From Italy

Name
Joseph thomas Scigliano
Email
josephjoseppe@gmail.com
Phone
(707) 766-9417
Your Story
I was born in March of ’42. I would not recall anything of the war personally, but I did hear of the ‘war’ from my classmates in the orphanage in Italy. I would attend high school in Iowa and it was there that would learn of the war. I had been in so called ‘enemy’ territory and my country would change sides as it were. It was after the end of the war that I recall two men digging up a bomb out of the ground and seeing two soldiers in uniform march down the road in front of our house on Via Zabbo in Gallio in Tyrolia Italy. that is what I recall of the war after the end. Sorrrry.

SCRAP DAY – NO SCHOOL!

Kids helping the war effort

By Janet Olmstead     b. 1932

I’m glad to talk about a memory I have of those years.  We were all so patriotic back then.  My special memory is about the day my town, Springfield, closed all the schools and told the kids to go collect scrap for the war effort.  First we cleaned out our own houses and farms.  But then we started going alongside the roads and found so much stuff like tires, cans and even old stoves.  We had so much fun yelling to each other about what we found.  Adults helped us haul stuff to the central collection place.  We stayed out all day until dark.  We wanted to do it again the next day, but we had to go back to school.  Besides, we had collected a mountain of scrap.   I only remember doing it once.

www.homefrontmemoir.com

 

War Time in Niles, MI

from Julia Anton Wiggins

Here is a story about what some in my family experienced during World War II as residents of Niles, Michigan. This story is neither exceptional nor unique. It is just the result of me talking to my Grandma.

I encourage everyone to talk to the Greatest Generation. They have much to teach us and will not be here long. Just ask for stories. You will be amazed. But hurry. You’ve got to hurry.

I am not putting the full names of anyone but my Grandma Ossmer. She granted me permission to tell her story. It never occurred to me to ask the others, but now they are dead. In respect for their privacy, I use their first initials only.

**********

My Grandmother, Ethel Fitch Ossmer, worked in the Kingsbury munitions plant in LaPorte, Indiana, during WWII. Her job was making bombs.

Here she is in a group photo at the bomb plant. She is the short but scrappy lady in the front row to your left. A woman in her forties, she wears a mid length skirt and dark blouse and she is pointing into the camera’s eye.

Born a true Victorian lady, she never wore trousers, not even to make bombs.

She has something that looks like a model airplane across the top of her shoes in the photo below. Two of her sons were at war at the time, in Europe and the Far East.

Uncle B— stormed the beach at Normandy on D Day, was trapped in a shallow foxhole with a dead German, whom he used for cover, (I mean I would too!) and survived to become a highly decorated hero and later, a successful executive. He had a big beautiful family and lived a long happy life.

Uncle D—- escaped from a Japanese prison of war camp and returned to Niles for a job on the railroad. Not long after his return, he was crushed between two railroad cars during a switch operation on the tracks down by the ice house.

Another Uncle D (should we call him D Plus?) was a merchant marine. He survived the war and became a steeplejack, retiring to Brooklyn, Michigan, where he built his own house by hand and had a fieldstone fireplace. One of the rocks had a petrified lizard tail embedded in it. I hope it is still there.

Perhaps the little plane was a momento one of them sent, or gave to his mother when he was home on leave. In any case, in this photograph, my Grandmother has a war plane on her feet, and she is sending a message.

SEND A MESSAGE WITH THOSE BOMBS!

https://amemoirfromthehomefront.com/index.php?gf-download=2020%2F03%2FFDBC7648-89CC-47B4-800A-371E7D096E1F.jpeg&form-id=1&field-id=7&hash=a1544f859d0a695c4466d48dad74d1f83741bc213f39c1950261c3f31d29f53a

 

One day, the plant officials took all the ladies outside and posed them in a group. “Ladies! Send a message to go with those bombs! “ So they all posed looking warlike and fierce as a message to their enemy.

In this picture, Grandma O told me she was telling the enemy, “Here’s One in Your Eye!”

