GOOD VVVV THERE WAS TALK OF WAR
Bud Kendrix had 40 acres, a mile east of Porum. There was goat roping. One Sunday afternoon we were all there watching, Rondal roped his calf, and was tying it. The calf was kicking and got his foot caught in the front pocket of Rondal's new Levis, the first time that he had worn them.
We all heard the loud, “Rip!” as those Levis tore—all the way down. Rondal got the calf tied, in good time. He walked off, bent over, clutching the front of his jeans. He had to go home and get some more Levis.
Empires Daddy would let us ride his stock. I don't know why. Most people wouldn't, sometimes they would get hurt, a leg broke. When I left for the army I would probably get on any thing to ride it. I usually would.
Orba Lee remembers ,"We went down to the river bridge, 7 or 8 miles past Briartown and have parties. Games like, ‘drop the handkerchief’ and put on shows. I would try to ‘testify like Old Man Sexton.’ We didn’t take food or drinking water. Just a bunch of us played on the smooth sand that had washed in, and had a big time.''
That bridge washed out lots of times, the river would cut a new channel in the sand, around the end of the bridge. Thelmer remembers seeing a pretty good size house floating down the Canadian River. There was a man on top of it. He got out onto the bridge. It would come a flood and wash a lot of the crooks and bends out of the river. It would cut across and waste a lot of good land.
Callie Woods, Truman's brother-in-law had Truman and Rondal helping dig a cistern. They got down to rock. Truman said, "I believe we've got enough of this black powder." Callie said, "Let's put in two more to be sure." Rondals car was on the other side of the house. It blowed rock 40 ft high and one come down and tore a hole in the top of the car. It broke out window lights, too. That loosened the rock and they got it as deep as they wanted it.
I, Thelmer, went to town and looked at the postoffice bulletin board, at the very first draft notices. My name was 5th from the top. Just below, was my friend, Ted Thompson's name. He was the brother of Truman's wife, Empire. We would be having to leave in three weeks. We drove to Muskogee and talked to the recruiters.The first draft was to be just for a year
They said that if we volunteered for 3 years that we would get ratings much faster, than if we were 'draftees'. And we could probably get out of the army at the same time the draftees did. The ratings that we got would be permanent, not 'temporary war ratings'. What they said, turned out to be true. It helped me several times. So we volunteered, went home and told our folks
They knew that we would have been drafted in three weeks anyway.
I left my mandolin at home when I went to the army.
Nobody remembers what became of it, I sure do wish I had it.
Orba Lee, she remembers her friend Molly Cornsilk, her brother was drafted into the army. He soon showed up at home again. "Me no like that job. Me come home."
We enlisted October 22, 1940. I served 5 years and 18 days, to Oct 4, 1945
They drove us to Tulsa and sent us on a train to San Antonio. We wore our civilian clothes. Ted got all the rolls of toilet paper that he could find. He got as close to the front of the train as he could and he opened a window. He held a roll of the toilet paper out the window---on a stick.
The paper streamed down the side of the train---oh, it went a long ways.
Fort Sam Houston was in San Antonio, Texas. We were given army clothes and were assigned to a tent in ‘tent city.’ We changed clothes and I hung my suit and felt hat on a nail.
A Sergeant come in and ordered me to put them in a bag. I didn't move and he grabbed them and crammed them in the bag; including my new felt hat. I hit the Sergeant. He didn’t get up, he might not have been able to.
A man with a gun marched me to a man at a desk.
He just set there. I asked, "You wanted to see me?"
He asked, "Is that any way to address an officer?"
I answered him. "I don't know anything about addressing an officer.
Captain, "Have you had the 'Articles of War' read to you?" I said, "No, He called a Lieutenant in and told him to read them to me, out under the shade of a tree. Usually they are read to a whole company at a time.
I was restricted to camp for 30 days. All the others were too.
It wasn't long before there was provision made to hang civilian clothes up.
One afternoon, we didn't have anything else to do. Ted and I went to the obstacle course that was across from our tents. We were running through it, just playing. We liked to run and jump and catch the top of the
8 foot wall. We would swing our leg over it and go over the wall.
When a Lieutenant stopped, we thought that we were in trouble.
"What are you soldiers in trouble for--that you are having to run this course,
this time of day?" We told him, "We are just having fun."
He shook his head, "I wish I had a bunch like you in my outfit.”
OPAL, my sister just younger than me, was sick. I come home for a few days, My first trip home, all the folks gathered. They were proud of me. They all were there, every time I come home. Mama had killed 16 fryers, they were still small.
Christene remembers that a car come by and run over a chicken and killed it. So they had 17 fried chicken for dinner. I couldn't enjoy the big dinner.
I never hated anything in my life, as I did the army. My family never knew how I hated it. I never did let my folks know how lonesome I was.
(And why would you think that I wasn't lonesome in the CCC?
I had to go to the CCC camp so that Poppy would have the $25 a month that they sent him; to buy food for our family. I was drafted into the army. There was no way out and I did the best that I could.)
While I was home, Ted wanted to wear my blue serge dress suit. He turned the coat sleeves and pants legs up and pressed it--to fit him.
I had a shock, when I went to put it on. He didn't cut it off.
It wasn't long before Ted transferred to an army base in Abilene, Texas. He was soon in an accident, he was driving a jeep and it went off a cliff.
MY BEST FRIEND died, May, 27, 1941.
