This is my story. It is based on actual events, but I have changed enough details so that other people in my story will remain anonymous. I will tell my story in installments. It will be much quicker than writing a book. I doubt I have enough time for that...
31 August 2015
I was born 18 September 1922 in State Center, Iowa. Yes, Iowa really has a town named State Center. There is even a marker in a field near town that marks the exact geometric center of the state. As you can imagine, it's not a big tourist draw.
In those days State Center only had about 1,000 or so people. It was a nice little town. My father worked for the lumber yard delivering coal. We were poor, and the Great Depression made it worse. I was six when that started but I don't remember much about it. We didn't know we were poor because everyone else in town was about the same. State Center was in the middle of rich Iowa farmland, and the farmers still produced the crops that kept the town in business. The local grain elevator was bustling each fall. The trains would come to town and load up the corn and haul it away to market. I used to like to watch the trains. They had steam locomotives back in those days. Lots of smoke and steam when an engine would start moving a train loaded with corn.
Starting at age 10 I grew a garden to help my family. I would sell sweet corn, tomatoes, and potatoes at a stand next to US Highway 30 which ran by in front of my house. I also sold to the local grocery store. When I turned 14 I started hiring out to local farmers pitching hay in the summer and manure the rest of the year.
I graduated from State Center High School in May, 1940. World War II was well under way in Europe. Some of my classmates went to Canada and volunteered. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. My family history argued that I shouldn't be a soldier, at least not in a war with Germany.
All my grandparents were born in Germany. My father's father actually came to the USA to avoid service in the Prussian army. He had been born in Schleswig-Holstein in 1849, and the turmoil of the "Schleswig-Holstein Question" was the background for his adolescence and early adult life. He learned the trade of a shoemaker as a boy and when he was 24 set up a shop in a little town east of Oldenburg. Soon after that he married his first wife and they had two children. When his wife died in childbirth in 1879, he was devastated. But Germans are tough. His daughters went to live with his late-wife's parents and he moved into the tiny apartment above the shoemaker shop. After a short time, he fell in love again, with a Catholic girl who came to his shop frequently. They were married in January 1881. At this point, my grandfather was drafted to serve as a boot maker for the Prussian army. This would mean leaving his home and new bride and traveling with the army in the event of a war or other army action. He and his new wife fled to Hamburg, where they boarded a ship for America.
My grandparents settled first in Chicago, where he started another shoe shop, and then moved to Iowa. They had 10 children. My father was number 6. He grew up in a home where war and armies were labeled the follies of European rulers. He learned to consider the USA as a haven from such horrible acts of men. When World War I came, my father did not volunteer. There was actually quite a bit of anti-German sentiment in the USA in general and in Iowa in particular at that time, so my father wasn't drafted. The Great War was over only a year after the USA entered the fray and life in Iowa went back to normal.
So, the family to which I was born was very pacifist, very isolationist, and very anti-military. When war came again in 1939 and escalated over the next two years, there was little chance that I would go to Canada and join up. On the other hand, if America entered the war, I might not have a choice.
My parents had saved up enough money to send me to aviation technician school at Iowa State College in Ames, just 20 miles west of State Center on Highway 30. The USA had declared itself the "arsenal of democracy" so the U.S. aviation industry was in full swing and growing rapidly. The demand for workers who could rivet and do sheet metal work was huge. When the first U.S. peacetime draft was held in 1940 I received a deferment as "essential to industry." When I graduated from the training program in May 1941, a friend and I drove his Model T jalopy to California. Our arrangement was that he would buy the gas and I would buy the oil. That engine was so loose that I spent more money on the trip than he did!
31 August 2015
I was born 18 September 1922 in State Center, Iowa. Yes, Iowa really has a town named State Center. There is even a marker in a field near town that marks the exact geometric center of the state. As you can imagine, it's not a big tourist draw.
In those days State Center only had about 1,000 or so people. It was a nice little town. My father worked for the lumber yard delivering coal. We were poor, and the Great Depression made it worse. I was six when that started but I don't remember much about it. We didn't know we were poor because everyone else in town was about the same. State Center was in the middle of rich Iowa farmland, and the farmers still produced the crops that kept the town in business. The local grain elevator was bustling each fall. The trains would come to town and load up the corn and haul it away to market. I used to like to watch the trains. They had steam locomotives back in those days. Lots of smoke and steam when an engine would start moving a train loaded with corn.
Starting at age 10 I grew a garden to help my family. I would sell sweet corn, tomatoes, and potatoes at a stand next to US Highway 30 which ran by in front of my house. I also sold to the local grocery store. When I turned 14 I started hiring out to local farmers pitching hay in the summer and manure the rest of the year.
I graduated from State Center High School in May, 1940. World War II was well under way in Europe. Some of my classmates went to Canada and volunteered. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. My family history argued that I shouldn't be a soldier, at least not in a war with Germany.
All my grandparents were born in Germany. My father's father actually came to the USA to avoid service in the Prussian army. He had been born in Schleswig-Holstein in 1849, and the turmoil of the "Schleswig-Holstein Question" was the background for his adolescence and early adult life. He learned the trade of a shoemaker as a boy and when he was 24 set up a shop in a little town east of Oldenburg. Soon after that he married his first wife and they had two children. When his wife died in childbirth in 1879, he was devastated. But Germans are tough. His daughters went to live with his late-wife's parents and he moved into the tiny apartment above the shoemaker shop. After a short time, he fell in love again, with a Catholic girl who came to his shop frequently. They were married in January 1881. At this point, my grandfather was drafted to serve as a boot maker for the Prussian army. This would mean leaving his home and new bride and traveling with the army in the event of a war or other army action. He and his new wife fled to Hamburg, where they boarded a ship for America.
My grandparents settled first in Chicago, where he started another shoe shop, and then moved to Iowa. They had 10 children. My father was number 6. He grew up in a home where war and armies were labeled the follies of European rulers. He learned to consider the USA as a haven from such horrible acts of men. When World War I came, my father did not volunteer. There was actually quite a bit of anti-German sentiment in the USA in general and in Iowa in particular at that time, so my father wasn't drafted. The Great War was over only a year after the USA entered the fray and life in Iowa went back to normal.
So, the family to which I was born was very pacifist, very isolationist, and very anti-military. When war came again in 1939 and escalated over the next two years, there was little chance that I would go to Canada and join up. On the other hand, if America entered the war, I might not have a choice.
My parents had saved up enough money to send me to aviation technician school at Iowa State College in Ames, just 20 miles west of State Center on Highway 30. The USA had declared itself the "arsenal of democracy" so the U.S. aviation industry was in full swing and growing rapidly. The demand for workers who could rivet and do sheet metal work was huge. When the first U.S. peacetime draft was held in 1940 I received a deferment as "essential to industry." When I graduated from the training program in May 1941, a friend and I drove his Model T jalopy to California. Our arrangement was that he would buy the gas and I would buy the oil. That engine was so loose that I spent more money on the trip than he did!