Celebration of Democracy

The fourth of July always makes me think of the fourth in 1968 I spent traveling from communist East Germany into Czechoslovakia, ultimately reaching Prague (see above). We had spent several days in East Germany where the buildings and landscape were dull and gray – no color anywhere – and the people were downtrodden and suspicious. As we were held up at the border for what seemed like hours, we experienced an epiphany about what it means to be an American and live in a free world under a democratic government – something we had taken for granted all our lives. We found ourselves singing “God, Bless America” to pass the time. I remember pulling out my red, white and blue Budweiser bowling shirt so I could be more patriotic (although I think the Budweisers originally came from Czechoslovakia).

I began to appreciate what my father and both parents had sacrificed so that we could be free. Certainly not as much as I appreciate them today and what they went through, but it was a start. While in Prague, we realized that the people were actually excited to see Americans. It was the summer of 1968, and they were moving toward democracy and away from the control of the Russians.

Every fourth someone asks me if I was going to see fireworks and I always replied, “I hate fireworks because they remind me of war.” I had reread Tim O’Brien’s classic story, The Things They Carried, which is a poetic description of what the Vietnam War was like on the ground. He does an amazing job of describing fear. Coincidently, I just watch a 1974 Academy-Award winning documentary called, Hearts and Minds, about the futility and waste of the Vietnam War. How different this war was from World War II. I lost many friends from high school. The whole country was conflicted about it, but if it hadn’t been for television bringing it in to our living rooms every night, most Americans, including myself, were far removed from the conflict, going on with our daily lives. I often think about if I had been a male instead of a female. Would I have signed up? Would I have been influenced by the legacy of my father in World War II? Would I have gone to Canada? As I said, I hate firecrackers and the thought of gunfire and bombs bursting makes me sick. I even hated the cowboy and Indian battles in the movies as a child, often hiding my eyes and covering my ears. I don’t think I would have been very brave. If women were running the country today, would we have so much war and so much military buildup?

On August 20, 1968, more than 500,000 Soviet Union troops invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia where their tight grip remained until 1987. We have a lot to be grateful for. With the exception of 9/11, we don’t know what it is like to be invaded and live in a war-torn country. We should thank God everyday that we live in the United States. Thank goodness my father played his part in defending our democracy in World War II

Off to Europe

I am sure that my parents knew that my father would eventually leave to fight in the war. I imagine that fact made every minute they were together very precious. As I said in my last post, knowing my parents, I bet they found time for a little fun. It was a busy time, yet exciting against the back drop of World War II. I know I should include what was happening to the United States at this time in this blog, but after watching Ken Burn’s “The War” (which every baby boomer should watch), the big picture is so overwhelming. I want to stay with one story. We pick up here in the interview as my parents and Lynn and Red leave Alamogordo. I continue to be amazed at the details my parents remember.

Dick: We brought Lynn back to Texarkana, and she got out at the bus station and rode the bus to Shreveport.

Nita: We had a little leave in Hot Springs before we went to Charleston. When we got there, we lived with Red and Lynn, and it was the only place we could find. It was upstairs over a chicken farm. We rode the train. We spent Christmas there in 1943. He (Dick) left Charleston, and went up east. Elise (Dick's sister) and her family were stationed there.

Dick: We went to New York City. While I was there I got on train and went back down there to Bambridge, Maryland. I guess I spend one night and then went back to New York City. Seymor Stutzel's, my navigator, family, lived in Brooklyn. The family had us over. Old Stutzel’s sister, she was older than most us. She lived all her life in Brooklyn; she'd never been over on Long Island. And Stutzel's mother and daddy came by to see him sometime. (As a child, I can remember Mr. Stutzel visiting our home in Hot Springs, and my sister and I giggling in the background at his Brooklyn accent; we had never heard anything like it.)

Nita: I didn't go to New York City with him. I got on a plane in Charleston to go back to Arkansas. I was going to go to Memphis, and Flo and Dub Jenkins (my mother’s best friend from high school) were going to meet me in Memphis. I was going to spend a few days with them and then ride the train home. I got to Atlanta, and they bumped me off the plane. So there I was. I didn't know anybody. So I sat and waited for awhile. Finally, I got up and I told them, "Listen, my husband had just gone overseas. I don't know anybody. And I need to get home." So they took me downtown to a hotel, and I spent the night, and then they got me a ticket on train to Memphis. I am sure I got bumped off the plane because the high military person needed my place. It was not unusual for civilians to be bumped off airplanes (not unlike flying today).

