PART THREE

LaCrosse High School

Southwest County

Bomb Defuser, Coast Guard, Engineer, Farmer, Gunner,

Infantryman, Mechanic, Sailor, Tank Driver, Topographer, Wife

Moving along to another part of Whitman County, we have stories from LaCrosse, Hooper, Hay, and Endicott, plus a couple from Colfax that made it to our LaCrosse High School interview session. At this point we were attempting to keep our record of losing at least ONE person per interview session intact, but stumbled at the last moment. One candidate almost didn't make it… somehow Gene Ellithorpe ended up in Hay before finally showing up in Endicott. I told him that's what he got for flying without a wingman. Well, you had to be there.

Anyway, what emerges in this group of stories - some long, some short, all true - is a wonderful set of experiences set in the context of many different occupations our greatest generation people engaged in during those war years. Part Three presents a number of people in TRIBUTE who served over the Hump in the China-India-Burma Theater of War, and also touches on the Aleutian Islands front, two areas of the war heard about much less frequently than the Pacific or European fronts.

We had a really nice day at LaCrosse High School. The students posted two kids at the doors to welcome people as they came in and we had a little chat session before breaking off into groups for the interviews. They served cinnamon rolls and coffee mid-session and we were all invited for lunch when we finished.

A week or so before our scheduled interview session at LaCrosse High School, our contact teacher there, Mike Jones, told me a speaker was to do a presentation at the school. She was a Jewish woman named Naomi Bon, a survivor of a German Concentration Camp. I went to hear her speak, drawn by her connection to our tribute to World War II era Whitman County residents. Her story resonated with memories, feelings, and experiences of prejudice, bigotry, hatred, and curtailment of personal freedom, some of the reasons America got into the war in Europe and responded to attack in the Pacific.

As I listened to Naomi Bon I turned and watched the High School students who had gathered in the gym bleachers for her lecture. They sat mesmerized by the tale she told, one likely they had only heard before as fiction. Before them was the living truth, and they heard her.

I only was able to hear the first half of her presentation, but her words painted a clear context for the stories that follow. Here is part of Naomi Bon's story.

NAOMI BON

Naomi Bon spoke of the many German people who were against Hitler and what he stood for, and their inability to stop the progress of the Nazi party. She recalled Jews having to wear a yellow star on everything they wore to set them apart, then being herded into ghettos where they could be more easily supervised. Persecution grew in earnest. Eight more families were moved into the house she shared with her family. All able bodied Jewish men up to the age of fifty-five were forced into labor camps to support Germany's war machine.

She and the other women of her family, including a baby sister and an aged grandmother, were ordered to railroad cars and were permitted only one change of underwear and no valuables at all. They were given numbers and eighty-five of them were shoved into a cattle car with only a bucket to serve as a toilet for all of them.

"We didn't know what was happening," she explained.

When they finally reached their destination she was separated from her family by the wave of a stick in the hand of a German officer. She never saw any of them again, but learned later they had been sorted out to go to the gas chamber, or killing factory. Her female family members were considered too old, too young, or too weak to work for the Third Reich.

After a long time in a crowded flea-infested prison camp, Naomi eventually was forced to work in an explosives plant, a life or death experience every day. She and other Jewish women agreed to put their lives on the line by deliberately building bombs that would not explode. Their lives were preserved by a woman who worked in the Nazis' kitchen. She would put edible food out in the kitchen garbage cans so Naomi and her friends could sneak out at night and retrieve those life-sustaining leftovers. Years later Naomi found that very woman and was able to thank her for her kindness to a few starving Jews.

She lived to be liberated by the Allies in the spring of 1945 only to eventually be imprisoned by the Russian forces. Finally free, she immigrated to the United States where she and her husband raised a family.

Naomi Bon now spends her time touring all over America, going to schools wherever they will make time and room for her to speak to deliver her message. That message is: yes, it really happened. She believes her life remains proof that America was morally obligated to join the battle against Hitler and the world domination he planned at the expense of innocent lives.

That moral obligation was played out in lives all over America, both in those who went to war and those who manned the home front, and also in the lives of children. Della Evans was one of those people interviewed at the LaCrosse session who did her bit to win the war when she was a school child.

DELLA EVANS

By Toni Hopkins

Della Barr Evans was a grade school child in 1941 when the second World War broke out. The war was something that everyone knew about, everyone followed events closely, and they worried about friends and loved ones who were involved. For Della, life didn't change too very much.

