The Story of a Family

1939-1945

by Helen Erwin Campbell

Nineteen thirty-nine found the family back in the Madera area. In that year war in Europe became a reality; after Germany invaded Poland, England and France declared war on Germany. Also, in that year Grandma Moses became famous, the U.S. economy began to recover because of orders for war equip­ment, popular songs were God Bless America and Three Little Fishes, the film The Wizard of Oz was released, baseball was first televised in this country, nylon stockings first appeared, a Simplicity dress pattern cost 15 cents, Donnie started first grade, and Buddy entered high school.

In the summer of this year John and Goldie made a trip to California to see the folks. There were eight of us travel­ing in John’s 1937 Ford: Goldie, John, and their two children Dick and Lois, Flossie and her two little girls Joanne and Donna Mae, plus me. Donna Mae was sick on the way out; actu­ally Flossie said later by the time she was two miles from home she was sorry she’d started.

Mom and Dad were living in a rented house then. The house was on a cotton ranch, but they rented only the house, and it was much better than some places they’d lived. I remember Mary was there also visiting from Fresno. She called me into the bedroom soon after vie arrived and suggested we put on shorts.

“But I don’t have any.”

“I have an extra pair,” and she pulled them out.

I tried them on and they fit. I was a little reluctant as I was never as quick to defy Dad as she was, but she per­suaded me. We came out of the bedroom, giving each other courage by being together. Everybody looked at us, Mom, Dad, Goldie, John, and Flossie, but no one said a word. We tried hard to be nonchalant as we waited for comments, but none were forthcoming. After about an hour and a half I felt too uncomfortable wearing the shorts and told Mary I was going to change back. We both did. We came out again in our regular clothes and there was still no comment. I don’t think I ever did wear shorts around Dad except that one time. My regret was that Dad didn’t live long enough to see some of the exceptionally skimpy bikinis that adorn our California beaches.

Clifford, at that time, was working for Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, and while in California Goldie, John and Flossie drove to Long Beach to see Clifford, Helen and sons Clyde and Darrel. They again had a loaded car. They took Mom, Buddy and Donnie with them, plus the four children they’d brought from Kansas. Don remembers they flipped up the trunk of the 1937 Ford, and Bud and Dick rode back there, something the Highway Patrol would not allow today.

I went to Fresno with Mary and started looking for a job. Goldie had told me I could stay if I found a job before they left for Kansas. I didn’t, but when they came to say goodbye, I told them I had, and so I stayed. Within a week I did find a job working for a lawyer.

That September Bud began attendance at Madera High School and rode the bus to school. Donnie, in first grade, had to walk one mile to Easton School, the local elementary school. Donnie considered that to be totally unfair; that he had to walk to school while his big brother got to ride a school bus. There were buses that carried students to Donnie’s school, but he lived just under the distance limit so did not qualify. He continued to find the situation unjust and continued to pro­test loudly to Mom, but he walked. It probably didn’t help that Bud never lost an opportunity to rub it in.

Don remembers the first day of school in first grade in 1939 (There were no kindergartens in those days). Dad and Mom dropped him off in front of the school, drove on to where they were picking cotton, and picked him up after school. After that he walked each day. Mom took a picture of Donnie on his first day of school, in his brand-new pair of two-toned pants and new shoes and holding some of his big brother’s books.

Don remembers that each September when school started, he got a new pair of jeans and a new pair of shoes. The shoes were bought with plenty of “growing room,” and if they lasted until the next September, fine; if not, they went barefoot.

I lived in Fresno with Mary from June of 1939 through August of 1940, and during that time I visited Mom and Dad several times. Their standard of living was not high, but I think they never again were as bad off as during the Bakersfield period. That must have been the low point in their lives.

Dad was beginning to save a little bit of money. I don’t believe he bothered with banks. He used to collect his money in silver dollars, rather than paper money, which he carried around in his pants pocket. Mom was disapproving of this practice, mainly because the weight of the coins wore out the pockets of his pants. The dollars must have been a little heavy in his pocket (when I was there, he had about twenty), but maybe the weight of the money was comforting somehow.