Dick: We picked up an airplane (a B-24 bomber) at Homestead on Long Island. We flew it from there to North Miami in Florida. We were there two or three days. We got our orders, but we didn't know where we were going; they just told us to take off. We flew down to Puerto Rico and turned and went to Trinidad. From what I remember, it was the best landing I ever made. I hit the ground and didn't even know it.

Nita: He was flying the “Nita-Lynn.” (Red and my father named their airplane after their wives, Nita and Lynn. In 1950, my sister received the name of my father’s bomber. She continues to wear the name with patriotic pride.)

Dick: We started flying the Nita-Lynn when we left Homestead in New York. Then we went to Belem which is just south of the Amazon. Then from there we went to a town called Bordelase, which is on the Atlantic Coast, in Brazil (I couldn’t find such a place on Google; I must have heard wrong). We left Bordelase, and flew to Dakar which was in French East Africa. I was tired by then and they wanted us to go on. I conned them into staying over in Dakar. While we were there, they said you have a day's rest, and tomorrow, somebody has gone down out in the Atlantic, and you are going on a search. So we went out there and looked for the people that went down. On that trip was when old Lefty, the radio operator . . . there was a Colt 45 hanging behind the pilot's cockpit and that crazy nut got to fooling with that thing and pulled the trigger a shot a hole in the side of the airplane. It scared the hell out of all of us. (If they only knew what was ahead of them.)

One other funny thing that happened. When we landed in Dakar, the natives there were at war. When we pulled up there, that radio operator said, "Good God, almighty, look at that Ubangi. There was one of them African American (I had to edit this word out) soldiers who had a fez that must have been that tall, and he must have been six and a half feet tall to begin with. And his damn old rifle had a bayonet on top. Hell, he looked like he was fifteen foot tall.

We left there and went to Tunis in Tunisia. To get there we had fly through a mountain pass. The first time we got up there, the damn thing was close and we had to make a 360 degree turn and finally got through there. You had to go through there to keep from getting in the clouds. If you get in the clouds and ice up, you'd be in trouble. Then when we hit the Mediterranean coast, we had to fly the coast line. It seemed like it took us forever. When we got to Tunis, we went down the runway, and the guy told us to turn left. Hell, it wasn't nothing but mud out there. "Through that mud?" we said, and he said, "Right through the mud." Tunis is in North Africa and Tunisia is on the Mediterranean. From there, we flew to our air base in Cerignola-Stornara,Italy. That’s where we made the bombing raids from.

And that's where we’ll stop the story for a while. 

A Sentimental Journey

A few years ago, I visited a dear college friend, Josephine, in Phoenix. She and her friend David took me to a “Night in the 40's Big Band Hangar Dance” at Falcon Field in Mesa, Arizona. Event flyers said: “Take a Sentimental Journey back to 1943 with ‘A Night in the 40s’ Big Band Dance." The ‘Night in the 40s’ features a WW II 1940’s musical show followed by a big band orchestra playing sounds of the era to dancing men and women dressed in period styles – all in the shadow of the vintage B-17 WW II Flying Fortress bomber ‘Sentimental Journey’!”

Writing this blog has fueled my obsession with the 1940s and World War II so I was game to go along with them because my parents loved this kind of music. While riding out to Mesa, I drove Josephine and David nuts talking about my parents’ stories. 

Once when I was about nine years old, we took a car trip across the country to California. On the way home, we stopped in Las Vegas and the first thing my parents did was make a reservation for a big band show, starring Russ Morgan. I remember my sister and I dying of boredom as my parents danced. We wanted to see real movie stars. The band droned on and we tried to get into the gambling room. We’d been playing slot machines for a long time because, in the 1960s, children could play slots in Hot Springs, Arkansas. We couldn’t understand why we were quickly removed from the gambling area. Back home, my parents bought a little stereo record player, and the first record they bought was Glen Miller, which they played all the time. The stereo was amazing technology for the time, and I sneaked a lot of rock and roll records in.

So back to the “Night in the 40s.” There was a costume contest and an amazing dance contest. It was sentimental to watch. Several women dressed as "Rosie the Riveter," Norman Rockwell’s painting that symbolized how many women helped the World War II effort. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., owns “Rosie” so I was excited to see these women, especially a little three-year old girl named Quinn dressed as Rosie who won the costume contest.