School stayed the same, but the subjects started to circle around the war. They held a mandatory scrap drive at Riparia School, the one-room school that Della attended. Scrap metal was in demand in the war effort and so school kids all over America were sent out to scour the countryside for metal and also tires. The metal was shipped off to make things for the war. No one is quite sure what happened to all the tires. The kids at Riparia did better than they thought they would do, gathering twice as much metal as they expected to gather.

The day Pearl Harbor was bombed, Della was out riding her horse. Though it was a surprise that the Japanese had bombed Hawaii, it wasn't a surprise to her they were going to do something big. Della quoted her father as often saying that it was going to happen sometime. Della said even she knew the beginning of the war was soon to come.

When the war ended with the dropping of the Atomic Bomb everyone was overjoyed, according to Della Evans. No one wanted the war to go on any more than it already had. They were happy about the bomb, but no one really knew what it was. They didn't know what "atomic" meant. The bomb was a total surprise. That it happened was a huge relief and no one showed any sympathy for those who started the war. No one felt sorry. They thought that the Japanese deserved what they got for causing so much grief, hate, and hurt during World War II.

Della told about her husband, Bill, who lived in Rattlesnake north of Prosser. Every day he could watch the Hanford area, but he and his family had no idea what was going on down there.

During the war, Della said, everyone was urged to buy War Bonds and Saving Stamps. Those red stamps had "America On Guard" printed on them. According to a Savings Card Della still has, "Savings stamps are available in denominations of $0.10, $0.25, $050, $1, and $5. They may be purchased in any amount and may, when affixed to savings cards or albums, be cashed at any postal-savings post office or applied toward the purchase of postal-savings certificates or United States savings bonds."

Della smiled, "I saved so much I guess I saved them forever." Although she still has some savings stamps and a Savings Card she has kept all these years, the bonds she bought were turned into cash after the war was won.

Della also kept a War Ration Book that included the instruction "This book is valuable. Do not lose it." Della didn't.

The instructions also stated, "Rationing is a vital part of your country's war effort. Any attempt to violate the rules is an effort to deny someone his share and will create hardship and help the enemy. This book is your government's assurance of your right to buy your fair share of certain goods made scarce by war. Price ceilings have also been established for your protection. Dealers must post these prices conspicuously. Don't pay more. Give your whole support to rationing and thereby conserve our vital goods. Be guided by the rule: If you don't need it, DON'T BUY IT."

Ration stamps were issued by a Local Ration Board, then the stamps were used as you purchased rationed goods, and the person selling those goods had to collect the stamps. Gas, shoes, meat, sugar, and tires were some of the items that cost the most stamps. Some ration stamps had pictures of tanks on them, and each stamp was numbered.

Della Evans had the pleasure of editing a book titled Rural Reflections which contained a story titled "Gold Star Mother" by Norma Dipple. Della says, "When I was a youngster during the war and went to town, the houses along the streets would have stars hung in the windows. Those were red, white, and blue, signifying they had a son or daughter in the service. When that son or daughter was killed, they were given a banner with a gold star.

"When I was putting Norma's story in the Rural Reflections book, I wanted a picture of one of those gold star banners so I went to the library in Colfax. The librarians had never heard of such a thing. Something that was so important when I was young had been completely dropped.

"There was a Mother in Lacrosse who lost her son and every year until she died, she would plant in her front yard a floral display designed as the Gold Star Banner to honor all the Gold Star Mothers."

The Gold Star Mothers organization was formed in 1929 to help veterans in VA hospitals and other centers by donating thousands of hours visiting, writing letters for them, sewing lap robes, and aiding them with personal needs.

Della now lives near LaCrosse, Washington, where she teaches her grandchildren all about the war and its history. She has made several trips to Washington, DC taking her grandchildren with her and showing them the memorials and telling them the history of the war. She will never forget that war and all than happened to so many people.

At Pullman High School when two or three students interviewed one person they did one paper. At LaCrosse they chose to do differently, so some of the people in this Part Three section had two papers written about them. We chose to print both stories. One such interview was done with Charles Tobin. Chuck could not make it on the big interview day, but came in the next day, so I got to be there when two students interviewed him. We all three heard a story made more compelling by the gentle tone of Chuck's voice. Here are two versions of that interview.

CHARLES "CHUCK" TOBIN

By Travis Carter

Mr. Tobin was born in South Dakota. He was the fourth oldest out of six sisters and three brothers. When he was young, he came west by freight train. Charles got married in 1952 and has four children. He worked for McGregor's for 50 years and now lives in Hooper.