Me and Ted Thompson had been in the service for six months.
My Captain called me, and gave me a bus ticket to Muskogee, Oklahoma.
I had instructions to go to Ted's funeral. I was to wear my full uniform and stand at the head of the casket, at parade rest. I refused.
I tried to get out of it. I was ordered to go. They showed me how.
I was afraid they had someone from the Army watching me.
I walked the body to the grave, and stood there at parade rest, at Coleman cemetary. It was less than a quarter mile from my own home.
It was the first 'war funeral' around there. Ted and I were both raised there.
Everybody that I ever knew--was there at that funeral.
I could feel their eyes, and I knew that they were all looking at me.
I never felt so little, I wanted to get off and hide.
Back in San Antonio, I got on a crowded city bus. The bus driver told an old black woman, "Get up and give that soldier your seat." I told her not to get up. I would have fought that bus driver if he had made her get up.
Cook and Bakers school, it was four weeks, and I liked it.
They gave us recipes, for large amounts. One day they looked at my records
“This soldier hasn't had basic training. We better get him out of here."
Camp Wolters, I was transferred there.
It was a new base that was being built 48 miles west of Fort Worth on the US hwy 80-A. It spread over16,000 acres on the rolling cedar hills in Parker and Palo Pinto Counties, just east of Mineral Wells, in Palo Pinto County,Tx
My friend, Sgt Smokey Wilson a cook, bought a new green 1942 Ford
Then a law come out, that 1942 cars were rationed and only certain people, like doctors, could buy one. He thought for the longest, that they were going to take his car away from him.
Finally they classed his car as ‘Recreation for Soldiers’.
My friend Ray Bennett and I and two other cooks, rode with him from Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, Texas, to the new base. We used our traveling money to pay for the gas. The base was not ready, they had us stay in a hotel in town and gave us "meal tickets'. We stood around on the streets and stared at the people and they stared at us. The good rest rooms in the Baker and Crazy hotels were all pay. Us soldiers would flip a coin to see which one of us would crawl under a door, to open it for the rest of us.
The barracks were ready in a couple of weeks. It took another week before they could feed us. Then there were no salt and pepper shakers, for our tables. The next time we went to town, we each brought back a shaker in each pocket.
Gas was rationed, but there was a certain station in Mineral Wells, where soldiers could usually go and fill up, without stamps. Some soldiers would sign up that they owned a car, when they didn’t, to get ration stamps.
There was a two mile sidewalk, paved to town. I think the bus cost seven cents at first. I could always catch a ride. I never walked that sidewalk.
I got to going to a 'duck pin' bowling alley, in town and made friends there. I liked to bowl and I seldom lost, I bowled 300, lots of times.
I got paid some. Sometimes I would bowl for the 'house', where the looser would pay. Most people didn't know it.
The owner told me to let the other fellow beat sometimes.
Ray Bennett met Ludie. Before long she mentioned that she had a niece. They arranged a blind date, a double date.
Thelmer Moore and Annie Louise Knight. We liked each other.
She had a boy friend who had joined the army. She soon got a ‘Dear Jane’
letter from him. We had a date that night, every night. I pealed an apple with my pocket knife and fed it to her, and wiped her tears. I told her that 'You are my Sunshine' was our theme song.
Louise never told me--that was what her red headed, first boy friend had said too. (77 years later; I wonder if I had married him, would I now have a cute red headed grandson, like that boy that I see now at church.)
‘Moore’ was what I was called in the army, my friends did too.
I was cook at first, then made Mess Sgt, there was three shifts. Cooks had a separate room because of their work hours, 24 hours on and 48 hours off.
More cooks were needed, as more men were drafted. The army was expanding. They wanted cooks trained and sent out. I had sixteen ‘green’ cook trainees, because of that, I had to be there every day. You couldn't do much of anything with that many, they just got on each others way.
There was a kitchen at one end of the mess hall. Tables with benches built on, to seat 4 or 5 on each side. They were lined up in rows, the plates were in rows too. You could look down them and see that they were straight. There were usually 300 men in the company and sometimes 4 or 5 holdovers
There was a table at the end of the mess hall, where the Officers ate the same food. Some of them complained. The Batalian Commander told me to treat them the same. They picked a soldier to wait on their table. He was called a ‘dog robber.' When the men got to talking to noisy, the Company Commander would motion me, pressing with his hands ‘down’.
I would blow a whistle and they would quieten down.
When Camp Wolters first opened, I wrote the menu and bought the food that the men ate. That was in Company B, 63rd Training Battalion. I had fifty-one cents a day, to feed each man. I come to Ben E Keith in Ft Worth and bought green vegetables. Just anywhere that I wanted to buy the food.
I had to account for every penny.
Soon they had one Mess Officer, who wrote menus and bought food for the whole Camp. They delivered ours to our mess hall. Sunday for supper, we always had sandwiches. Men got to where they wouldn’t be at the mess hall for supper, on Sundays. We had lots of bologna, it come in fat, long rolls. Sometimes we had 25 pounds that we had to get rid of. That wasn’t a big problem, after I met the Gill family, Dock, in Louise’s family loved it.
OPAL, My sister just younger than me, was sick in 1941,(She died November 20, mumps, heart trouble and blood problems). I got a three day pass and went to see her. The last two times that I got to go see her, she was in the hospital in Muskogee. The quickest and easiest way to get there from Mineral Wells, was to 'thumb a ride'. I was a proud U S soldier. I had a staff-sergeant rating, with my stripes on my sleeve. Everyone stopped to pick up a soldier then, and no one had any thought of danger.
