Memorial Day
5/24/2009
Dear friends and family,
It has been 3 weeks since I have written anything. Why? You really need something foremost in your mind to write anything worth reading. Memorial Day brings back so many memories as I grew up in the 40's during WWII as a child.
But my memories are something I cherish, even if sometimes they are painful. My mother had 3 brothers in WWII, one in Europe and two in the Pacific. We were constantly putting packages together and off to the post office in Bessemer to mail these precious packages.
I remember dad buying candy, cigarettes, Zippo lighters, lighter fluid, yes back then you could mail lighter fluid. I have letters my uncles wrote my mom and blacked out parts where they went through a military censorship. They could not tell us anything about where they were, just general thoughts about maybe what they might need but we never knew where they were, nor where they were going.
The thought that stands out most in my mind was the phone call my father took when the family was notified my uncle Enoch was missing in action. The sadness was overwhelming knowing "Junior" might have been killed in action. It was dad and mom then getting us into dad's 1940 Dodge and driving to my grandparents home at 1908 Clarendon Avenue in Bessemer, Alabama.
Thinking back, my parents must have been in Enoch's record to call his sister first. My dad was the most senior of the inlaws, a few years older than all the kids. And my mom was the 2nd oldest sister but I believe the most stable and able to handle bad news better than any other. We got to our my grandmothers house and I remember what my dad and mom said to them after we all gathered in the living room. He was so great in saying Enoch was missing but he truly believed he was MIA as they did not find his body. I remember us all praying together and then calling the other sisters and brother in and telling them the news.
We all kept our hopes up and soon the Red Cross called again and told us Enoch was on a list provided by the Germans that he was a POW. That was all we knew, but just knowing he was alive was such a relief. The Red Cross then gave us a mailing address for POW and again we gathered things to mail Enoch and disguising things in sealed candy boxes than dad had put cigarettes in the bottom layers then had the candy company reseal the boxes. I even remember the name of the candy company in downtown Birmingham. It was Bell Camp Candy company!
We sent so many boxes, I guess a thesaris for the pain of having a brother held by the Germans. Luckily he escaped some months later when the allies pushed through Belgium approaching Germany. He survived some terrible train rides that had Jews in the same cars. He remembered the Germans painted large "P" on the tops of the train cars so the English and American figher planes would not machine gun the cars.
He said the planes would buzz the cars, and the train would stop and all the prisoners got out so the pilots knew these were not trains with German troops or equipment. Enoch said they had to do this as the Germans painted a "P" on the top of just about all their cars and this was the Allies used to identify the real "POW" cars.
It was on a march that Enoch and 4 other GI's escaped. They stopped one night and used a village to house the Jews and POWs overnight. These guys felt they would survive if they got into Germany, so they hide in crawl spaces and in between walls in some homes and barns. The Germans went though these building using bayonette and poking between the slots in the wall luckily missing all of these 5 guys. They waited hours before venturing out and then trying to find the allies pushing toward Germany.
They soon ran into a Russian army and they were held and questioned by the Russians refusing to get them a liason officer to repatriate these guys. Enoch said that luckily they escaped the Russians again one night and soon found a British force and was soon sent to a ship off the coast of Italy. Due to injuries, he was sent to Wales and a hospital there. There he met Mary, a volunteer nurse that was taking care of our GI's and others these.
He ended up after leaving the hospital, going home to Wales with Mary and marrying a young nurse. We loved the news knowing he was OK and he was bringing home a Welsh wife. So a great good comes out of a terrible experience. They were married over 50years with my aunt Mary passing away this last year. I share this story as Enoch now has lost so many memories and these are some he shared with me and my family too many years ago. Happy Memorial Day...
Jeff the Knutt in the Ham