Mr. Tobin got a draft notice for the military when he was twenty-two years old. He went to Spokane to be inducted and then Fort Lewis for basic training, then on to Fort Knox to train to be a tank sergeant and driver. The reason why Charles became a tank driver is because he worked for a farmer and he knew how to drive a tractor.

He said, "Driving a tank and a tractor is the same, except the steering clutches are different on a tractor than on a tank."

Chuck Tobin went to England for four or five months. Then he went to France for thirty days. That is where he saw the most action in his military career. He was very active when he was in France. He fought at the Battle of St. Lô. The Battle of St. Lô was after D-Day. He and other reinforcement troops were sent in about two weeks after the conquest of Normandy.

Mr. Tobin drove an M5 tank, a mid-sized tank. They worked very near the front lines. The bigger tanks were behind him. He was told where they were to go by a commanding officer who was sticking his head out of the tank. The M5 tank's job was to shoot down German men with heavy arms, like bazookas, so that the Germans would not get a shot at the larger tanks and the infantry men who were behind them.

Chuck's tank did pretty well until after they were in France about thirty days. One day his tank got hit by a bazooka, which just crumpled the front end of the tank. Not even an hour later, when Chuck had driven the tank through a hedgerow, they started down a little incline and ran over a land mine. Charles lost the front portion of his right foot and broke his left foot. Nobody died out of the four people in that tank, but they were all thrown out onto the ground and the Germans kept shooting at them.

After spending six months in an English hospital, Charles came home with a Purple Heart, which he showed us during the interview.

He told me he will never forget having to walk five miles in the morning to where they parked the tanks and five miles back in the evening every single day for two months while he was in training.

CHARLES TOBIN

By Jessica Lane-Zehm

Charles "Chuck" Tobin was born in 1917 in a small South Dakota town. He was the fourth oldest of six girls and three boys. During the Great Depression while he was in school, he spent his free time working for a farmer to earn any extra money he could. In 1933, at the age of seventeen, he came to Whitman County to look for a job. He traveled by railroad in the dirt and filth of any freight train car that was not already full. Chuck settled in LaCrosse, Washington and started work for a local farmer. He remained in LaCrosse until he was drafted in 1941. At age twenty-two he reported to a draft board in Spokane for induction, then was moved by train to Fort Lewis. A month later he was in Fort Knox, Kentucky where he spent many days and countless hours in training. At the fort he was taught how to drive a tank, which he says is not much different than your everyday tractor. They learned to shoot, drive, and above all to take orders.

"The hardest part was probably the marching," he said. "We had to get up and march five miles every morning." Another hard part of the training was the gun drills. The men were ordered to crawl along the ground while machine guns were fired over the top of them.

"One guy panicked and jumped up in the middle of the drill. He was lucky though because they had stopped shooting long enough to reload." Chuck remembered that incident very well.

After training Charles was sent to England for five months, then went to France. He was sent into battle at St. Lô. Reaching the battle site was a long and tiring process. They had to wait for high tides to come in before they could get up to the beach where they could unload their tanks, which took days. For Chuck combat went by as a blur. They never got a relaxing or easy moment. They were constantly on their toes. "We were always scared, but we just went in to do our job and hoped we came out alive."

There were four people in his tank when they would go into battle. Chuck was the tank driver, and there was also a navigator, a gunner, and a lieutenant to command progress. Their job was to find and destroy German machine guns to clear the area so the infantry could walk in. When Chuck was asked what motivated him to keep going, he shrugged and said, "I guess you could say it was those one hundred guys out there on foot, out in the open, coming up behind me."

After they had been in France about thirty days, they were in combat one day and Chuck had been watching for Germans when a bazooka hit the tank at close range. Looking out the hole in the tank, he could see Germans close enough to see the detail on their faces. He watched them as they tried to hunt him down.

During the chase, which lasted less than an hour right on the front line, Charles maneuvered his tank through a hedgerow. As he was starting down a slight incline on the other side of it, he hit a land mine, blowing off the front end of the tank which was about two inches thick. The lid of the tank blew off too and all four of the crew were thrown out onto the ground as the tank caught on fire. Chuck tried to crawl behind the tank for protection from the enemy machine gunners, but his feet were both seriously injured and he had trouble moving under the barrage of German fire. One of the men was severely burned and flying shrapnel had injured the lieutenant. It was amazing that the Germans, who were so close to them Chuck could see the expression on their faces, failed to hit any of the four of them.