Several times I “teared” up during the night, thinking about my parents and their lives during the time the music was so popular. I was especially emotional looking at some of the World War II memorabilia around the hangar. There was one display with a replica of one of those, “Your loved one is missing in action . . .” telegrams. I have a one exactly like it. I believe the 1940s will always be with us. 

From San Antonio to Other Places

We last left my parents’ interview as they were discussing my mother’s trip to see my father in San Antonio. She was only able to stay one weekend in San Antonio, but I imagine they had a good time at that tea dance. My father was sent to what seemed like a lot of different places to get his training; I guess the Army Air Corps (now the Air Force) knew what they were doing. She visited or went with him when she could and lived in some unbelievable places by today’s standards. We have it so easy. She sometimes fixed up her friends with his buddies. One of these buddies my father got to know because their last names started with a “T” (Terrell and Teal) and they always had to line up together. And in 1946, I received my middle name from Frank Teal’s eventual wife, Carol. Here is another part of the interview with my parents:

Nita: From there (San Antonio) Dick went to Muskogee. He and Frank Teal rode the bus from Muskogee down to Hot Springs in the baggage compartment at Christmas.

Dick: You know the hat rack above the seat. (That's where they rode.) We did okay when you get stretched out.

Nita: After Christmas was when Ruthie Rigsby (Aunt Ruthie, my sister’s ex-husband’s aunt, owned the Pancake Shop in Hot Springs and now her daughter and son-in-law own it) and I went to Muskogee in my little green Ford. She had a date with Frank Teal. It had snowed, and we got stuck. The roads were so narrow back then, and I slipped off and got stuck. And I had all that rum in the back end. Rum and coke was what everybody drank back then. Oklahoma was a dry state. Your daddy paid for our trip by selling most of it. A man stopped to help and wanted to see if I had a chain in the back in. We wouldn't let him look in the trunk. (Growing up, my sister Nitalynn [You’ll be interested to know how she got her name too.] and I loved to hear this story; we could just see our mother standing firm by the trunk.)

Dick: We had some scotch whiskey for one of them old boys.

Nita: He had taken the orders and sent them home, and we had Dane Harris (local nightclub and liquor store owner who played a big part in Hot Spring’s colorful past) pack it in the back.

Dick: We made a buck or two on it. We went on to Coffeyville, Kansas. Nita came up there for a while. When we left there, we went to Altus, Oklahoma, and she came with me there.

Nita: We had a room with a woman whose son graduated when you (me) did. Dick had moved every six or nine weeks. He graduated in Altus in June of 1943.

Dick: When we left Altus, we drove out to my granddaddy's (Major Charles Roberson) house in Elk City, Oklahoma. We went out there and stayed overnight. They had a big picnic for us. They had everybody come. This was my mother's daddy. Aunt Bernice, Aunt Pearl, and Aunt Maude (these were my grandmother’s sisters – their mother, my great grandmother was named Dixie, my first name) were there.

Nita: I went with him to Fort Worth from Altus. Frank and Carol Teal were at Altus and that's the last that they were together in the service. Your daddy had met Frank Teal in the service. You know Teal and Terrell.

Dick: Our serial number were just one number apart. When they moved us out of that tent city into those barracks, he had to bunk next to me. He was from Detroit, Michigan, but he had spent a lot of time in New Mexico. He was kind of a cowboy type. He liked the open range. His family was in the plumbing business as well as I can remember. Evidently they were uptown. They had made lots of money.

Nita: They were about the same height. You could always spot them in parade because they were the tallest ones. Then he married Carol, and her daddy was an executive with the 3M company. They had money, but both of them were real nice.

Nita: We were in Fort Worth at Tarrant Field. We lived in a motel out Camp Bowie Boulevard. When he left there, he went to Tucson, and I went home. I didn't get to go.

Dick: After we left Tucson, we went to Alamogordo, and she came out there.

Nita: Lynn McCrocklin (Dick’s bombardier Red’s wife) and Nita stayed in what was damn near a pig-pen. It had an old stove in the middle, and we'd build a fire because we were cold, and then it would smoke us out. We'd have to raise the windows, and there'd be chickens and goats. It was quite a place.

