CHARLES AND DOREEN PARKER

Charles and Doreen Parker make their home in Malden, but they met in England during World War II, far away from Whitman County.  Charley was born in 1920 eight miles out of Pine City at a place called Hole In The Ground.  When he was still little, his family moved near the Ewan Cheney Road east of Chapman Lake.  He went to school at Rock Lake School District School #59 which still stands along the Williams Lake road just before you get to Badger Lake.  When he was sixteen he moved to Rosalia where he worked for the Maley brothers wheat farming for four and a half years.  In October of 1941 he and some other guys headed for Libby, Montana to try their hand in the lumber trade. 

It was while he was in Montana that he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Two days later he enlisted.  Had he reported to the draft board the day before or the day after he would have been assigned duty in the Pacific, since men were sent to those two major theaters on alternate days.  However, on December 9^th the call was to Europe in the United States Army Air Force with a Construction Engineer Group.

First stop for Charlie Parker was Fort Douglas, Utah where he was issued a uniform.  A week later he arrived at Keesler Field, Mississippi for Basic Training and six weeks of Equipment Schooling.  His next training was at Brookley Field in Mobile, Alabama where his company was formed and they received the equipment they would need for air strip construction.  Charlie was assigned to a TD14 Tractor and a C2 Wrecker, which he met up with in Ireland.

Charlie tells about the opportunity he had to make three trips to Heil Company, an automotive engineering company at West Alice, Wisconsin, a manufacturing area out of Milwaukee.  Those trips took him away from Mobile on a train for three week-long trips over a six week period.  He drove three gas trucks with trailers back to Brookley Field.

It all started one Monday morning during roll call when an Officer appeared and asked for twenty-five volunteers, men who could drive trucks, to fall out at 8 a.m. in fatigues at the barracks.  His Sergeant pointed to Charlie, so he fell out and was loaded onto a truck and taken to nearby Mobile Bay.  The volunteers were issued wheel barrows (the trucks they were to drive!) and shovels and set to work building a recreational park for the base.  "It was nice work," said Charlie.  "Better than policing the area around the barracks." 

Well, Tuesday about twenty of the same men fell out again, as they also did on Wednesday.  "They brought us a nice lunch and it was pleasant work," Charlie again affirmed.  Thursday they were still there running their "trucks," but, said Charlie, "Around noon, here came that same Officer and the Sergeant in charge.  They pulled out all twenty of us from the park, told us to jump in the truck, go back to the barracks, dress in Class A uniforms, and report to the orderly room at 1600 hours.  And that's how we got to go to Wisconsin."

In July of 1942 Parker was on a train to Fort Dix, New Jersey.  On August 1 he boarded the South American pleasure ship Uruguay, a boat built for 800 passengers.  There were eight thousand G.I.s aboard, all of them headed for Halifax, Nova Scotia to join a large convoy, the largest that had assembled up to that point.  When that convoy reached Iceland it was joined to yet another huge convoy.  "All you could see was boats, boats," recalled Charlie.  "We changed course every seven minutes to avoid torpedo attack, but we had no sub scare going over."

The convoy approached Swansea, Wales where part of it broke off, including the Uruguay, and went on in at night.  At the docks they were loaded into something like a canal lock which raised them up to dock level.  At that point, about 10 p.m., a German air raid hit.  The Uruguay was lowered back down and went back out into the bay.  That was the only time Swansea was bombed.  "The Germans knew we were coming," Charlie said.

They took a train to Canada Hall where for two weeks they awaited the arrival of their supplies which were to come into North Ireland.  They ate a lot of what Charlie called "Billy Goat Stew," beet root and black bread sandwiches, and tea provided by the Naffies, Britain's version of Red Cross ladies.  They finally reached their destination, Langford Lodge, which was about fifteen miles from Belfast.  There they built two metal surface airstrips out of reinforced steel mats, strips designed for the P-38s that were just coming in.

Parker had to spend six weeks in a British Hospital, the Fifth General, for some surgery and said he had "beautiful care" during that stay.  Since his unit had moved on he was sent to England as a casual replacement at the second largest rear echelon American air base in England, Air Depot Number Two in Lancashire County.  Air Depot Number Two was where new planes from the United States came in to receive armor and parachutes and generally get ready to go on to combat bases.  "They came in by the thousands and it took about six week to get an airplane ready to go," Charlie remembers.