When the medics reached them they were all hauled off to different medical establishments to be treated. Chuck's left foot was badly broken and his right foot was partially blown off. He stayed in a treatment center in England for six months before returning home. The nurses and doctors treated him the very best they could, giving everyone their full attention, even though there were rows upon rows of injured people to attend to. The nurses were constantly exhausted but tried to make his stay as enjoyable as possible.

He was supposed to stay in bed and not try to walk, but on some occasions he would let himself off the bed and crawl around the hospital. One of the orderlies would find him away from his room on his hands and knees and just wrap his arm around Chuck's waist, pick him up, and carry him back to bed.

After the war and after he healed, Chuck moved to Hooper, Washington. He worked for McGregor Land and Livestock for fifty years before retiring. At the age of thirty-five he married and had children who have long since grown and moved out of the house. He plans to remain in Hooper where he is happy, spending his free time at Sara's store for a daily coffee hour.

Charles "Chuck" Tobin earned a Purple Heart for being wounded in the line of duty, and also gold bars and a Bronze Star. Those medals were all well earned through his bravery, determination, and honor for his country.

Charles was a lot of fun to interview. He told me some great stories, and basically made the experience interesting. I really admired him for his courage, determination, and strength. He went through a lot and never gave up, but kept trying through it all.

I want to add to the story you just read that at one point early in the interview Charles Tobin had just answered the question "What did you do in the war?" by saying "I drove a tank." Jessica, looking a little disappointed politely asked, "Is that all you did, just drive a tank?" He quietly nodded, "Yes, that's all I did."

One thing became quite clear as we began to pile up a stack of stories about what people did during WWII: it took many people doing many, many different jobs to win the war. Here we have two students who both interviewed a Flight Engineer who now makes his home in Hay.

CECIL "TYKE" CURTIS

By Drew Henley

Cecil Curtis, more commonly known as "Tyke," was working at the Boeing plant in Seattle, Washington when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He decided he wanted to fight for his country's freedom, and joined the service.

He told Boeing he was going to quit and they said, "Well, you can't. If you do, we will make you join the service."

Tyke replied, "That's where I'm headed, so see you later."

Tyke was going to go in the Navy, but when he got home from his last day at work he had a draft notice from the Air Force. This kind of shocked him, because he was not aware that they were drafting twenty-year olds. He packed up his things and took off for where the draft notice told him to go.

While he was waiting for a bus, a man reading a newspaper said to Tyke, "Do you know that they are drafting 20-year olds now?"

Tyke replied, "I sure do."

So off to Wichita Falls, Texas went Tyke where he would study Aircraft Mechanics. Then he went to Burbank, California for a special school. He was really more interested in being a fighter pilot or being on a B-24 than being a mechanic, but he was over six feet tall and they would not allow people over six feet to be on a plane. After his schooling, Tyke received notice that taller men were being allowed in aircrafts. So he reapplied and was accepted.

Then it was off to Utah to gun school and to learn how to fight. That was a difficult feat because the lowest 10% were automatically flunked out and had to try again. After graduation from gun school, Tyke headed off to Phase I in Tucson, Arizona. He was now a certified B-24 Flight Engineer. There were ten people on a plane: a pilot, co-pilot, navigator, bombardier, radioman, flight engineer, two waist gunners, a tail gunner, and a turret gunner, the last being Tyke's position.

For Phase II he headed to Springfield, Massachusetts, then he and his crew were off to New York to get their brand new airplane. Then they flew to Palm Beach, Florida for a final check of their equipment. It was there that they practiced flying their brand new airplane, but when they went to land it after testing it out, the front landing gear was destroyed and they had no plane. This is where Tyke and another man got separated from their squad. They received orders from a higher-ranking officer to meet them in Italy and get more orders from there. So the two of them took a bus from Palm Beach to Homestead, Florida where they took off with an ATC aircraft transporting a B-24 bomber. Their first stop was in Puerto Rico. Then they flew to former French West Africa.

Once in Italy, after trying to hitch-hike for a ride, they finally found an Englishman and asked where the base was. He gave them a ride to Naples, Italy. They stayed in Naples for a little while looking around and finding out what they needed to do. Then they went from Naples to Berry, then north to Cerignola where the base was located.

When they arrived they were given a mattress cover and were told to fill it with the straw over yonder and they were also given a tent. Italy was cold that time of year and they were too, so they had to invent some kind of heater to keep them warm. Tyke and his partner made a chimney from scratch and put some gas to fuel their heating device in a barrel outside the tent.

So it was that Tyke and his partner made it over to Italy where they would have to fly thirty-five missions to complete their duty in order to get discharged. Their problem: they didn't have a plane.