On my way back, I was nearly there. It was 17 miles on to Camp Wolters, I would get back on time. I was at the edge of Weatherford,
waiting for some one to come along and give me a ride.
A county sheriff car was driving west, with two uniformed men.
It slowed down and stopped. I thought, "Boy, I sure am lucky,"
One officer got out and told me to get in the front seat, he got in the back. When they turned the sheriff car around, I told them that I was going to Camp Wolters. They told me to hush, they kept driving.
I protested and the one in the back, punched me with a sawed-off shotgun.
I protested again, he punched me in the neck with the gun, it hurt.
He said, "I'll blow your head off if you don't hush." I believed him.
I wanted to tell them that all they would have had to do was call Muskogee and they could have found out that I had just come from my
sister's bedside, in the hospital there.
They drove me to the courthouse and I waited and waited. Finally they stood me in a line of men. I was the only soldier in the bunch. A tottery old lady come in to look at us. She walked down the line real slow. She stopped when she come to my uniform. They had me to say certain words to her. Finally she shook her head and said, "No, he's not the one." I didn’t know what it was about, but I sure was relieved.
They showed me the door and said that I could go. It was the first time that I had been allowed to talk.
I said, "Wait a minute, you have held me here, until I am late for duty. Now I am AWOL." They had me driven to my company headquarters and told them why I was late. I was boiling mad.
THE PROVO MARSHAL, I went to the Camp Legal Officer and told him what had happened. He said, "Forget it, we have to get along with them, over there in Weatherford."
The next day, I was still mad. Ray Bennett, my best friend, borrowed a car from his girl friend. We checked out two army 45's and ammo and drove to Weatherford. We walked all over that courthouse. We prowled the halls with our loaded 45’s and looked in open doors.
If I had seen either one or both of those Weatherford Sheriff Officers, we would have shot them.
‘They would have deserved it, for the treatment they gave a US soldier.'
I have had a very hard time with my feelings for any Police Officers.
It has been hard to raise my three sons to respect law officers.
I am still hurt, 65 years later.
Thel has been gone 3 years. I always thought the Parker County Sheriff should know this. He might use this story for teaching.
Nov. 2015, 74 years after it happened; I sent him this story.
He never tried to contact me.
We got quite a bit of lamb to cook. It was good and I liked it, but the recruits wouldn’t eat it. We had to have our menu posted. Just before the men come to the mess hall, I changed the word ‘lamb’, to ‘veal’ cutlets or ‘beef’ steaks. They would eat it all.
I would go right out and change the name, after they left, so I wouldn’t get in trouble. Some of the man would tell me that they knew it was lamb.
If we were short on any other food, I would write ‘lamb cutlets’ on the menu and a big lot of the men would go to town and buy their meal.
We got our meat, half a beef at a time, most near always. I cut it off the bone. I always saved the bones and made soup. The men knew that I always had a pot of soup on the stove and they could ask for it when they wanted it.
An older Colonel had stomach trouble and he learned about my soup. He would come any time to get it. He might come the middle of the morning for me to fix his breakfast.
I nearly got in trouble when a I Star General inspected our Mess hall. He rubbed his white gloves over the top of the fire extinguisher that was hanging between the stoves. He found some dust.
Sgt Collins, from North Carolina, one of the cooks, said, “Sir, we haven’t fried an egg on that fire extinguisher, in over 3 months.” As Mess Sgt, I was responsible for everything that was said or went on there. The General filed charges, then dropped them, because so many people were laughing at him.
A new cook come in, I stopped him from putting a big pan of eggs in the oven, to bake them for breakfast. The plates of the recruits, after they ate, showed that they wouldn’t eat the baked eggs. I told him that he had to scramble them, on top of the stove. They must be stirred as they are cooked. He thought that I didn’t have the authority, I sent a runner to get First Sgt. Lasquist. The cook told him that it was ‘to much work’. He was told to do it my way. The next time he was on duty, he still put the big pan in the oven.
I just happened to come in and catch him. “That shows a bunch of laziness.
You put that pan of eggs on top of the stove and slowly stir it. Or you can transfer out of this kitchen.” He did it my way.
There was a ‘wartime order’ that all loaves of bread sold in the US were to stop being sliced. It was ‘to save electricity.’ It was several months before that stupid rule was stopped.
The General over Camp Wolters put out an order that no soldier was
to carry his baby, when he was walking on the street in town. He had to be ready to salute any officer that he met. I was going to carry Benny Thel any time that I wanted to. That order didn’t last long enough for me to test it.
We had a big hand turned slicer. It sliced bread, bacon, anything.
We cut the bacon rine off and rubbed it across the griddle, before cooking hotcakes. We had two big stove tops. One cook would pour batter for 16 hot cakes on each one. Another cook was flipping them and taking them off into the plates of the recruits, as they walked by.
` The draftees were fed good, a balanced diet. The ones that come into the army skinney, they gained a little weight. One recruit gained a little weight, he said, "The army is puttin' milk in that gravey." The fat ones struggled with the physical exercise and they lost a little.
All the cooks went to the office and requested, to be transferred out of the kitchen. The Colonel come to me and asked, “Why?” I told him that Crowder, the company commander, had ordered them to cut and section the grapefruit, for the 300 men, for breakfast each morning. The cooks would have had to come in at midnight to get them all cut. That would have wasted a lot of grapefruit too, because not every man wanted to eat a grapefruit.