Over the years Dad, when the problems of everyday living became too much for him, has thrown vocal tantrums, lashing out at anyone around him, but always making Mom his chief target. Some of those verbal tirades lasted two or three days. Mom would take a lot, but she would often reach a point when she would either remove herself from the scene or fight back.

I recall one of Dad’s prolonged temper tantrums in the early thirties. Mom hid out in the chicken house for a long while, and had everyone seriously worried about her safety. Another time she left the house in the middle of the night and walked the mile and a half or so to Goldie’s and John’s house. That time, Mary woke up a little later, and when she inquired about Mom’s whereabouts, was ordered by Dad to get out. She followed Mom down the road to Goldie’s house, still in the middle of the night.

During one of the times I visited the folks during this time, Mom told me about another of Dad’s temper fits. He had started throwing verbal abuse at her as she was getting dinner on the table. She surprised him. She picked up the dish of fried potatoes she had just set down and threw it in his face, hitting her target straight on. She said he hadn’t had a tantrum since. Years later, Mom told me that Dad never – even during hist most vocal tirades – struck her.

Bud and Don remember some of the foods Mom fixed during those lean years. Bud still can’t eat potato soup because Mom served it so often then. Mom also made a lot of dumplings, and those Don liked, but he couldn’t stand the hominy she fixed. When there wasn’t too much to eat Mom could always make up biscuits and country gravy. Steak or roast wasn’t necessary for the white gravy she made.

Mom also used a lot of canned tomatoes, in a hot dish with day-old bread added or sometimes cold with sugar added. Another dish both of them remember with little fondness is the chili Mom made. Hers was very thin, probably made from a store-bought chili brick, with no beans, and served with dry bread in it. Don remembers if they were financially flush, they had crackers. Probably the main criterion of most of the food she fixed in those difficult years was that it be inexpensive.

It was 1940; Winston Churchill became British Prime Minister and made his famous “Blood, sweat, and tears” speech, Congress (against some bitter opposition from isolationists) passed the Selective Service Act to mobilize the United States military, Hitler’s Germany began its blitz on London, F.D.R. was elected for a third term, and the film Grapes of Wrath was a box office success. That year; popular songs were: You Are My Sunshine and The Last Time I Saw Paris. The popu­lation of our country reached 132 million, three cans of Old Dutch Cleanser could be bought for ten cents, J.C. Penney advertised its finest muslin sheets for 94 cents, and Dad went into business for himself.

By the spring of this year Dad had managed to save $50. With that money as a down payment, and his own glib tongue, he was able to buy fifteen dairy cows from Jim Beck of Kerman. At the same time Dad made a deal with a western Madera County farmer to sharecrop 40 acres of alfalfa. There was a small house on the place for living quarters for his family and a place to keep his newly acquired dairy cows. Dad harvested the alfalfa, and he and the farmer went halves on it.

Donnie finished his first-grade school year at the Ripperdan School, where he was privileged to ride the school bus. Bud couldn’t tease him any more about having to walk to school.

Dad would sometimes let Bud drive the old Dodge, and Bud and his friend Harold often liked to go down to the San Joaquin River to swim and, as Don suspects now, to drink a little beer with their friends while away from parental supervision. On one of these trips Don managed to persuade Bud to take him along, or that might have been one of the conditions Dad made for Bud’s using the car. When they arrived at the river, Bud wandered away with his friends, with final in­structions to little brother Donnie:

“Now stay out of trouble, and stay out of the deep water. I’ll be back a little later.”

Donnie played around in the water and enjoyed himself for a time, but then he ventured out a little too far. The swift current caught him, carrying him down stream. Donnie could well have drowned except for the quick thinking of a middle-aged Hispanic man standing on a bridge abutment. The man saw Donnie coming and reached down, neatly plucking him out of the swiftly-moving water. Donnie was a scared, wet seven-year-old.