Air Depot Number Two had no use for Charlie's construction skills so he was assigned "light duty" which varied until the day an officer asked him, "Charlie, have you ever tended bar in an Officer's Club?"  Well, he hadn't but he did for the next two years.  "It was a beautiful bar and I turned out to be a pretty good bartender," Charlie admitted.  "I learned so much from listening to all those educated people talk about all kinds of things.  It really was quite an education."  In his spare time Charlie developed a business selling and renting bicycles.  The business thrived as outfits rotated in and out of the base.  He also pressed clothes for people like "twenty-year old Captains."  

Charlie tended bar until the European war was over on May 7, and then General Miller took all "non-essentials" to France to Camp Philip Morris where he was attached to the 75^th Infantry.  That unit was getting ready to go to Japan.  "We were one happy bunch when the A-Bomb fell, because until then we were going to be part of the big invasion."

Charlie was sent stateside in November of 1945 to New York City, than to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey.  He then returned to Fort Dix, then flew from La Guardia to Fort Lewis, arriving home in Cheney the last day of November, 1945.

There was, however, one major complication in his travel plan.  He had to leave behind Doreen Hodgson Parker, the English girl he had married November 11, 1944.

Born in Carlise, Cumberland County, England in 1922, Doreen was one of four surviving children out of ten born to her parents.  Her dad, a railroad man, died at the age of forty-six.  Her mother contributed to the war effort by taking in children from London who were forced to leave their homes during the Blitz.

Doreen finished school at age fourteen, as was customary.  Faced with having to pay to continue her education, she worked for a couple of years in a bakery, then went into apprenticeship in a beauty shop located above a haberdashery, where she also worked.  When the war came along she, and all young women her age, had to find a government job to help the war effort.  There were applications all over town for all kinds of jobs including work in the "Land Army."  Since there were very few men available to mind the land, England made farmers out of young girls.  "I was so afraid of animals, even chickens, I just couldn't work for the Land Army," Doreen laughed.  She applied to the Motor Pool Office and served doing paper work in the allocation of parts all over England.  She rode her bicycle seven miles each way to her job.

Doreen met Charlie at the Tower Ball Room in Blackpool while she and her entire family, twenty-six of them, were on holiday there in the summertime of 1944.  "Our whole town took the same week off each year so we could have holiday together," she explained.  They had been to Blackpool for many years, enjoying that Coney Island-style seaside resort's lovely, spacious accommodations.  One of those accommodations was the Tower Ball Room where entertainment was available as well as dancing. 

Charlie and Doreen met at a dance in the Ball Room.  She was standing with three of her family members when he first saw her.  He had developed a rapport with the Master of Ceremonies at the Tower by bringing along cigars with him when he came to dances.  With the MC's approval, he asked Doreen to dance, and met her entire family within minutes of their first dance together.  Over the next few days Charlie spent a lot of time with the family.  He and Doreen's brother, a Royal Air Force pilot, decided to switch uniforms and visit a local pub for some Black and Tans.  He had a great time picking on the G.I.s who were in the pub and was glad none of them were military police. 

Parker was stationed at Blackpool which was 180 miles from Carlise where Doreen lived.  He remembers that distance well because he traveled it frequently between June and November 1944 when Charlie and Doreen were married.

After being separated from Charlie for about a year, Doreen sailed to America on the Willard Holbrook in April of 1946.  She crossed the United States by train all by herself, but Charlie was there to meet her in Spokane. They have stayed in the area for the fifty years they have been married.  They  raised two children, a boy and a girl.

Her first day in Washington State she and Charlie drove to Cheney to his Grandma's house.  "His whole family was just wonderful to me," she smiled.  "The first morning we were there, when I came in for breakfast I was asked what I would like and I said a boiled egg on toast would be nice.  Well, I was served a boiled egg in its shell rolling around on a plate with a piece of toast.  I wondered how on earth I should eat it.  I had always had an egg cup!  Charlie came in and I asked him what I was to do.  He told me to just break it open and eat it!  So right away I started learning how to be an American!"