Finally, I Honored Others on Memorial Day

For over thirty years on Memorial Day I've closed out the school year by completing final paperwork. After I retired I celebrated by attending quiet parties. or I shopped, unmindful of the significance of the day.

Last Monday my sister and I attended the services for the Royal Dutch Flyers who had trained in Jackson, MS during WWII. We both realized minor parts our parents played in that long ago time and it was somehow necessary that we attend one service in our lifetime. We are aging just as many vets are. Loyalty to their comrades brings most vets to any memorial service. Ours was delayed respect.

Mother worked as one of several PBX operators--you've seen them in old photos or in early movies sitting at a board plugging and unplugging wires to connect phones--and Daddy repaired all the telegraph/teletype machines at the base. In those days airbase workers couldn't reveal much about their work or what they saw at the base.

The activity at the Jackson Air Base of 1941-47 was the reason we saw so many airmen in town. A number of American squadrons came and went at different periods of time. In May 1942 the base was designated as the Army Air Force Specialized Flying School and would be open to the Netherlands East Indies Air Force to train here. One story is that the Dutch base in the East Indies had been taken over by the Japanese and training had to be conducted somewhere else. The Jackson base was selected by the Dutch Air Force for basic and advanced training while Fort Levenworth in KS would conduct primary training.


Today one veteran from the Viet Nam War told us he'd heard stories of these young men, many in their late teens, who were daredevils, flying loops under telephone and utility lines, flying low over buildings and homes--any scary tactic imaginable. I faintly remember one occasion looking upward and hearing that same remark from the few around me as a light plane flew just above our heads. Many died during their training or on flights across the U. S. The war activity prevented the transfer of bodies in the United States back to Holland, so the remains were sent back to Jackson, Ms where a plot of land in the city's cemetery was designated for the Dutch Airmen. For over 60 years a service has been held in honor of these young men and their commandants.



Over the years a member of the Royal Dutch Family came to lay the wreath at the base of the monument.Other times a special guest did the honors. This year veterans of four conflicts lay the wreath while 100 persons, mostly vets and their families, watched.

A few years ago one of the oldest men in the Dutch Air Force was laid to rest alongside his comrades, last year his wife's remains were buried next to him. This year, an airman whose remains were in a Florida cemetery were transferred to be laid to rest with his squadron. In the rear of the cemetery known as Cedarlawn lie 36 airmen, two children, and one wife in a quiet area unknown to most of the traffic passing daily.

The 9:30 a.m. day began cloudy with the sun peeping until it found a wide gap in the clouds. Within thirty minutes the humidity has risen and heat had replaced the few breezes we experienced earlier. Military honors with gun salute, fly over, a lot of speeches of reminiscence reminded us of the once presence of the Flying Dutchmen. May 4 is the Dutch celebration of Memorial Day. I'm sure they honor those buried in Mississippi.

Those Christmases Long Ago

In the worst of times during World War II with rationing of gas and food, my family joined others in the United States by inviting a serviceman to lunch on December 25. For each of three Christmases we gave a soldier a few hours of attention and a home-cooked meal.

In preparation for the lunch in December, we saved a teaspoon of sugar in a special jar throughout the year. This was for two desserts. Each month Mother bought one food item. The menu never changed: turkey(sometimes a chicken), dressing, cranberry sauce, English peas, candied sweet potatoes, and pickled peaches. Dessert was Mother’s coconut cake and a chocolate pie -— made from scratch, of course.

Beginning in 1943 my grade-school sister and I, a gangly 13-year-old, planned and executed the room and table decorations: old Christmas cards dangling off a string hung above the doorways, a fresh cedar wreath on the front door, a small pine tree covered with silver balls and ringlets of construction paper (tinsel was needed for the war effort). Mother’s only white tablecloth, starched for the occasion, displayed her best dishes.

Thirty minutes before noon Dad left for the train depot, a mere 15-minute walk.Trains passed through our city to and from Memphis and New Orleans and crowds of service personnel choked the one-story building standing at the west end of downtown.

Dad’s responsibility was to select our guest. After entering the stuffy waiting room filled with cigarette smoke and the din of voices, he’d lean against a large column where he had full view. His eyes scanned each GI. He told us later how difficult it was to pick one serviceman from the hundreds milling around.

“They looked so vulnerable, so young,” he said later. “I hated that we couldn’t offer food to all of them.” He told us he searched for the young man who looked the most scared and lonely.

“You in town for awhile?” he’d ask the stranger. “There’s a hot meal waiting at my house. Want to join me and the family?” He and the hungry GI walked slowly back to our house chatting. This was Dad’s son for the day.