When Bud again appeared, he was concerned, not only for the near tragedy but for his responsibility. On the way home Bud convinced Donnie that it would only worry Mom if they told her about the adventure.

“And we don’ t want to worry Mom, do we?”

So, Donnie didn’t tell her, at least not for several years.

It was also in August of 1940 that I got an offer of a civil ser­vice job with the Federal Trade Commission in Washington D.C. I had taken the exam before I left the Topeka Business College the year before but had forgotten about it. I had just the month before started a job with an insurance adjus­ter’s firm, and decided to ignore the government job offer. I wrote of the offer to John and Goldie just as a matter of news, and they were aghast that I would turn the position down, so I reconsidered and accepted. Around the first of September I, took the train for our nation’s capital, stopping off for a brief visit in Topeka. 

Looking back, I have now decided that was probably the best thing I ever did. In the District of Columbia, I was fifteen hundred miles from my nearest family, and I was strict­ly on my own. I grew up, and I had a lot of fun in the process.

In 1941, World War II continued in Europe. London was enduring the air raids by the German air force, Germany in­vaded Russia, and in December Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, “a day that will live in infamy.” On that bloody Sunday morn­ing 2,008 sailors were killed (five times as many as our Navy lost in World War I), plus 218 soldiers, 109 Marines, and 68 civilians. On December 8, the United States and Britain de­clared war on Japan; thereafter Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, and the United States declared war on Germany and Italy.

Here at home that year Orson Welles’ the film Citizen Kane was shown to movie audiences, the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker was born, popular songs were Deep in the Heart of Texas and Chattanooga Choo-Choo, intensive atomic re­search began, Mary got married, and Bud left home.

Mary had been going out with Roy Plog, and on June 12 they were married. She would have liked to have a church a wedding, and Mrs. Plog offered to arrange one. Two of Roy’s sisters had already married, so handling the details of a church wedding were not new to his mother. But Mary knew that it was customary for the bride’s parents to pay for the wedding, but also knew that would have been beyond Mom and Dad. So, she and Roy bypassed all the pomp and circumstance and were married in Las Vegas.

During the summer of this year I took my annual vacation from my job and went back to Topeka for a visit. I had been writing letters from our nation’s capital and was surprised people seemed to think that just because I lived there, I would be in the know regarding important events going on in our government. I didn’t. I probably knew less since I had an active social life and didn’t read many newspapers. The fact that I was walking home by the back gate of the White House when Presi­dent Roosevelt’s limousine drove out from the grounds only three or four feet from me didn’t make me privy to inside information.

When Goldie and John took me on a visit to Severy to see Grandma and Grandpa Erwin I found to my surprise and pleasure that my status had risen. The last time I had seen them was when I was a child amongst my sister and cousins of like age; a child that had to be fed at the family reunion but otherwise ignored unless I was too noisy.

I found my letters had been passed around, and this time I was “the young woman who wrote letters from Washington, D. C.” The experience was ego-building.

This visit was the time Grandma brought out the dishpan-­full of strawberries for the delicious shortcake. This was also the time Grandpa gave me some information about his fam­ily, and, since I was living in Washington and had access to the National Archives, I agreed to research our family tree. He was pleased. Grandpa also said that whenever he met some­one with the name Erwin with the same spelling as ours, they could, by discussing family, usually discover they were related in some way.

When I got back to Washington, I had all good intentions, but I had not the faintest idea how to go about such research. Also, I had a boyfriend or two, our country got into the war, I transferred out of Washington to Denver, and the rest is history. I am now keeping the promise I made to Grandpa that day; only about forty-five years late.

It was in the summer of this year that Bud got fed up with the situation at home and left. He doesn’t now remem­ber just what altercation with Dad caused the final break. As Don said,

“There was an excuse almost every week. One could have picked just about anything.”

