Memories of WW II

By Gary White

Much of my early life in Cedar Vale, Kansas was colored in one way or another by the ongoing war. My first memory is a car ride I took with my father to deliver my uncle Vernon to Ft. Leavenworth before being shipped to India to help build the China-Burma Highway. I don’t think I would have been over three years old at the time, but I remember dad and Vernon riding in the front of the car and me mostly sleeping in the back. I remember waking up when they got to Leavenworth in the middle of the night and I saw all the men in uniform and guards standing at the gates. We said our goodbyes and dad must have driven home directly and without sleeping. It would be several years before we would see Vernon again, but grandmother had letters from him that had been Photostatted after parts had been blacked out. The whereabouts of service men, particularly those on sensitive missions was withheld from the relatives.

My next memory of the war is looking at the black headlines of newspapers and the photos of scenes of the war. The adults gathered around their radios for news of the war every day and read Ernie Pyle’s articles in the newspaper. My friends and I played war all the time, using the balsa-wood airplanes that came in Kellogg cereal packages that we carefully cut out and assembled. I knew that very important things were happening in the world, but had little sense of where these events were taking place. Many of my friends’ fathers were in the service and their mothers were left at home to raise the kids and try to make ends meet. My father never was drafted because his occupation (delivering gasoline to farmers) was deemed vital to the war effort. Mother was in constant turmoil thinking that he would lose his deferment at any time and we’d be left alone. She was already working for the telephone company and making a reasonable income, but she was always in fear for dad’s life should he be drafted.

Many items were rationed during the war. We had coupon books for many food items and there was a lot of trading of coupons back and forth among the neighbors for items that each preferred or didn’t need. A much more obvious effect of rationing was that gasoline was also rationed. My father had to collect coupons for every gallon of gas he sold and had to account for them. I can remember him sitting at home with small mountains of cardboard coupons counting and counting to try to get the coupons to match the level of the tanks in his storage yard in the south part of town. It must have been a difficult task because he was always in a state of anxiety about it.

Another memory was the night that a train load of German prisoners of war came through Cedar Vale. It was dark and many people, my family among them, turned out to see the enemy in the flesh. Each train car was lighted inside and was filled with young men in uniform. Soldiers with machine guns stood at each end of the car to keep the prisoners from escaping. I don’t know what the young Germans would have done if they had escaped into the wilds of southern Kansas, but the U. S. Army took no chances. When the train stopped at the railway station to take on water and coal we were face to face with the enemy. Ugly cat calls came from the crowd and the Germans on board threw out paper water cups and other small pieces of paper with slogans such as, “Kill the Jews and the war is over.” It was altogether an impressive sight and it is burned into my memory in vivid detail. My father collected one of the cups, which had swastikas drawn all over it. The cup became one of the mementos of the war at our house.

For children of that era, the war seemed to have always been with us and would always be there. My first indication that the world could change, and sometimes drastically, was the death of President Roosevelt. I was alone at home at the time and listening to the radio. Dad was out delivering gasoline and mother was across the street working at the switchboard. To me, Roosevelt had always been president and the news of his death came as a terrible shock. It was rather like hearing that God had suddenly died. I remember running across the street to deliver the news to mother and wondering what might happen next.

What happened, of course, was President Truman and then the news of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Suddenly the war was over and we were launched into the Atomic Age. We had no idea of what that meant and we were several years away from the “Duck and Cover” era. There was general rejoicing in Cedar Vale. The old jail that sat behind the City Hall was dragged out into the intersection by L. C. Adams, the post office, and City Hall and there was a huge night time bonfire. Since I was living only a block away I was there for the whole affair. I well remember the flames that were higher than the top of the Adams building and the excitement of the gathered citizenry of Cedar Vale. That we made it through without burning other downtown buildings is a wonder. I have often speculated about the meaning of the jail burning to Cedar Valeians. Did we think that there would be no crime after the war? Did the building simply need to be razed and this was a good excuse? In any event, it was not long before a new concrete block jail went up on the same site and Cedar Vale again had a place for drunks to sleep it off.