They asked another squad if they could borrow their plane for a couple of missions until they got their own, and the other squad agreed. So Tyke and the rest of his squad got in the plane and headed out for their first mission. They returned from the mission, but not without getting shot up pretty bad. The squad they had borrowed the plane from needed the plane back so they could fly their own mission. Tyke and his squad waited at camp. The other squad never returned, so he and his squadron were without a plane again.

Finally, they saw an old wrecked plane at the camp. It wasn't in too bad a shape, so they decided to fix it up and use it, and that's what they did. They flew all their missions with that recycled plane, which treated them well up until their last mission. They were out on a mission when they caught the corner of a very harsh storm. They were flying with three other planes, all of which turned back while Tyke and his squad kept on going. They had one engine out when they came out of the storm. They were over the Czech Republic so they flew low and tried not to let anybody know they were there. They then flew over some water and as they were approaching a little island they thought nothing about it.

Suddenly they were getting fired at! Their well-experienced pilot tipped the plane up on the wing that still had working engines and they escaped death. They got an amazing seven hundred and forty bullet holes in their plane that mission.

Tyke told me about how everyone on the plane wore parachutes because people were always falling out or getting shot at and things like that. Well, Tyke did not fit too well in those planes being over six feet tall, so a parachute would not fit on his back and still give him room to move around comfortably and freely. So, just in case he would need it, he would stand on it when he was fighting from the top turret position.

He said, "I would always glance down from time to time to make sure it was still under my feet."

Tyke is a remarkable person and contributed greatly to World War II. I'm very happy people like him are in our world, people who are proud of our country and people that will fight with everything they have to stick up for us. Tyke is amazing and I am happy I had the opportunity to interview him.

CECIL "TYKE" CURTIS

By Amanda Evans

Cecil A. Curtis, also known as Tyke, had the title of Flight Engineer during World War II. Tyke was working in Seattle at Boeing when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He wanted to leave to fight for his country so he told his boss he was going to quit.

His boss replied, "If you quit we will put you in the army."

Tyke told him that's what he was leaving to do.

It was off to Wichita, Texas for mechanic's school. From there he was assigned to a P-38 squad in California to be a mechanic. He became Crew Chief at Edward Field. From there he went to gun school in Utah where he graduated.

He was assigned to fly in a B-24 in Tucson, Arizona. There were ten people to a plane. He went from Tucson, Arizona to Springfield, Massachusetts for the second and third phases of training. He had to go to New York City for a new airplane and that is where he got his new hand gun, which was a forty-five. He still has that gun to this day.

After the stop in New York City, his crew flew to West Palm Beach, Florida for their final check. When the crew got into West Palms the nose wheel collapsed on the plane so they had to stay there for about a week waiting for a new plane. They ended up never getting a new plane so everyone was on their own to get to Europe.

So, Tyke and this guy he had become friends with took a bus to Homestead, Florida for the first leg to Africa. They hitched a ride on an ATC transporting a B-24. Their first stop was Puerto Rico, then on to Brazil. From Brazil they went on to French West Africa, and ended up in Tunis which is in North Africa. They then flew across to Berry, Italy. Tyke and his friend stayed in Berry for a few days. They were getting paid seven dollars and fifty cent per day and they were staying in hotels for one dollar per night.

After a few days they hitch-hiked north to find out where their outfit was. They had to set up a tent to sleep in. There was no heat in the camp, so Tyke and his friend hitch-hiked back to Berry and found a stovepipe to heat their tent. Their stove was the best stove in camp.

Tyke drew his first mission and was hit by a fighter outfit. They survived but the next crew got shot out of two planes. They took an old plane that no one used except for parts and when they fired it up the plane started and off they went. The plane lasted Tyke until his very last mission. He ended up with seven hundred and forty bullet holes in that plane on the last mission, but it still flew. Tyke flew thirty-five mission total while he was in the service.

After his last mission he went back to New York. In New York he wanted to go to the Broadway show Oklahoma which had recently opened. He was told he had to wait six months, so he decided not to get tickets. Strangely enough, Tyke was back in New York in exactly six months and twelve hours, but he never did get to see the Broadway show.

He skipped rest camp to go to B-29 school, then he was sent to Boise for Instructor of Engineers classes. He was then sent to California for more training, then to Portland where he was discharged. He got a job working for the Navy in Seattle. Soon after arriving back from the war, Tyke got married. Then, with a baby soon on the way, he and his wife decided to move to Hay, Washington where they still live today.