At the doorway we sisters rushed to embrace the soldier like he was a returning brother, pressing a small gift into his hands. At the table he could hardly swallow a bite of food, as we peppered him with questions about his life,his family, his state. After dessert and coffee we said our goodbyes reluctantly and Dad returned to the depot with a contented soldier, his duffle bag slung over one shoulder and a package of food for his supper in his hand.

Whether these young men completed their tours of duty, or died on some lonely spot of foreign soil, we never knew. However, they're a part of our memories of that time.


We sisters 10 years later

109 East Palace

My neighbor V insisted that I purchase a copy of the above named book and read it as Sis and I drifted towards Santa Fe. It is the story of the secretive nature of those who were engaged in planning and executing the Atomic Bomb. I've capitalized the words because, although it helped us win against the Japanese in WWII, there is an awesome, penetrating feeling one receives when the story gets to the actual day of the first bomb test.

Sis and I visited 109 E. Palace the other day and to our regret, a linen shop was in the same building that had been set up as a undercover office to serve as a starting point for all physicists, their families, military personnel, and other needed workers. Locals didn't know what lay behind the iron gate; that inside the white lintel entranceway one who entered, "disappeared."

I lived through this war and somehow I'd forgotten about the AB. Years of peace and wars in other foreign soils, growing up and raising my own family, I was caught up in the "now." All the time, work was going on at Los Alamos, NM, a short hour's drive from Santa Fe. Even the Santa Feans didn't know that on a mesa past the San Idelfonso Reservation, history was in the making.

We didn't complete the book before visiting Los Alamos. The road leading to the mesa began a mix of mind pictures playing at rapid speed as we drove up and up and up. We were remembering the descriptions of the difficulty of military vehicles carrying precious cargo on muddy roads, the vistas that were seen by the newly arrivals, and once on the mesa top, we saw nothing that those who had to live in secret saw. A thriving city with all the modern conveniences...just the opposite for the workers and their families.

Los Alamos has two museums: the Bradbury Science Museum which gives a brief history in photographs and then gives hands-on science information. Extensive material on the components of "Fat Boy" and "Little Man" (named after W. Churchill and FDR) that were the forerunners to the bombs dropped on Hiroshima snd Nagasaki. Displays of research being done now to "serve national security, eneregy, health, and environmental research needs", as the pamphlet handed out states. This is a wonderful science lesson for young people. The history is quite complete, a number of lessons in themselves about the progress and timeline and what was being done at Los Alamos at the same time war was being raged in Europe.

Visiting the History Museum on the former campus of a boys' ranch that was appropriated by the U. S. Army for the research, gives tangible remains of life on top of the mesa. Life under secrecy wasn't ideal by any means, and while the physicists worked long hours day and night trying to beat the Germans, whom it was reported were already working on a bomb, their wives were attempting to carve out a semblance of daily life putting up with poor electricity, little heat (the mesa is 7,355 ft. high), improper kitchen equipment, vegetables that rotted in transport, little fruit, and anything you can imagine could be devastating so far from civilization. Yet, the persistence of these women to provide a balance without being able to contact their families, who knew nothing of their husbands' work for years, should be rewarded. As should the military personnel who were stationed there.

The local bookstore displayed all the various books that have been written about this project, led admirably by J. Robert Oppenheimer, a quiet man who deceived those under him as to his ability to keep the large group filled with hope and working to capacity. 109 E. Palace isn't the last of the stories I'm going to read. Written by the Jennet Conant, granddaughter of James Conant, who played a part in this secretive world, has compressed into a readable account the story from its early days to the decisions made afterwards as to the use of Los Alamos. Although there are many others who've done this, hers is the latest to be published. There are books written by WACS who served during that time, a book of some of the workers, giving their photos during the period, as well as an up-to-date one. On one page they've written of their time at Los Alamos.

Some interesting highlights(or low points) of life there: everyone had the same address, Box 1663; workers were given numbers on their security passes; important persons were given fictional names and everyone called the other only by a first name; no outsiders for years knew where their sons or daughters were working--just "somewhere"; no one could get off the mesa without special permission, so local inhabitants were asked to provide R/R for the overworked physicists and their wives; there was no shopping for the women, poor laundry services, so they began to wear overalls that would take the wear and tear of dirt.

When you visit Los Alamos, you can also see the Jemez Mountains that are the result of a volcano that erupted and left these mesas or peninsulas. Bandelier National Park adjoins and is a testament to the early Indian settlements who left petroglyphs on cliff walls, as well as dwellings set back in cave areas formed by the volcano. The area of the volcano eruption is Calles Caldera, a national preserve. One can see the deep depression left after the eruption.

Everyone should be reminded of the path that led to the development of the bomb, the results of that destruction, the terrible feeling the physicists felt knowing their hard work would kill thousands of people.

I hope generations to come will study this time in history.