Bud went to Fresno where Mary was living and attending Fresno State College. He stayed with her, got a job in a drug store for twenty-five cents an hour, and continued going to high school.

Everyone past early childhood on that Sunday, December 7, 1941, undoubtedly remembers what he or she was doing when the news about the attack on Pearl Harbor broke. Don was living with Mom and Dad on the Alfalfa farm, and he vividly remembers the radio broadcast telling of the Japanese at­tack. Mary and Roy were living in Fresno at the time, and were in the actual process of moving to Oakland for the job Roy had there. He had already enrolled in the Army Air Corps Cadets, but was told to wait for his draft notice before going in.

I was in Washington, D. C., and with my roommates had gone to a Sunday afternoon movie. When we came out of the theater it was late afternoon, and the newspaper extras were being hawked on the street. It was hard to comprehend at first. But we knew all our lives would be changed by the events of that day, and they were.

Nineteen-forty-two began with the world at war, in Europe, in Africa, and in the South Pacific. Young men were rushing to join the military, or were being drafted, civilians were facing rationing of sugar, gasoline and cof­fee, and we were dancing to the music of the big bands. Walt Disney Studios released its cartoon film Bambi, the film Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby gave us the all-time popular song White Christmas, and other popular songs were, ¹The White Cliffs of Dover, ¹Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition, and That Old Black Magic. Also, that year the American scientist Enrico Fermi split the atom, Bell Aircraft tested the first United States’ jet plane, Henry Kaiser started building Liberty Ships, a Penny’s Penco sheet cost $1.49, a one-pound can of Folgers coffee was thirty cents at Safeway, and Dad and Mom bought the first real estate they’d ever owned.

Bud was a little past seventeen the beginning of 1942. His friend Harold had moved to Richmond and was working in the shipyards, and in February Bud left high school in Fresno and joined his friend.

Sometime in the spring Dad and Mom moved from the alfalfa farm to a rented place in the Easton School District, and Donnie finished the third grade in the same school he had begun the first grade.

Don remembers the move. Dad rented a truck and cow-trailer, and moved their household goods and his dairy herd, moving the herd two cows at a time, to the new location. He still sold milk to the Co-op at the new place.

As the war effort accelerated, everyone seemed to come through Washington and the city became greatly overcrowded. Eating out necessitated long waits, traffic was congested, hotel rooms were hard to get, and available apartments were almost non-existent. Fortunately, my two roommates and I al­ready had a small apartment, but I remember taking the street­car to work at the Federal Trade Commission, which is on Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the White House and the Capitol. Oftentimes the busy traffic would slow to a complete stop. Then we’d depart the street car and walk to work. It was quicker.

Many of the young men we’d known were either enlisting or being drafted. We met others newly in uniform, but they would often soon be gone. The government decided to decentralize by moving departments not essential to the war effort out of Washington, and I saw this as my opportunity to get out too. I transferred to the Accounting Office of the Bureau of Reclamation in the Department of Interior just before they moved that office to Denver, Colorado. It was not difficult, as a lot of employees were scrambling to find other jobs that would keep them in Washington. It was in June of 1942 that I traveled by train to Denver, with stopovers in Chicago to visit a girlfriend, and in Topeka to visit Goldie and John.

That summer Dad bought a 32-acre farm, or ranch – as they are called in California. it was located three miles south of Madera on Highway 99 and next to the Southern Pacific Railroad. It had previously been a vineyard but the vines were gone. There was a barn on the place, but no house.

The acreage cost $2,250, and Don believes Dad paid only $100 down. Dad was a good talker, and he talked people into trusting him. He got a pump company to drill a well and in­stall a pump. Clifford remembers Dad borrowed $150 from him to pay for this well. To lower his electric bills, Dad init­ially used an old Buick car engine to power the irrigation pump.