The following is the story of one of three Dormans interviewed for TRIBUTE. Jack was one of those people who ended up in a very dangerous job: defusing bombs. The years since the war have not taken the edge off of Jack's ability to express himself, as he did to Mike Broeckel. Also, when I asked him for a picture of himself for this book, one from the 1940s period of his life, maybe one of him in his uniform, he answered, "I don't have any of just me. They all have girls in them and I don't remember any of their names." Somehow, I had no trouble believing him.

JOHN R. DORMAN

By Mike Broeckel

John R. Dorman, known as Jack, was a sophomore in high school when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day, Monday, there was an all-school assembly where they listened to President Roosevelt declare war on Japan and Germany.

"It was an experience of growing up and wanting to do something. I felt insulted and angry over those Japanese stabbing us in the back. Giggly girls weren't important anymore," Jack said.

He didn't mind growing up fast, because having fun wasn't as important to him as his country. Everyone had a common thought, helping the United States. He graduated from LaCrosse High School in 1943, then was stationed at Walla Walla to go to Officer Candidate School (OSC.)

He was there two weeks before classes started. He learned all of the marches, rifle skills, and everything that he needed to know for OCS. They were taught in only two weeks everything that normally took eight weeks to learn. After the first two weeks, Jack took classes in naval warfare, sciences, history, math, and leadership. Mr. Dorman said he only got paid thirty-one dollars a month as an apprentice seaman. One of his greatest achievements was being appointed Company Commander at OCS.

Jack Dorman's interest in football caused him to lose interest in his studies so he washed out of OCS. He went to Great Lakes Naval Training in Chicago for one month. Most of the people that went to that camp called it the "rest" camp. The reason they called it a rest camp was because most people needed time off to rest after OSC training.

"Most people just got burned out from the intense training at OSC," Jack said.

He told about one exercise they did where they would jump off a forty-foot platform into water, then take off their pants and trap air in them so they could stay afloat. He explained, "Challenges are not meant to kill you, but are meant to be overcome."

After Chicago, Jack went to Norman, Oklahoma. Norman was an Aviation Ordinance School where he learned to load cannons, arm bombs, and take 50-caliber machine guns and 20-millimeter guns apart blind-folded. The summer at Norman was very humid and Jack experienced his first hurricane while stationed there.

Jack tells a funny story about Aviation Ordinance School. "It was the last day and we were all marching to our last class. I was the right guide for our company and I knew where we had to go, so I wasn't paying much attention to the commander. Well, the commander called for column left and I was the only one that went to the right. Everyone got a good laugh out of it."

While he was stationed in Norman, the United States attacked the beaches of Normandy. The Navy was in charge of transporting the troops across the English channel on landing crafts and ships. Some of the ships opened their troop deployment doors too early into about eight feet of water. Lots of men drowned due to all the weight they were carrying. And the ones who didn't drown were literally cut in half by German machine guns as the troops attempted to make it ashore.

"I wondered if I would have had the guts to keep the ships going in after the other officers had dropped the doors early," Jack said.

At the end of Ordinance School, the top five men got to choose where they wanted to go next. Jack ranked sixth. He was stationed at a Bomb Disposal School in Washington, D.C. There Jack had to learn to defuse live bombs without getting blown up. He defused Allied, German, Italian, and Japanese bombs in forty-foot holes that were dug just for defusing bombs. Jack only had to defuse bombs that he knew. The officer in change had to defuse any bombs that were not common. This was not always a successful process. The officer would talk by radio to another man that was four hundred yards away from the bomb, telling him exactly what he was doing. If the bomb blew up, the next person that had to defuse that kind of bomb would know not to make the same mistake.

"In war the Germans had everything they left behind - toilet seats, doors, hallways - booby-trapped with a fine wire filament that felt like a spider web," Jack explained. This same kind of wire was strung in all sorts of places at the school to get the students used to always being aware of things being booby-trapped. Wires would be placed on toilet seats, bed springs, door ways, or chairs and when you broke the wire a cherry bomb would go off," Jack said.

While he was still in training at the Bomb Disposal School, the war ended. But before Jack could leave they all spent one month cleaning up the base.

Next Jack was stationed at Terminal Island, Los Angeles. There he drove a semi from San Diego to L.A. hauling disassembled airplanes and delivering goods in between hauls. Jack told of one exciting experience at one of his stops.