Although raised never to point one’s digit, she made an exception just this one time. The circumstances called for it, overriding nicety.

She told me they sometimes wrote notes on the bombs to support the soldiers who would use them. Often they would put on bright lipstick and give the bombs a big red kiss. Somebody else put ink on an old pair of high heel shoes and stamped footprints across the casing of a bomb. A note to the enemy (we stomp on you with our pretty little shoe) or a note to the soldiers (we’ll be here when you get home, Hon, and we will be lookin good) ?

Back to the picture. Please note Grandma O’s daughter B——- to her left in the coveralls. She is energetically emulating a machine gun. This eldest daughter was a scrapper, the story goes, until she found religion and straightened herself out.

My mind’s ear can hear her going

Thidadidathud! Thidadidathud!

While I did not know her at her scrappiest, I can hear her making that noise. Look at her picture and you will too.

We think another daughter, S——. is behind Grandma O’s right shoulder. It looks just like Aunt S——— but she seems older, thinner, and more careworn than she should have been at that time. Of course, the times were rough. She later recovered her joi de vivre, married a dashing cavalier on an airplane, had three sons, and was tragically widowed. She came back to Niles from Gleason, Tennessee, got a job running the eye doctor’s office, and bought a house on Regent Street, enjoying a long happy marriage with her sons’ sixth grade teacher, our beloved Uncle Harold R——-. She was also a well known realtor in town.

Grandma O said the money at the Kingsbury plant was great, plus they also got free housing and food.

She told me they were required to smoke Kool menthol cigarettes during breaks and lunchtime to “clear the lungs.”

So what if her hair turned green and her complexion yellow.? She was a single mother of a very large family and desperately needed the work. Plus she was serving her country.

In spite of all the toxins, the birth of 12 children, and the stress of widowhood and loss, Grandma O lived past her hundredth birthday.

We think she was 103. During the Depression and the war which followed, the family made themselves older or younger to suit the circumstances so we are not sure about her true age. The birth certificate was destroyed in a fire at the Baptist church some time in the 1920s.

I make no claim to historical accuracy in the details of this story. I am just recounting what my Grandmother told me.

We love her story just the way she told it and we don’t need anything more.

One last thing. Please take the time to scan this photograph to examine the faces and dynamics of these heroic women. My family only takes up one corner, but every one of them tells a story of her own.

One of those stories could be yours.

Office of Price Administration Announces Rationing

On March 12, 1943  The Office of Price Administration (OPA) announced the following

Image result for images US ration book

Each person regardless of age will be allowed 16 points a week for the whole group of new items to be rationed.  There will be no exact meat ration, although the amount of meat available will average two pounds a week per person for home consumption. Restaurants will continue to be coupon free to the customers , although OPA will ration the supplies used by restaurants.

Bouillon cubes and beef extracts, not rationed now with canned soup, will be rationed with meat.

Not all cheeses will be rationed. Hard cheese like Swiss and American will be rationed; soft  or perishable cheese like cram cheese or cottage cheese, Camembert, and Brie will not be rationed.

Canned fish will be rationed, but fresh, frozen, smoked, salt and pickled fish will not be rationed.

Weekly coupons will be good for a month.  If any coupons are left over from the first week, they may be used the second week’s coupons.

Blue Stamps in War Ration Book No. 2 are used for most canned goods and for dried peas, beans lentils, and frozen commodities like fruit juice.  The red stamps are used for meats, canned fish, butter, cheese edible fats, and canned milk.  You have to give up more points when buying scarce foods then when buying the same quantity of a more plentiful one.

(Special note:  This will be the last post for a while due to a project request.)