As soon as there was water available Dad moved his fam­ily to his newly purchased farm, and they camped out while Dad built a two-room house for them to live in. This wasn’t a new undertaking to him. He’d built several oilfield shacks back when he’d followed the oil booms. He built the house with the assistance of Don and Mom, though Don can’t remember being all that much help.

Don, looking back now, thinks they must have appeared pretty pathetic to the casual outside observer, but Dad was, nevertheless, happy. It was the first time in his whole life he’d owned land, and he was proud.

With our country at war our family, along with everyone else, did what we could to help. Bud and his friend Harold decided they would not wait for the draft — they would en­list in the Marines. But they were both only seventeen, and the Marines couldn’t take them without parental consent. They went to their individual parents, armed with the proper forms.

“No,”was Dad’s and Morn’s answer to Bud’s request, and they remained adamant in their refusal. No amount of argu­ing on Bud’s part changed their position. Harold’ s request met with the same response, so they continued to work in the shipyards.

Bud remembers visiting Mom and Dad, along with Mary and her baby, in the latter part of this year. Little Joanne was several months old, and Mary was proud to show off their newest grandchild to them. However, something upset Joanne (perhaps she-was cutting teeth) and she became very fussy, at times crying her distress. Mom, successfully having raised eight children, made a suggestion about what might help. Mary, with the knowledge of the several modern baby books she’d read, shrugged off Mom’s suggestion. Again, Mom offered a tentative suggestion, and Mary answered,

“That’s not what the book says.”

Dad listened without comment. The baby kept crying. Again, Mom made a suggestion, and again Mary answered.

“The book doesn’t say that.”

It was quiet for a moment except for the baby’s fussing.

Then Dad spoke in a dry, quiet voice. “Maybe you should feed her the book.”

Nineteen forty-three: The war continued, “in the air, on the ground, and on the sea.” The movie Casablanca won ab Academy Award, the musical 0klahoma was playing on Broadway., popular songs were Mairzy Doats, I’ll Be Seeing You and Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer, streptomycin was discovered, and the first Liberty ships were launched. Also, that year the infantile paralysis epidemic killed al­most 1200 in the United States and crippled thousands more, further rationing of foodstuffs was begun, the pay-as-you­ go income tax system was started, the Lindy hop gave way to jitterbugging, Bud enlisted in the Marine Corps, and I got married.

In March of this year Mary’s husband Roy, having re­ceived his draft notice, went into the Army Air Force Cadets for training. He received no family allowance, and Mary worked at Hammer Field near Fresno to support herself and nine-month-old Joanne.

It was in April that I made a trip from Denver to California to visit the family, and stayed with Mom, Dad and Donnie on their dairy ranch. They seemed to be doing well and making an adequate living from their small dairy herd.

After my first night at their house Mom was wondering if I’d slept well.

“Helen, did that train going by in the middle of the night wake you up?”

“No.” I had to admit, it hadn’t. “It wasn’t the train.  I didn’t even hear it. But it was all those insects whirring and chirping that kept me awake.” I had become a city girl.

That same trip I also visited Mary in Fresno. She was working, and at times having babysitting problems. From there I went on to southern California where I saw Clifford and Helen and their two little boys. Clifford was working in the shipyards.

It was about this time Dad managed to buy a used Farmall tractor, the first tractor he’d ever owned. The tractor was the older type with flat steel wheels with spikes on them. Dad replaced those with rubber tires. He had to do battle with the Ration Board to do this, but he finally did convince them to give him a priority rating, as tires were then rationed.

The folks really had come quite a way from their migrant-worker Grapes of Wrath kind of existence of five years before. Dad was proud of himself, and I think he had good reason to be.

In May Bud and his friend Harold went into the Service as Marines, now both being 18 and no longer needing parental consent. They were sent to boot camp in San Diego to be trans­formed into full-fledged fighting Marines.