Dick: She was in the ladies' restroom one night at a place we were at and she heard one woman talking about leaving so the next morning. Nita went over there about daylight and rented that place.

Nita: It was an old garage. The woman who owned it didn't even know the other woman was moving. I made a deal with her, and we got it. You had to go outside to go the bathroom. Then Red and Lynn got a place inside the house. When you left Alamogordo, we came home, and then went to Charleston, South Carolina.

As I sit here in a warm comfortable home, I think about all the places they had to live. From this distance, it sounds maybe like camping, but I’m sure it wasn’t even that comfortable. Knowing my parents, they probably managed to have a little fun. Without television or other kinds of entertainment, they must have talked a lot and made firm friends as the war pulled people together. 

Miracles

I’m taking a detour from parents’ interview to talk about miracles. The more I learn about my father in World War II, the more I realize how what a miracle it is that he survived and produced a family (all of us). A miracle happened this very week when the daughter of one of my father’s crew contacted me. She had Googled her father’s name and came upon the “My Father in World War II” blog. (See the photograph in my first post). Her father, Sgt. Herman Lipkin, was the radio operator and left waist gunner. 

After bailing out of the airplane and landing in a tree, her father badly damaged his leg (which he eventually lost). Partisans found him. She said, “The underground took him in the back of a truck, I believe. He was all covered up. As a matter of fact, he was blindfolded when they cut him down from the tree so as not to be able to reveal his whereabouts if he was captured and tortured. They took him to an airstrip and begged them to take my father on the plane. They did, and he was taken to a hospital. He was sent back to the United States and was in a hospital for quite some time. You know, when I write his story to you, I can't believe that he survived. It doesn't even sound real...more like a movie.”

She also told me, “My dad was listed as MIA (missing in action) for months and his parents thought he was dead. There's a book called Evasion and Repatriation by Edi Selhaus. My dad's story is in there on pages 75-80.”

I ordered the book and read his story. Herman Lipkin’s survival was indeed a miracle, thanks to the friends of the Allies. And what a small miracle the Internet has created. What are the chances of me hearing from the family of my father’s crew? It was wonderful to connect with Herman Lipkin’s daughter.  

I can’t believe Dick Terrell survived either. He was on his 13th mission when his bomber was hit. According to the Geneva Convention, once a soldier was parachuting in the air from his plane, the enemy cannot shoot at him or try to kill him – so the Germans couldn’t shoot at him or his remaining crew as they fell through the air.

My father landed in a tree as well, but was immediately rounded up by a German. And here’s another story that came through Facebook to me after I started this blog. A man named Harry Radar, who used to work for my father in his hardware store, told me that sometimes my father would talk about his war experiences. My father told him that when he got out of that tree, a very young German held a gun on him and because he was just a kid, my father was able to talk him out of shooting him. He was eventually transported to Germany and while in Berlin, waiting to be transferred to another train, the Army Air Corps bombed the train station. It was a close call. Once he made it to Barth, Germany, where he remained for 13 months, he lost 30 pounds from lack of food, and according to Red McCrocklin, the guards seemed to kill people at will. So many miracles. I am counting my blessings that my and my sister’s families are here today.

The Parents

While I named this blog, My Father in the World War II, wasn’t exactly straight. It was my parents’ war. My mother, Anita Dorothy Stueart Terrell, was as involved as well. I was blessed to be able to interview them on audio tape during a couple of Thanksgiving vacations on the Gulf Coast years ago. Dick and Nita (as they were called) were married in a double wedding with my mother’s best friend and her fiancee. Her friend's husband was sadly killed early in the war. Here is part of that interview to give you a perspective on what they endured even from the beginning (Keep in mind my father sometimes used salty language; I debated about editing it down, but decided to keep it as close to their “voice” as possible).

My father was born in Camden to Joseph Graham and Lela Roberson Terrell on July 9, 1916. His mother died when he was nine, and his father when he was 16. He attended Arkansas A&M in Monticello, Arkansas and then worked for Arkansas Power & Light Company as surveyor. After marrying Anita in 1942, he started a Civil Air Patrol course and joined the Army Air Corps. He became a 2^nd Lt in the Army Air Corps.

My mother was born to Millard Luther and Nina Snow Holcomb Stueart on November 7, 1920 in Tokio, Arkansas. Her father and older sister Helen moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1932 to purchase a small grocery store. In 1934, the rest of the family moved to Hot Springs. My mother graduated from Hot Springs High School in 1938 and attended Henderson State Teachers College. She was working at Sterling Store when she met my father through Lucille Terrell who was married to his brother, Joe Terrell.  