Crowder changed his mind.
To train the draftees, There was a Tailorcraft tandem (one seat right behind the other) small airplane that used to simulate bombing. The plane would fly low over the troops. In our kitchen, we filled the one pound paper bags of flour, for them to throw. You were considered a casualty if any flour got on you. The small plane stalled out, it got to low and crashed onto the trainees. One trainee was killed, that ended that type of training.
There was no separate Air Force in WW 11, it was part of the army.
Contentious objectors did not believe in fighting or carrying arms. They were drafted and had to ‘fulfill their military obligation’. We looked down on most of them, because we believed they were ‘faking it’.
One conscience objector would set on the high seats at the parade field and hold a pole like he was fishing. One stood around praying nearly all the time and we kinda' stayed away from him. He did the work that he was told to do and we sorta' liked him.
I was Mess Sgt and one was sent to the kitchen to work at whatever I told him to do. I had them before, and they usually were good workers. This guy would not do anything, he moved around mumbling. I needed a ‘pot scratcher’. There were pots and pans that had to be washed and put away. The mess hall was going to be inspected by the Officer of the Day, and it would be my fault if I couldn’t, or didn’t, have everything in order.
I said everything to him that I could think of. I was going to be in trouble. I got so mad that I socked him with my fist. I was sorry, as soon as I hit him, standing there defenseless. It left a mark over his eye.
I thought that I was going to be in big trouble. The 1st Sgt walked in, just before I hit him. He heard what I had said, he just turned around and walked out. He said that he would take care of it, if the soldier reported it. That hit that I put on him, I guess it was what he needed.
He run over to those pots and pans and he did a good job of cleaning them. He had it done by inspection and he was a good worker after that.
It cost me a good nights sleep though - I had hit a defenseless man.
A number of German soldiers were in a POW camp, as part of Camp Wolters. Part of their area was alongside the main road into town. There was a lot of traffic on that road. The guards over the German prisoners said that the Germans believed that the cars going along the road, were being driven back and forth—to try to make the Germans believe that the Americans had plenty of cars and gasoline.
Luigi was a cook and always late. Breakfast had to be started at 4:30.
When he wasn’t there, I had to do his work. I finally went to the 1st Sgt and told them to 'ship him out'. He come at me, wanting to fight.
He had to go to the brig for it, before he went overseas.
After the group of draftees had their training, they were “shipped out,’ put on a troop train and taken to ships to go overseas. The ‘cadre,’ the group of 14 or 15 of us that trained them, stayed with them, to the ships. The cooks were part of the cadre and were sent on the trains to prepare their meals.
The company’s cadres’ took turns, making the trips. They put a special car on the train for us cadre. They would switch it around to the next train. You haven’t been on a rough ride—until you have rode a troop train. They were always regular passenger cars, but they went on some back roads.
The trains went on long round-about routes, to fool spies that was trying to find out their route. Spies wanted to know whether the troops were going to ship out from the east coast, to the war in Europe, or the west coast, to the war in the Pacific
All the railroad bridges were guarded, to keep the trains from being bombed. If any of them were sabotaged, we never heard about it. One of Louise’s uncles, Dock Gill, was a guard on a bridge near Camp Wolters. He and his friend watched it, twelve hours each. His wife, Lizzy and Betty Sue and Linda Lou, his daughters,would bring a picnic and visit sometimes.
Dock built a small hut and the railroad threw them off some coal for a fire. They wrote the train number and the time. They walked across the bridge every time a train come by.
Dock kept a fishing pole out, sometimes he caught a good one. Once he heard a train coming and he jerked the pole out and laid it down. he checked the train number and went back to his fishing pole. There on the hook--was a tuft of long wavey red hair. He thought that it sure looked like that it had to come from a womans head. If it did, he never could find her.
Once in the night, "Click, Click, Click' on the bridge. It scared the stuffing out of him. Turned out to be an armidelo crossing the bridge.
There was a man and a woman who were walking down the river.
He stopped them and told them that no one was allowed to walk under that bridge. He thought that he was going to have to 'pull his gun' before they turned back.
As Sgt, I always knew what our destination was. Mostly we went to Fort Ord, in California or New Port News, it’s just down from New York City on the east coast. Sometimes we went as far as 1000 miles out of the way.
I remember being in North Dakota, Washington State, and all in between. I do not remember the Great Lakes, Florida or Maine. I have been in all the other states. Some places I have looked down—the train would have rolled half a mile, if it went off the tracks. Troop trains to Fort Ord, California might go through Arkansas. There was a derail in Little Rock. It was rough when those wheels bumped over the cross ties. A big crane set the train back on track, it lifted first one end of our car and then the other. We didn’t even get off the train.
Coming back from dropping off the troops that we had just trained, we traveled in a group. We were given meal and lodging ‘tickets’. Guys would drop off and spend the night, here and there, to visit their folks. All you had to do, was just tell them. Just as long as you were back at the base, on the right day.
Then the same cadre trained another bunch of draftees. Some of the groups got 12 weeks training, some just 9. Sometimes there was infantry troops needed in a hurry and that bunch of trainees just got 5 weeks of training. I couldn’t see the need for some of the training. I figured it was just to teach them to take orders. In combat, that is necessary, obeying orders.
