for military personnel in the days before email and cell phones. It was their only real link with home. Arthur received letters from his parents and close relatives. When the other guys got letters from their girlfriends or wives, he wondered why he hadn’t taken the time to find a gal before he left for war. When they received ‘Dear John’ letters, he remembered why. Arthur didn’t want to start a romance that he might not be able to finish. He certainly didn’t want to be dropped like a hot potato for some stateside Romeo that wooed his girl while he was languishing in the Pacific.

 

Arthur was busy filling out forms and doing paperwork while the short wave radio in his makeshift warehouse played a station that broadcast American music and news. His men were moving supplies in and out when the broadcast was interrupted with the sad news that President Franklin Roosevelt had died. Everyone stopped what they doing and listened intently. FDR was not just any President, but had been the man who led America out of the Great Depression. Whether you agreed with his politics or not, he gave people the hope they needed to survive some of the darkest days our nation had ever seen.

 

FDR had not been well for some time and no one was really shocked by his death. At the same time, no one was ready for it either. Even as Vice President Harry Truman took the oath of office, he did so in a state of disbelief remarking in a very homespun and Missouri was that he felt like a huge bale of hay had just fallen on him. From what my parents have told me, I think that just about everyone in the military and on the home front felt the same way.

 

My father noted that many battle-hardened men broke out into tears as they listened to the radio broadcasters describe President Roosevelt’s funeral. The same was true of men that had no access to radio, but saw news reels of it or read about it later in the newspapers. Despite the grief that America felt, there was little time for mourning. There was still a war to fight and a world torn apart by global conflict to rebuild.

 

Liz and her family listened to FDR’s funeral over the radio. By the time he died grief had already hit their family and the families of so many other people that it became a part of everyday life. Flags were at half mast more often than not and many families had special stars or other emblems on their doors or windows indicating that they had made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. We had become a nation of people that lived their lives around war and wondered when, if ever, we would learn to live with and appreciate peace again.

 

Chapter Seven: The Japanese Surrender

 

The war in Europe ended and left a good portion of the continent in ruins. It probably took the USA and its Allies as much effort to help the nations of Europe get back on their feet as it did to defeat Hitler. While all this was going on, the Japanese were still fighting for what they had to know was a lost cause in the Pacific. For them it was all about honor and they were more than willing to fight to the last man.

 

General Douglas MacArthur was the Supreme Commander of all the Allied Forces in the Pacific. He estimated that if the Japanese home islands had to be taken by force, that could mean between five hundred thousand and one million Allied casualties. Fortunately, the President and Chiefs of Staff had another option.

 

The story goes that a letter written by Albert Einstein and sent to President Roosevelt at the beginning of the war warned him about the possibility that the Germans might try and build an Atomic Bomb. If they succeeded, they would have a weapon of mass destruction that we would not be easily able to defend against. As it turned out, the Germans were not as far along with their A-bomb research as we thought, but FDR made it a priority for the U.S. to develop their own A-Bombs just to be on the safe side.

 

The Atomic bombs were not ready in time to be used to help end the war in Europe, but were ready to be used against the Japanese by the summer of 1945. In what is still a very controversial decision, President Truman decided that using the A-Bombs against Japan that were provided to him by the ultra-secret Manhattan Project was a necessary action that would ultimately save far more lives than would be lost in the blasts.

 

Prior to the dropping of the bombs, the Japanese were offered the option of unconditional surrender. They were not told about the bombs, but indications were given to them that if they did not cease all hostilities and agree to the unconditional surrender, something very bad was coming. They refused to surrender under the terms that were offered to them.

 

The first A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Despite the death and destruction, the Japanese refused to surrender. After the second A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the Emperor and his government finally came together politically enough to agree that it was time to bring the nightmare of the last few years to an end before more lives and property were lost.