 

 

 

 

 

For Grandad, WW II (and fate) Put an End to the Depression

from Emil Stefanik  b. 1938

My grandfather was from Cleveland.  He owned a clothing store and held some stocks and lost everything in the depression. He took a job in a small steel mill  where he earned 50 cents an hour.  He was too old for the war.  He heard about the need for workers in the war plants so he moved his family to Camden, New Jersey and got a job in the shipyard.  His pay went from 50 cents an hour to a dollar an hour with plenty of overtime.  Grandad, my grandmother and my mother also got help to pay for some of the rent.   He always told that it was fated for him to make that move because the first ship he worked on was the U.S.S. Cleveland.

 

WW II Made Me Love This Country

(Author is unknown )

World War II made me love this country because there was a spirit of love in America which has never been here since.  I had respect for my country and fellow citizens.  I felt the country had great promise, and I was really happy that I was living in a period of history when I could play a part.

During the war we didn’t have a lot of violence here.  People were future oriented.  You had a sense of purpose, a sense of moving with the country.

I wish we had more of that today.

 

WHO REMEMBERS 52- 20?

(52- 20 was a subsection of the GI bill.  It promised $20 a week for 52 weeks to tide veterans over as they searched for work.)
My name is Arthur Poretz.  I was honorably discharged from Navy in 1946 and applied for 52-20 payments. I’m writing about the period but have no recollection of how I actually received the $20 each week. No checking account, no credit cards, it couldn’t have been cash in the mail. Very stumped but sure there is an answer since I’m writing about 1946 and my life after war.
Perhaps some reader remembers how these payments were made.  Please comment.

He saw a world he didn’t know existed

By Dave Bielkins b.1966

My grandfather, Walter Bielkins, was born and raised deep in the North Carolina backwoods on a small, horse-powered farm.  They had jury-rigged electricity which they used for lights and the radio, but no running water.  He had never traveled much beyond the farm drive.

He enlisted right after Pearl Harbor and was sent to Fort Bragg.  He told me he had some trouble adapting to being in such crowded quarters along side so many strangers, but it was for the war.  His big shock came when he took a weekend pass to Fayetteville.  He had never even imagined what a city was like.  He was awed by so many cars and so many tall buildings.  He saw houses all jammed close together.  The restaurants and stores were a big shock as he had never been in either.  He wasn’t alone because there were other country boys in his unit all discovering the same thing.  He told me that with tens of thousands of boys being moved all around to new and different places, the war changed far more in the country – and in its soldiers –  than anyone could imagine.    He came home safely from Europe and lived to be 76

WHO’S SORRY NOW?

Albert Scioffi b. 1936

My sister, Alice Mary, had a boyfriend who joined the army.

Before he went in, he bought her an engagement ring. Alice Mary didn’t want to be engaged, but she felt bad because he was going off to war. In 1945 her boyfriend was coming home and she was worried about how she was going to break the news that she didn’t want to marry him. She felt sorry for him, but that’s how she felt.

She met him at a restaurant downtown near the train station. My parents, my brother and I were all waiting for her when she came home that night. “How did he take the news?” we all asked. “I never gave him the news,” she said. “He gave me the news that he was engaged to some girl he met when he was on leave in New York. He said he was very sorry.”

Alice Mary felt she should be happy that he no longer wanted to marry her, but she felt jilted nonetheless and cried all night. The next day she was fine and was glad her pretending to him was over.

My Precious “Steely”

Something of value

Jane Kinkade

b. 1935

 

Image result for images playing marbles

I grew up in a small town near Dallas.  My cousins and I played marbles games back then.  We had lots of kinds of marbles; glass, stone, “aggies” of agate, and there was the rare ‘steely’ that my cousin, Maryann, used for her shooter.

. Our games were simple: draw a circle, put in a marble from every player and then take turns trying to knock the other players’ marbles out of the circle.  She won lots of games with that steely and prized it above anything she owned

When my father was killed in France, Maryann came to our house for the wake.  We were both about 10 years old.  As a kid, she didn’t know the right things to say, but she gave me her steely.  I knew what it meant to her and understood what she was doing.

I won some games with the steely, but never used it against Maryann.  Today the steely is in my jewelry box where I see it and think of Maryann’s war time kindness often.

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