CANNED HAMS We carried several in the mess car, on the troop trains, to be used in emergencies. A porter on one of the trains knew that. He kept trying to get me to sell him one of the hams, he wanted to pay me ten dollars. Finally I told our Captain that the porter just wouldn’t leave me alone. The Captain asked me how the porter wanted me to deliver the ham to him. “Just after we fill the train with water, and are still going slow, there is a place that we throw our trash off the train. The porter wanted me to throw the ham off in a separate bag.” The Captain told me, ”You take his ten dollars and then forget to throw the ham off. You guys spend his money for beer. "We’ll break that dog from sucking eggs.”
The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
I, Annie Louise was working at the 'water fountain' on the mezanine of the big Baker Hotel when we heard the news. We were excited and mad. (My Mama didn't like to hear us 'young ones' get excited about 'whipping someone, or winning the war.' She said that we didn't know what war was, (she had seen my Daddy suffer silently, with his breathing, because he had his gas mask kicked off when he was carrying a friend off the battle field in France; thirty years before. He was 'shell shocked') We were already going to whip the Germans, now we would 'whip the Japanese too!
Moore, 'as he was called' was to get off duty and see me.
Anne Louise Knight and I married December 27, 1941. We drove to the Church of Christ preachers house. We had been going to church there together. I paid him with $2 bills that I had saved. Aunt Etta, Glenna June, Lizzie and Betty Sue were there. I owned a car, Louise wanted to go to Dallas, because she had never been there.
We found a motel and stayed two nights. I had bought my first pair of pajamas and wore them for the next 72 years. We walked around downtown, around the big Woolsworth and bought picture postcards and mailed them to everyone in the family. My Captain didn’t chew on me very much, for getting married, without army permission. I was stubornly not going to ask the army-- for permission to get married. It was my business.
Back in Mineral Wells, we were lucky enough to have found a tiny motel, one room furnished apartment for rent. Apartment 3 at Camps Courts. It cost $6 a week, linens furnished. We were glad to get the one room, and happy with what we had---each other. It was on the highway, going out to Camp Wolters, on the bus line. Our bathroom was nearly 3 x 5 foot, no curtain between the shower and the commode.
It was the first home that either one of us had lived, that had a shower or a commode or electricity. Our families homes didn’t have telephones either. (They lived in the country and got phones, soon after we left home.) There was no oven, the burners on top of the stove, they kept the room warm
We didn’t have an ice box. Any meat that we bought, had to be cooked soon No one had air conditioners a refrigerator, nor a fan.
There was space for the car, in the shed beside our room.
The car soon needed work and I sold it, no more going to church.
There were busses but they only went to the Army base and back to town.
There were nice houses for rent. A PFC and his wife were living in a real nice one that he rented in his mother in laws name. He could not rent the good house in his name, because he could not prove where he got the money He made ‘big money’ gambling, the army tried to stop it, but there were always gamblers. Some poor sucker was always getting ‘took.’
Trainees and friends learned that I always carried money. When they needed it quick, they would come to me and borrow it. I didn’t want to lie and tell them that I didn’t have any money. I got tired of that and quit carrying money. Louise kept working at the Water Fountain at the Baker Hotel. After three months we had enough money and we walked about a mile to the store and bought us a radio. We really were proud of it. It was 8 X 8 and 16 inches long. It cost $14.95.
There was no Army P X, food, or dependant medical.
I set up an allotment, for Louise to automatically get a portion of my pay.
The Army held it out of my pay and deposited it into our checking account. She had a bank checking account when we married. We just walked down to the bank and changed the name on it, to Mr and Mrs Thelmer Moore. We were proud. That may have been the first checking account-that any of my folks ever had. That money did not start coming into our account until after
BENJAMIN THELMER MOORE was born [date removed] 1942.
Nine months and one day after we married.
The first morning that they were home from the civilian hospital, I gave him a bath. I cared for him and he liked to get a grip on my finger, he would hold on. We kept on playing and ‘exercising.' He wore a white ‘morning dress’
button down the front and a white dress in the afternoon. They were all
hand made and had tiny lace or tatting on them. They were always ironed.
Birds-eye woven cloth diapers were the only kind, and they were hard to find. We were lucky enough that everyone helped us to have 4 dozen. That was how many that you tried to get. Louise did the washing by hand.
She washed diapers every day and hung them in the carport.
I kept having my uniforms laundered and starched at the base.(Thel always looked 'sharp'. He once said that he would have liked to have a job where he would have had to wear a suit, every day.)
Benny Thel was 3 months old and Louise had a high fever and her milk ‘dried up.' There were few civilian Doctors, and they would not come to the house. I saw a base Doctor, he said he could not make house calls. I explained it to him, and told him that we lived ‘right by the highway’. He agreed to stop by and ‘just look’. He looked in Louise’s throat and said that she had the measles. And when they ‘broke out’, she would be all right.
Benny Thel, was crying because he wanted more than water to drink. The Doctor said he was not a pediatrician and could not treat him.
I said, “He is hungry.” The Doctor said, “Give him half Carnation canned milk and half water in a bottle.” And he quickly left. Benny Thel was glad to get the milk, and he was never sick.
(Louises milk 'dried up' when Tommy and Richard were both three months old. They did fine on Carnation. Richard was four years old and he walked up to the table and saw a can of Carnation milk. He reached up and got it. He started drinking it, out of the little punched hole.