I was still working in Denver when I met Army Air Force Staff Sargent Dick Campbell who was stationed at nearby Lowry Field. Shortly thereafter he was sent to Harlingen, Texas, for schooling. At the end of that training. While enroute to his next duty station, near Salt Lake City, he telephoned me. Over the phone we finalized our plans, and on July I took the bus to Salt Lake City. We were married on July 9 by the man who sold us a marriage license, who was also a Mormon bishop. Dick and I had a few days together, and then I took the bus back to Denver and my job.

By the autumn of 1943 Bud had finished his training and was shipped out. His letters started arriving at home on a regular basis and were very welcomed by our anxious parents. Many of the letters were chopped up rather badly by the cen­sors. and it wasn’t until he arrived home in late 1945, they heard the full-story of his wartime duty. We did determine, however, from something that was not censored, that he had landed first on New Caledonia.

It was in the latter part of November that Dick began his journey overseas. His group picked up their Liberator bombers (B-24’s) in Sioux City, Iowa, and flew to Harrington, Kansas, for outfitting. From there they flew by way of Palm Beach, Florida, to Puerto Rico, then to Belem and Natal, Brazil, across the ocean to Dakar and Marrakesh, Africa, and up to England, landing there just before Christmas. They were to fly bombing missions over Germany.

In 1944 the Germans carried out heavy air raids on London, our troops completed conquest of the Solomon and Marshall Islands in the South Pacific, D-Day landings were made in Normandy on June 6, the first V1 buzz bombs were dropped on London, and Americans captured Guam from the Japanese and later landed in the Philippines. On the home front that year, Roosevelt was elected for a fourth term as President with Harry S. Truman as Vice-President, the moving picture film Going My Way with Bing Crosby won an Academy Award, popular songs were Don’ t Fence Me In, Rum and Coca-Cola,  and Sentimental Journey, the  cost of living in the United States rose almost thirty percent, a Mazda 40 or 60 watt light bulb could be bought for thirteen cents and a prime rib roast for thirty-three cents a pound, and a B-29 crashed and burned on Dad’s and Mom’s dairy farm.

Don recalls it was in the middle of the night that they were awakened from sleep by a big plane right over their home. It crashed and burned between their and the railroad, about 200 yards from the house. He thinks it must have cleared the house by only a few feet. The plane did not burn completely, and as far as Don can remember there were no fatalities. He was about eleven at the time, and he thought the whole experience was quite exciting.  It took the Army several days to clear up the debris, which they did by trucking it all away. They even mended the fence and filled in the hole made by the impact.

Don believes Dad got some kind of compensation from the Army Air Force, but he didn’t talk about it much. Mom never wrote about the crash in her letters to me either, which seems surprising.

The Erwins were well represented in our country’s war effort. Goldie’s husband John was working the Topeka post of­fice, sorting and delivering mail. Flossie’s husband Oran was working in an aircraft plant in Wichita as a machinist, and Clifford was a welder in a Long Beach shipyard. Raymond and Dad were supplying necessary food items. Raymond working in a dairy and Dad running his own small one on the side. Mary’s husband Roy was stationed in Italy and participating in bombing raids over Germany as a bombardier on a B-17, and my husband Dick was an aerial gunner on a B-24, stationed in England and flying missions over Germany.

I was living in San Francisco during 1944 and working as a secretary in the War Shipping Administration. One of my jobs was to order the food that supplied the troop-carrying maritime ships. (I remember ­often felt more than a little sympathy for those troops when I ordered out a carload of dehydrated rutabagas.) Bud was a fighting Marine in the South Pacific, and Don was still a schoolboy.

It was on February 13, on his fifth mission, that Dick was wounded. A piece of hot flak slipped in between the layers of his flak jacket and lay there, burning him badly on the back as the plane made three more passes over their target. He thought at the time he was shot and wasn’t aware it was a niece of hot flak until they landed back at their base in England.       

