An echo from World War II
Both my parents were avid readers.
They enjoyed good fiction and history, and dinner conversations were often
about what they had read or were reading. My father also read math and physics
books as though they were novels. He had shelves of them which was unusual for
a real estate broker.
As an American officer, Dad was in
the UK from February 1942 until March 1943. He was trained in radar with the
British Army, and on his return the US had time at Wright-Patterson Field and later
at Fort Brady, Michigan, where the radar stations were protecting the Sault
Locks from a possible German raid from Norway over the pole.
Those locks carried a huge
percentage of American iron ore and steel, and a strike would have crippled
production and extended the war by several years.
It was at Fort Brady that he met my
mother who was a WAC aircraft plotting officer and the WAC company commander.
Less than a year after they met, my father was sent to the Philippines where he
trained radar operators and set up radar stations on islands shortly after the
Marines had re-captured them. Often, he’d arrive before bodies were buried.
This took him around the Philippines, to New Guinea, and to Pratas Island,
China.
While my mother never knew exactly
where he was or what he was doing, she followed the South Pacific news closely.
As a teenager in the 1960s, WWII
was before the beginning of time. As a result, I had no idea how fresh in my
parents’ minds it was. They talked about it, but mostly about friends they’d
made; acts of kindness they’d experienced, and how even then, the history was
becoming distorted or forgotten.
For example, on the fiftieth
anniversary of D-Day, one of the UK tabloid newspapers ran a “sensational
feature” about how many American soldiers had been killed during a pre-invasion
exercise and were buried in Devon. The story was billed as one that had been
supressed and was only now coming to light. The reality was that it had been
fully published in several of the official histories in the late 1940s and
early 50s. I was first aware of it when my mother told it to me on the way home
from seeing The Longest Day in 1962, and I heard is several times
afterwards.
My mother’s interest in history
continued until the end of her life. One day when she was 102, she was at a
committee meeting for an organisation she was still active in. (She was also
still in a book club that had given her a Kindle for her 100th
birthday. She loved it because she could enlarge the type.) At this meeting,
one of her friends said:
“Janice, I’m reading a fascinating
book about a plane crash in New Guinea during WWII. Only two soldiers and a WAC
survived and had to find their way down
the mountain avoiding the Japanese and natives. You were a WAC, so I thought
you might be interested.”
My mother replied, “Yes. That would
have been Margaret
Hastings. I was her commanding officer.”
Lost
in Shangri-La (2012) is by Mitchell Zuckoff
Michael Reidy, www.pmichaelreidy.com
Outdoor Loos in the Middle of the Night
Hugs
Pauline
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