"I had to drop some stuff off at a Navy prison, a prison for Navy personnel that were hardened criminals - murderers, rapists, etc. I walked through the first set of doors, then the second set of doors, and then had to walk across the entire compound. All of a sudden a big Navy guy - as big as a gorilla - walked up to me and asked me for my Tailor Made cigarettes. I told him I didn't have any and he tore my shirt off, mistaking my note pad in my shirt pocket for cigarettes." Jack said it was one of the most trying experiences he can remember.

After Terminal Island duty, Jack Dorman was discharged from the service. He didn't think the service was a negative experience at all. He didn't get into any trouble and would have done any and everything he was told to do. He didn't save anyone or win any battles but he served his country proudly. Jack said that discipline and respect were the name of the game.

When Dorman was asked what lasting lesson he learned from the war, he answered in a few sentences.

"War is hell. If we had not gone over and fought we would all be speaking German or Japanese. Appeasement doesn't work. We have to set boundaries. There are some things worth fighting for: your God, your family, and your country. Sometimes it isn't fun, but you have to do it. And if you are going to do it, go to win."

When I sent Darwin Nealey's story to him, it inspired him to sit down and write a greatly extended version of Melissa Hargis' story written from her interview with him. After doing a bit of thinking about it I decided to use his lengthier rendition because it deals with an area of World War II that is spoken of infrequently in histories of that era. Our thanks to Mr. Nealey for educating us with his war time memories and thanks to Melissa for getting him seated and writing.

DARWIN R. NEALEY

By Melissa Hargis and Darwin Nealey

In May of 1945 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met to divide Berlin among the United States, England, and Russia. They needed detailed maps of the area and the 659th topographical mapping outfit was chosen to make and distribute those maps. The project was to remain ultra secret, not even to be discussed within the outfits from which a special team was drawn.

Darwin R. Nealey was selected as the officer in charge of the project. He proceeded to choose the ten best men he knew, men who could do the job quickly and efficiently. As a team they prepared the Berlin map, keeping it a secret until its world-wide release. Every person did his part. They just sat down at their equipment and did the work, then when each was finished, Nealey assembled the map.

Nealey graduated from Washington State College June 10, 1941. Being a member of ROTC, he was sworn into the Army as a Second Lieutenant the same day. Instead of going home, his class had to be at Fort Wright in Spokane the next morning. His first assignment was to the 29^th Engineers Topographic Mapping Battalion in Portland, Oregon. The 29^th consisted of a headquarters company, photomapping company, reproduction company, and two survey companies, one of which worked in Washington and Oregon. The other survey company surveyed around Knik Arm in Alaska and also in California. The 29^th Engineers was the only mapping battalion held over from World War I, so they cadred nearly all the early new mapping units for World War II.

In February 1943 Nealey was chosen to be the liaison officer to obtain the mapping photography of the Aleutian Islands. He was on joint and direct orders from the War Department, the Western Defense Command in San Francisco, the Alaska Defense Command, and the 29^th Engineers. He arrived at Elmendorf Field, Alaska, the first week in March, then was sent to the advance force Alaska Defense Command on Adak with their intelligence unit. The Japanese had already landed troops on Attu and Kiska and it was apparent that line of attack had to be stopped.

The 11^th Air Force, which was to furnish planes and men for the mapping project, finally came up with one B-25. The photography needed for mapping had to be very precise with a sixty percent overlap forward and a thirty percent overlap sideways with the other flights. That was very difficult for pilots unaccustomed to such work, plus the weather only offered them about three days a month air time to do it. Nealey requested four photomapping planes with crews assigned to him, and in July got two B-17s with two photographers and one co-pilot for each plane. Nealey assigned one plane to be based on Umnak and work east toward the mainland, and took the other plane west of Adak to work toward Attu. He was also assigned a Coast and Geodetic survey ship to help get the ground control.

The Army had kept the Battle of Attu a secret because they didn't want Americas to know Japan had actually occupied part of the United States. According to some reports, the Battle of Attu had killed or captured every Japanese on the island, a report proven to be untrue. While Nealey was navigating one flight over Attu, they were shot at with anti-aircraft artillery that narrowly missed them.

In addition to that, he decided to visit an ROTC friend, located on the side of a mountain on Attu with a Combat Engineer Company. When Nealey had hiked back from that visit he received orders to climb aboard a Navy transport ship and return to Adak. He slept aboard that night and the next morning he saw a footlocker and duffel bag on deck with his friend's name on them. A month later he found out the Japanese had come off the mountain and attacked his friend's outfit, shooting him in the jaw. The man was being shipped to Utah for facial surgery. The same Japanese troops had followed Nealey to his camp and, during the night, had gone down the row of officer's tents tossing hand grenades into the tents. His two bunk mates were killed.