It was April first, on his seventh mission and the crew’s thirteenth, that their plane ditched in the English Channel when they ran out of fuel. They came over Dunkirk at 700 feet, thinking to land, but the German guns opened up, and they went on out to sea. A lot of planes were going down ­that day due to various circumstances, and their disaster sig­nals did not get through. But that’s another story.

The crew members, except for one lost in the ditching and one who died in the life raft, floated in two lifeboats for forty-six hours until picked up by English fishermen out of Folkestone, England.

During this same year, Roy Plog flew missions out of Italy over Germany. The irony was he was to come through this war with­out a, scratch, to reenlist and fight in the Korean war that wasn’t a war, and then to die in a routine training flight in Georgia in 1953.

On the other war front in the South Pacific Bud was fighting in a small artillery crew in several battles, including the battle to retake the island of Guam.

The year was 1945. Franklin D. Roosevelt died and was succeeded by Vice-President Harry S. Truman, Germany surren­dered, and the war in Europe finally ended on May 8. The first atomic bomb was detonated in New Mexico on July 16, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, Japan surrendered, and World War II came to an end officially on August 14.

The world was to be at peace in August, but in February some of our men fought one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war. Bud was in that battle of Iwo Jima. Life Magazine’s PICTURE HISTORY OF WORLD WAR II has the following to say about Iwo Jima:

^“Iwo Jima was, of all the many Pacific islands, perhaps the only one whose capture was unavoidably necessary. If the B-29 bombing of Japan were to succeed, the 8-mile square island had to be obtained as a base for long-range fighters and a haven for crippled Superforts.  Labyrinthine Iwo was known as the Pacific’s toughest nut, and the final staff briefing at Saipan was in the nature of a salute to men who were about to die. Only a frontal assault· could be made; said Navy Secretary James: Forrestal (who went along), which left ‘very little choice except to take it by force of arms, by character and courage.’ Selected for the task were the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine Divisions. D-day was February 19, 1945. The first waves got ashore all right, but the 22,817 dug-in defenders soon opened up with artil­lery and mortars (including 320-mm variety). The battle lasted 26 days, cost 5,563 dead, 17,343 wounded. Causalities, including replacements, exceeded 100% in several infantry battalions, and reached at least 50 percent in all others.”

The battle of Iwo Jima was well publicized by the media here at home, and it was a very bad time for us, particularly for Mom and Dad. We were almost certain Bud was involved, since he was in the 3rd Marine Division. Because the cas­ualties were exceedingly high, citizens on the West Coast were bombarded with requests to give blood so that whole blood could be flown to the wounded Marines of this battle. We were all very anxious during this whole time. But Bud came through it.

Bud is a little reluctant to talk about his war exper­iences. He did receive a Purple Heart, and when asked about it he answered with a grin:

“I got the Purple Heart for a wound I got while diving into a foxhole.”

Evidently the wound was on that part of his anatomy that was at the highest altitude as he made that fateful dive. He was hit by mortar fragments, but the wound was very light. In the excitement of the action he wasn’t even aware until later he had even been hit.

Bud was a good fighting Marine, but in between battles he and his buddies played a lot of poker. Bud was either a good poker player or a lucky one, because he frequently sent his winnings home for Mom and Dad to bank for him.

My husband Dick was back in the States during this time, but Mary’s husband Roy was brought home from Europe only to be sent to the South Pacific for a short tour of duty flying as a navigator on B-29’s.

With the signing of the peace treaty with Japan on August 14, most of the draftees were sent home. Bud, however, was not a draftee. He had enlisted. With disgust he watched many or his buddies leave for home while he stayed. behind.

Bud was finally sent back to the States shortly before Christmas, and he hitchhiked from San Diego, his point of debarkation, to Madera. Our parents’ farm was right next to Highway 99. Bud says of that homecoming:

“I remember when I got out of the car that I was riding in, I saw the door open at the house and here come Mom on the run. She had been watching for me. If you can imagine Mom running, as round as she was, and as short as she was, but she met me halfway. And that was a happy time to be home.”