Ida was standing there, "Oh, Richard!" The thought of him drinking that warm milk, out of the can, it gagged her. Richard reached it out to her and said, "Oh I didn't drink it all. Here, you can have some.")
At 3 months Benny Thel would cry for me to let him hold onto my fingers, and hold all his weight up. He had a little metal frame, canvas ‘jumper’. At 6 months he could stand alone. I have big hands, I could hold onto his foot and he could ’stand on my hand’. We both liked it.
Louise tried to stop us. She took pictures, still has them.
He was 11 months old, he liked to stand and bend his knees, and ‘dance’,
and laugh. He would not take a step. The day that he did take his first step, he could walk from one room to the other.
I cut my thumb, I was in the mess hall, sharpening a butcher knife on a long ‘steel’. My hand slipped and I cut it real deep. While the Doctor was sewing it up, he asked me how long I had been hoarse. Something had stopped me from singing in quartets and in church, years ago.
He operated and removed a tumor from my vocal cords. He thought it would be cancer, but it wasn’t. I wrote on a tablet for a long time.
The Doctor told me not to sing. I didn’t, until I got to be 75 years old.
(At 96, I remember and sing all the verses in the old gospel songs)
Lee and Truman brought Mommy to see me, while I was in the hospital. They come in Truman’s little white coupe, they stayed two nights. On the way home, Mommy needed to stop at a rest room. The first thing they come to, was a tiny filling station that was closed. She walked to the little out-house. She come back to the car and said, “There has been typhoid fever there, I could smell it.” She told several people. In about three weeks, Mommy had typhoid fever, she was careful and no one else took it.
While I was in the hospital, Louise had an early miscarriage.
It was the second time that birth control didn’t work for us.
They were short on officers, they made all the Sergeants take a special IQ test. All that passed the test, they were strongly urged to go to Officers Candidate School. I refused to go. We knew that they were turning out II Lieutenants as fast as they could. They needed them on the front lines in Europe.
My best friend, Ray Bennett wanted to be an officer. He went to Fort Benning, Georgia for officers training. He come back ‘A 90 day Wonder,'
a 'shave tail,' a II Lieutenant. He went to Europe and while he was serving in France, he was wounded. He soon went back to duty. He was killed in the ‘Battle of the Bulge.’ The Germans almost broke through our lines in their last desperate effort. General Patton was killed at that time too.
My second ‘best friend’ in the army, had been killed.
He introduced me and Louise.
We rode the train to see my folks in Porum once. Benny could walk, nearly run. He was excited and wanted to walk up the aisle and just keep going. We could not walk with him. He was excited and would not be still and go to sleep. Finally Thel held him tight--he screamed and he quickly went to sleep. Oh it was embarassing, everybody kept looking at us.
My Company Commander liked me. Ever so often there was an order----to send all cadre overseas, that had been there over a year. He kept ‘holding me,’ from having to leave Camp Wolters.
When a recruit got sick or for some reason, missed part of his ‘basic training, he became a ‘hold over.' He stayed with us and joined in the training of the next group.
When the Mess Sgt’s quit having to make out menus and buy the food, other grounds and barracks duties were given us. I had to see that the bathrooms in the barracks were clean.
One problem come up, an odor developed. You walk around the corner of the barracks and there was a bad smell---that would nearly knock you down. We found the source when we set up a guard and he caught a soldier peeing out the window by his bed, on the second floor.
He had a lot of scrubbing to do. He got a lot of extra duty in the bathrooms.
I had to see that the outside area was always clean. We had to carefully separate our trash into four containers, out by the street. All cans that had come with food in them, had to be rinsed out.The paper had to be pealed off the outside. (When Thel was 97 he was still pealing the paper off of every can and rinsing it, before putting it in the trash.)
Coffee grounds and aluminum were kept separate. We had a recruit that liked to chew on a mouthfull of coffee grounds.
I couldn't hardly stand to hear him chewing.
A ‘hold over’ was watering the grass near our mess hall.
A I Star General come driving by and saw the sprinkler going. The ‘hold over’ let some of the trash get wet. They sent a ‘runner’ to get me.
It was automatically my fault, that the trash got wet.
The General had a ‘Scribe’ that went along with him and wrote down every thing that we said. I had to stand there ‘at attention,’ He gave me a ‘chewing out’, because the trash was getting wet.
I ‘broke attention’ and said, “Sir, I am a Mess Sgt.
I used to write all our menu’s and buy all the food, and see that it was cooked and served. Now I have to watch the grass, bathrooms in the barracks and this garbage. We keep it all separated, then they come by with the trash truck and dump it all in together. I can’t help it, if it got wet.”
The General told me that I was ‘busted for sassing him' and for me to go to the Company Commander.
There was a ‘trial’ later, and the scribe solemnly read, word for word, what the General and me, had both said. The General was not there. The
Officers all laughed at what I had said. The Company commander said that my rank could not be ‘busted’, without ‘going to Congress’(a lot of red tape), because it was not a ‘wartime rating’. A good thing-that come from me voluntering instead of being drafted. I would have to be sent overseas, but I would keep my Staff Sgt pay and stripes.
Because I still had never had ‘basic training,’ I would have to go through basic training before I left for overseas. But that training was only ‘on paper.' I knew all the cadre and I never did any of the training or marching that I didn’t want.