  

Dick: We got married on the second of January in 1942, (I found a note in an old diary that said, "It was by far the happiest day of my life.") and when we came back from our honeymoon, I had that “Dear John” notice, “you have been selected to serve you country.” (He had his physical for the Army Air Corps on January 10 and received the A-1 classification on January 16.)

Dick: We just went out to the Hot Springs Airport and took civilian pilot training. CPT, it was called. We did this to try to get in the Army Air Corps and to keep from being drafted. Since I had already gotten my draft notice when I joined the CPT, the draft was held up. Jiggs Nobles was my instructor; he died just a few weeks ago. We flew those little old Piper Cubs. I think you had to have eight hours of instruction before they would let you solo, and I’ll tell you what, flying that airplane ─ without the instructor ─ the first time was scary, but I did all right. I.G. Brown, who used to be the sheriff, was one of the instructors, but he was mainly a ground school instructor. But we learned it. (I also found a comment in his diary on February 26, 1942 that said, "I sure like flying." My father is in the back row, 5th from the right.)

Nita: We went on our honeymoon to Dallas; it was Grand Prairie, I believe.

Dick: We wanted to be in the Air Corps. We had agreed to join the U.S. Army Air Corps when we took the course and got out of that training, which lasted three or four months. When we got married, I was still working for Arkansas Power & Light. Somewhere along the line, I quit. Then they came up with a job surveying for a power line that they needed done in Hot Springs, and they gave me a crew and I did that, and when that was over with, I went to work for Nita's daddy (M.L. Stueart ─ we grandchildren called him Big Daddy – he owned a grocery warehouse and 13 grocery stores). Man, that was terrible. I loaded groceries and drove a truck. I didn't anymore know how to drive truck than anyone. We lived on Hawthorne and Central, up above the church part of the time. You know where Jack Benny’s liquor store is? Penny and Frances lived out there in apartments, and we stayed with them for a while.

Nita: Then he left in September of 1942, and I moved into Mother and Daddy's.

Dick: Nita carried myself and old Petey Parsley over to Little Rock. We spent the night over there.

Nita: Petey was an ace with the B-52. He was Raymond Clinton's (Bill Clinton’s uncle) nephew.

Dick: He slipped on an airplane wing and hurt his back. He was out for while and then went back. His sister was named Virginia, a good looking woman. Remember where Aunt Elise (Dick’s sister) stayed a couple of years ago by the Hamilton House. She lived catty-corner across the street. They had that liquor store where “Just Add Water” is now. She was married to Gabe Crawford first. We got a train in Little Rock and went to San Antonio. It was myself, and an old boy named Gray from Little Rock and another boy named Caruthers from Little Rock and then Bill Mitchell from up at Morrilton. There were five of us including Petey and me.

First thing we heard when we got to San Antonio was, "You'll be sorry." We heard that from then on. They told us to bring a toothbrush and not even another change of clothes. It was hotter then hell, and we stayed in those clothes for two weeks. You could stand them up they were so damn dirty. We were living in a tent city at that time. Finally they gave us some clothes and moved us across the road to some barracks. I guess we took pre-flight after we moved from the tents, which is the ground school before they began flight training. Of course, it was easy for me because I had had that CPT training.

Nita: And the first free weekend he had, the girls (Nita had two sisters, Helen and Frances) took me to Little Rock, and I got on the train to San Antonio. When I got on the train, there wasn't any place to sit, and of course, I had taken all these clothes. I had to sit on my suitcase all the way to San Antonio. One of the enlisted men on the train helped me get my suitcase off. It was so heavy. I took a taxi to the Gunner Hotel where we had reservations. We went to a tea dance. That hotel was where all the military hung out.

Dick: Cadets were running every which way. In 1945 (after the war), when we got back down there, it was all first and mostly second lieutenants. That was the same bunch running around the same way. There was one old boy from other North Little Rock. We saw him, and ask him if he was going downtown. And he said, "Yeah, and I swore to myself I wasn't going down there sober again. Them damn Mexicans, they drive like mad men.” (See, I warned you.)

There’s more interview to come. Just think about wearing the same clothes for two weeks or carrying a bag with so many clothes you can’t pick it up!