On this D-Day...

SV Rascal

On this D-Day...

6/6/2017

....I'm thinking of the Texas A&M Class of 1942

While going through my father's papers and books (after he passed away in April at 96), I found his Texas A&M yearbooks. In the yearbook of his senior year (1942), he made a note of his classmates who were killed in action in WWII. There were 2-5 on almost every page. (These were the young men who died at Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Anzio, Operation Overlord (D-Day), Battle of the Bulge, etc., etc...Here are three sample pages...

Liz Davis

6/7/2017 02:04:05 pm

Wow. That is really fascinating...in a devastating sort of way.

When we were cleaning out Steve's aunt's place after she passed away, I came across a box of letters. They were letters from a WWII-era young man to his parents, written as he took his first ever trip away from home to go to basic training.

I could almost follow him maturing from letter to letter. First, he was a boy filled with youthful excitement. Then, as he went to flight school, the excitement was dampened by the sheer exhaustion borne of really hard work and long hours, and the knowledge that they were being pushed along so quickly because those who went before them were being killed at a rapid rate.

Next came letters written from the U.K. He was now, although only a few months older than he had been at the start of the letters, clearly a mature man. Gone was the boyish excitement. The level of fatigue was now taken for granted. And the letters, while vague about what specifically he was doing, seemed clearly meant to reassure his worried parents even though their only child was definitely in harms way.

Then the letters ended.

Next in the box was a telegram stating he was missing.

What followed next was another bundle of letters. These were from the families of the other missing crewmen from his Flying Fortress. "I heard they were POWs in such and such a camp." Or, "Somebody said they had seen a wounded man that looked like the navigator on a POW train to.... If you hear anything, here's my address."

Beneath that bundle of letters was another telegram.

Next were newspaper clippings from the local MA newspaper, and one in Finnish, presumably from the small town in Finland where his parents had come from. Then came a letter stating his commingled remains had been buried in a joint grave in a National Cemetery somewhere near St Louis.

Beneath that were two medals.

And just like that, an entire family that would have been...kids and grand kids and great grand kids, and careers and houses, and trials and tribulations, and triumphs and victories...just like that, this whole future world was wiped away from the realm of the probable.

In its stead was left a world-worn middle aged couple who carried around a carefully packed shoebox until they died.

When they died, Steve's uncle was the attorney who dealt with their estate and thus probably came to be the protector of the shoebox. When Steve's uncle died, Steve's aunt closed up her husband's legal office, but kept the important records at their home, along with the precious shoebox.

When Steve's aunt died 2 years ago, we came into possession of the shoebox. And now, we have the shoebox and are the keepers of this single story of how an entire lineage full of hopes and dreams and potential was wiped out of existence.

Hard to wrap my head around the impact of a similar story happening inside the family of each of the men whose names your dad so carefully wrote into his yearbook.

Hard to wrap my head around how a generation that lost so many of its young men could come back, dust themselves off, and move on to build the world we have today.

I know you don't have any room to store things. But gosh, I'd sure hate to see that 1942 yearbook with your dad's notes lost to time.

Rick

6/10/2017 02:22:15 pm

Each of the guys in my dad's book had a life, a family and their own story but you can only guess. Your story of this one kid is incredible and really tells a very human story of one human being and family. Thanks so much for sharing!

Bill Rouse link

6/9/2017 07:02:25 pm

Liz & Rick,

Each of your stories are very powerful. Thanks for sharing then.

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S/V Rascal Blog

On this D-Day...

....I'm thinking of the Texas A&M Class of 1942

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