I always liked the guns and rifle ranges. I qualified as ‘sharpshooter.’ The bazzoka was more powerful than a hand grenade. Two men set it on the ground and the bullet arched over. I was used to shooting a shot gun when I was growing up, and holding it tight to my shoulder. I learned to shoot the bazooka from my shoulder. I may have been the first one to do that. You pull it up tight, it kicks, but it don’t really hurt you. If you hold it an inch or two off your shoulder, your shoulder might get broken. If a bazooka shot at a tank, and it 'stuck', it created so much heat, that the men in the tank had to open the hatch and get out.
I used the training about flame throwers, in combat later. An enemy tank could be closed up, with men in it and they would not get out. You turn a flame thrower on the tank and as it gets hot inside, the crew scrambles out.
I hugged Louise and Bennie Thel goodbye on April 19, 1944.
Benny Thel was a year and a half old. I would hold one of his feet and he would stand up, on one foot in my hand. Louise made pictures.
I got on the bus that was going out to Camp Wolters. Oh, I regretted that I had ‘sassed’ that I Star General. I knew that I was going to New Port News, to ‘ship out’, just below New York.
Louise’s Daddy, Ben Knight, drove from their farm in Breckenridge, 50 miles west. He got all our belongings and Louise and Benny Thel in his car. They had a good place to live. Benny Thel loved the farm, Eldridge Dean, Alicea and Stanley Don, all younger than Louise.
Louise didn’t call me, ‘Moore’, any more. None of my friends were around.
Mommy wrote, her last two letters, were forwarded to Louise.
“I have been sick for two weeks. I wish I could quit so much worrying. I think I can’t get my strength back because my nose bleeds so much. “Oh I would have been so glad if you all could have come to see us before Thelmer had to leave. But I don’t guess it was for me to get to see him.”
Lawrence and Reba had been living at Oklahoma City with their son Jerry, he was two. Wilma and Imogene lived with them and they all three worked there at Tinker Field. Lawrence got his draft notice.They all three quit their jobs and went back to Porum. Reba and Jerry were going to live with her sister, in Porum. Wilma and Imogene were going to live with their parents again.
Mommy died that night. Poppy woke up and she had a pain in her head. She was gasping and never said anything that he could understand.
My Mother died on May 2, 1944. She was 57 years old.
The Stephens County Sheriff drove three miles out into the country to bring Louise a telegram about a death message. She was to call my parents home in Porum, Oklahoma. I was at New Port News, Maryland, ready to sail to North Africa on May 3, 1944.
Louise did not know my address. My family called the Red Cross and they found me, just before I sailed. The Red Cross got me a 10-day leave.
That was the only thing the Red Cross ever did for me. They would have loaned me bus fare, if I needed it. I rode the bus back to Porum, from Maryland, for her funeral. Louise and Benny Thel rode the bus to Muskogee.
And I got to hug Benny Thel and Louise again. It was a short 10 days.
THE LAST LETTER When Louise got back to Texas, There was the last letter from Mommy. It was just one page.
She wrote, “I am so discouraged I can’t do anything. Thelmer is going over to fight. Lawrence is being drafted and Junior will have to go before long. I just can’t stand the thought of my boys being butchered up.
Write me when you hear from Thelmer.”
Mommy did not know that on account of that harsh whipping that Junior got at school--It changed his life. He did not pass the physical exam and was not drafted. So no telling how his ((and you grandchildren's)) life was changed--for the better--because of that whipping. Thelmer and Lawrence were not injured in the war.
Poppy was so lonesome. He farmed for a while, his heart wasn’t in it.
Wilma married Henry Hudspeth and Imogene married Jim Hood. They were half brothers. They had known them all their lives.
Thelmer drove to Oklahoma often, to see Poppy. He said, “Poppy, Mrs Murray, who was Henry Hudspeth, and Jim Hood's mother, is a nice woman, she lives right up there in town. She is probably lonesome too. Why don’t you go see her?”
Poppy said, “And why don’t you tend to your own business?”
‘Old Age pensions’ started, Poppy applied. Each of his children
had to fill out a financial questionair. How much money they made and how they spent it. How much they could give Poppy. It made them all ‘sore’.
Lee said, “As much as we all pay in taxes, It would give him a good
pension.” He finally got $17 a month. He lived in a little house alone, for a while. It wasn’t far from Truman. He had a two wheel cart that he would hitch his white horse to. It was three miles, dirt road to Porum. Ed Futrell the grocer, said he would see him coming and know that he wanted to buy an apple, only one, 5 cents. If he saw that he was going to run out of apples, he would save a couple back for Poppy, on his daily trip to town.
Then he lived with first one and then another of his children.
Poppy had several small strokes, he would soon get back to talking and walking almost normal. He had slow, shaking, shuffling, Parkinsons disease.
Thel went to see him later and Poppy told him, “I want to go back with you to Fort Worth and see all of the folks down there. I want Lawrence to come and get me and I’ll go to his house in Eufaula for a few days.
I want Lawrence to take me to Imogene’s at Checotah. ‘It will be 'about over' by then.'” Thel protested that he would live a long time.
Poppy was at Lawrences and finally gave in for him to get him a wheel chair
Imogene remembers that back at Checotah, in their pretty pink house, they had just had supper. Poppy thought of how good his old Doctor was. He wanted him to come see him so he could tell him how much good that he had done him and how good that he felt. Imogene called the old Doctor, he lived in Checotah.
