Month: December 2020

Trumbull – Dear Folks – Dave Is In Okinawa (1) – The Lid Is At Least Part Way Off – June 7, 1945

~ Janet McKee ~ 2 Comments

Judy Guion's avatar"Greatest Generation" Life Lessons

The letter I am transcribing is from a copy of a typed letter on onion skin or airmail paper. It is a very poor copy, water stained, creased with the last portion of the letter typed on the back of page 3 and bleeding through. 

dpg-dave-in-okinawa-1-june-1945

June, 7, 1945

Dear Folks:

Well, the lid is at least part way off. We got a new APO number today – APO 902. Now at least I can tell you I’m on Okinawa. I surmised that you already had guessed that but now you know officially. I am afraid this letter will be a little jumpy because there are so many things I want to say now that I can tell you some things of interest.

I don’t know what you’ve read about this island but it’s really very beautiful. They told us before we hit the island that it was a hell hole…

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Havoc on the Home Front Impacted Christmas

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GP's avatarPacific Paratrooper

Female Santa of the 1940’s

From: “The Voice of the Angels”, 11th Airborne newspaper, vol. 201

Fewer men at home resulted in fewer men available to dress up and play Santa Claus.  Women served as substitute Santas at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City and at other department stores throughout the United States.

During WWII Christmas trees were in short supply because of lack of manpower to cut the tress down and a shortage of railroad space to ship the trees to market.  Americans rushed to buy American-made Visca artificial trees.  The electric lights that were designed in the 1940’s are still in use today.

Artificial tree in 1942 Sears catalog.

Travel during the holidays was limited for most families due to the rationing of tires and gasoline.  Americans saved up their food ration stamps to provide extra food for a fine holiday meal.

Vintage Christmas

Many ornaments were…

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Pre-Christmas post from Star and Stripes – 75th Anniversary

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GP's avatarPacific Paratrooper

In The Past

1964, a Vietnam Christmas for Bob Hope

Bob Hope brings Christmas cheer to troops in Vietnam

1964 | BIEN HOA, South Vietnam — Bob Hope brought some laughter to a place of war Christmas Eve.

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Residents of an outer island of Palau retrieve boxes from the U.S. Air Force’s 1999 Christmas drop.

Airmen prepare for annual Christmas gift drop to Pacific islanders

2005 | ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam — Airmen geared up to deliver items to Pacific islanders who can only dream of department stores.

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Santa Claus hands out presents to the men of Detachment 35, Company B, 5th Special Forces Group, in Vietnam at the end of 1968. The Air Force lent Santa six C7 Caribou cargo planes for his deliveries in Vietnam. The planes enabled him to visit some 50 isolated outposts – such as this Special Forces camp in Nahon…

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Writing Class

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Janet's avatarJanet's thread

A few years ago I did an adult education course in writing. It was a very interesting class. We had all sorts of assignments and we had to read out our compositions. It was rather daunting at first and I felt quite shy and self-conscious about it. On the other hand it was very entertaining to hear the others in the class. One learned a lot about each of the 15 or so contributors. I enjoyed the class very much – it was so sociable and also we received good criticism and tips for improving our writing.

Our teacher was primarily interested in poetry, being a poet herself with several published works. I felt she wanted to turn each of us into poets but still we were allowed to go our own way, up to a point. I was particularly keen to work on my autobiography but she put me…

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Two Roads

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Speculating on alternative futures. Another Robert Frost poem.

The Road Not Taken – a narrative poem first published in 1916 in Mountain Interval.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth,

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves so step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I should be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

I Heard The Bells…….

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A poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Written in 1863 at a time of personal and national despair.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of a all Christendom

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime,

A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound

The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men

And in despair I bowed my head

“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

Searching for a Theme

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Should I post a favorite poem? A poem that keeps coming to mind is Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I m apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do we make good neighbors? Isn’t it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn’t love wall,

That wants it down. I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will nt go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’