They set and talked about their kids. Poppy told him how proud that he was of all his kids. The Doctor drove off. Poppy kinda laid his head back, like he dozed off to sleep, but he didn’t close his eyes.
Imogene remembers, “I could see in his eyes that he was gone. We tried to call the Doctor back. The Doctor, he hadn’t even got home yet."
Poppy lived to be 73 years old, 11 years after Mommy died.)
NORTH AFRICA
The Santa Maria, was a luxury passenger ship that I sailed on to North Africa. ‘It did not have a gun on it.’ They really watched for submarines, over 6,000 soldiers were aboard.
I was a mess Sgt and on duty every 3 days. Before we sailed, I was aboard two weeks to get familiar with the kitchen. It had steam jackets to cook, and was very well equipt. There were 8 cooks on each shift.
We had 4 or 5 men pealing potatoes. They pealed three, hundred pound
bags a meal. There was a machine to whip the potatoes. Almost every day the men had hot rolls, it took 3 or 4 pounds of yeast, to make them.
They had plenty of good food.
A storm come up and most everybody got sick, I did. The sailors told me to not let my stomach get empty. I forced myself to drink tomato juice and I never got sea sick again.
We sailed through the Straight of Gibraltar. Spain was on one side and off to the right, in the the distance was the Africa coast. We went on a long ways into the Mediterranean Sea and landed at Algiers in North Africa.
Muselini in Italy had used poison gas in Ethiopia.
The fighting moved fast in the desert of North Africa. Some of the country looked just like around here, some timber and some farm land. They grew lots of produce. Riding on a slow troop train, our soldiers would jump off and run out and unload a farmers cart, sometimes pulled by a camel.
The farmer would be yelling and hollering.
They would jump back on the train with his cantilopes and watermelons.
The farmer learned that he could go to the Allied Military Government and they would pay him.
We could see war damage. The country was so poor, they were just on starvation. Most of the time, the natives were kept back, but if they could get through, they were begging for food. At first it was a temptation to scrape the food off my plate and give it to them, every meal. The longer I was over there, like the other soldiers, I got hardened to the sight of hungry people.
Each country has it’s own way of doing things. You have to watch
and learn what their customs are. There were public restrooms, sometimes the walls were just four feet high. Usually there was just an open hole in the dirt, middle of the room. Men and women both used them, at the same time.
The woman would turn her back and go on about her business.
I saw one. I never went back in another one.
The army set up tents around their open restrooms. Some soldier would ‘sell’ the tent to a North African for a dollar or so. When the native would try to take ‘his tent’ down, there would be a commotion.
Most of the people that I saw were black, some like the American Indians and some were white. People always wore something wrapped around them. I never did see anyone, even the children, completely naked.
I saw many wearing a tow (gunny) sack, with slits in it, for their head and their arms and legs. It really must have itched.
Women were covered, they always wore something white wrapped around them, they just had a peep hole, to see out of.
Most of the time they carried something in both arms, and sometimes something balanced on their head, at the same time. I couldn’t see how they could do it. Usually a man was going along, sometimes just watching.
One American soldier, a ‘G I’ (government issue- a general name for any military man) was walking and come up behind a woman, covered in her white cloth. He thought he would be smart, he was going to jerk it off and see what she looked like. He grabbed her covering. As he jerked, an Arab man who was walking behind her--he whipped out a thin dagger and threw it. It stuck between the G I’s shoulder blades. He had been warned. Before we landed in North Africa-we all were told to leave the women alone
I saw President Roosevelt. He was over there for a conference in Casablanca with Churchhill. He visited the troops in North Africa. There was a big bunch of benches and we listened to him speak.
The fighting went rather quickly across the deserts in North Africa.
It took us seven months for us to clear it of Germans and Italians. It was about over when I got there. The Allies landed at Salerno, Italy Sept 9, 1943. We stayed in a replacement depot. We just set there in camps in North Africa, until we were sent on to Italy, to be used to replace someone.
We had a smart Captain that grabbed me and ordered me to be in a bunch to ‘scrub the barracks.' It was a mild form of punishment. I was a Staff Sgt with a permanent rating and knew that I couldn’t be busted easily. There was plenty of others that were lower grade than me. The Corporals respected our rating. Me and the same Sgt that hid at Fort George Meade, Maryland--we went off into the woods and hid, again, to keep from scrubbing the barracks. ( Louise still has the letter that I wrote her about hiding in Maryland)
I joined Patton’s 5th army; to be used as a replacement.
Before we left North Africa, we were warned that if we did not go to church on Sunday---we were not to stick our head out. The Italians were a lot more serious about church. We were not to be on the streets on Sunday unless it was to go to church. Italy is mostly Catholic. Most all the G I’s soon got a chain to go around their neck and a little cross on it.
They learned that it helped them get acquainted with Italian girls better.
MUSSOLINI was 39 in 1930 when he became Prime Minister of Italy. He started a program for boys 4 years old, 8 years old, 14 and 18. When they were 21, they became ‘Black Shirt Fascists.' Forced doses of castor oil were sometimes used to intimidate whole groups into becoming Fascists. Ethiopia was invaded in 1935, using poison gas. Other North African nations soon fell.
Mussolini was winning battles and very popular. Italy soon needed money to keep its war going. In 1935 there was the ‘Rite of the Wedding Rings’. All the important women lined up and donated their wedding rings and gold jewelry. The women of the country gave 73,000 pounds of gold for the war effort. They were given steel rings when they gave their gold rings.