The weather was always very difficult. Darwin told this story about the winds. "Another Lieutenant and I attended a movie in the evening at the Navy's theater. We came out into a wind that was blowing very hard. We had about a quarter mile over open ground to get to our Quonset and the wind was blowing my friend, who had a bad knee, around like a rag doll. I was finally able to grasp him and together we crawled on our hands and knees, mostly on our stomachs, to our hut. That wind blew the weather station over, but not before it had been officially recorded at 110 miles per hour. The locals called that kind of wind a Willawa, which I define as a wind blowing 100 miles per hour in four directions at once."

Nealey was pressured to get mapping photography of Kiska also, but the Japanese were occupying that island and would have shot them down. The high brass then decided to land on Kiska to re-occupy it, and trained Army troops in San Diego for that purpose. Their main objective at first was to prevent Japanese supplies from getting to their people on the island so they would starve and surrender. That didn't work.

During the last of June and early July there were five days of solid fog and bad weather. During those five days, the Japanese Navy apparently moved in with ships and submarines and evacuated five thousand troops off Kiska and got away, unnoticed by the US troops. When the US landed in early July they were surprised to find not a single Japanese remaining.

By November Nealey had completed seventy percent of his mission, but the weather prevented further work until spring. Upon returning to Portland, he was promoted to Captain and given command of Headquarters Company of the 29^th Engineers. He was married in December 1944, then learned two weeks later he was ordered to be the operations officer of a new photo mapping battalion, the 659^th, and was to be sent to Europe. He landed in France in February where he spent two weeks in the Lucky Strike assembly camp. The 659^th was to occupy one of France's top magazine plants, the Illustration, located in Bobigny, a suburb of Paris, along with a sister topo battalion pulled out of England. They built a cantonment area of tents with wooden floors for the enlisted men and the officers were bunked in the tower of the magazine plant. The purpose of the two battalions being there was to make maps of Europe which were to facilitate the Allied push to end the war, which happened soon thereafter.

They were in Paris to celebrate V-E Day.

Darwin was assigned to return home on the Queen Elizabeth. Two-person compartments on the ship were altered to care for eight to ten officers and the enlisted men slept in the hold. It was a rough trip through one of the worst storms ever in the North Atlantic Ocean. Darwin was the only one in his group to make it to every meal. The ship was going up and down and rolling so much that the dishes would slide clear across the table. The men would sit down, then pour water on the table cloth so the dishes wouldn't slide.

"Can you imagine the state room with all of those sea sick men? I won't ever forget that. I was so glad to see New York," commented Darwin. He was flown to the West Coast, promoted to Major, and discharged from active duty at Fort Lewis on May 10, 1946.

Mr. Nealey was a delight to be with. He shared a lot of information, was very detailed, and gave me a good story. I really thought this was fun and I would like to do it again sometime.

Just to make things a little more complicated, we now have two people interviewing two people. The Camps edited both versions, so we can believe the four of them came to agreement on what the Camps did during the war.

DON AND NONA CAMP

By Daniel Broeckel

Don and Nona Camp lived near the town of LaCrosse when World War II started. They ran a large farm about six miles out of town. Don was a hard worker on the farm because there was nobody to help. It was long hours and hard days. He farmed three men's jobs by himself. The harvesting was the hardest. They sometimes found help in town at the hotel. People who needed work would go to the hotel and farmers who needed help would go to the hotel to get someone to work for them. Older men and local teen-agers were recruited to help.

The Camps were very fortunate to be running a farm because Don did not have to go fight since the country needed some men to stay and produce food for the troops. Don was willing to fight in the war if the chance ever came. But his father was getting older and there was no way he could farm. So the Government deferred Don to stay and farm.

Don rarely came to town because farming took all his time and then some. But he and Nona sometimes came to town on Saturday night to have fun and talk to other farmers.

Don and Nona Camp had two sons. One fought in a later war, the Vietnam War. And the other was in the military stationed in Germany in peace time.

During World War II the community where the Camps lived was very different than it had been. The families around them changed and did different things. They had an airplane lookout station that people of the town manned. They would write down a note if a plane flew over and write down what time it was. For doing this they got medals and awards for the hours they put in.

The home front was a very different place compared to the years before. The farming community was very helpful to the war effort. They had fund-raisers for the war. The country had to pull together and that is what they did.

Don and Nona were one of the many families that made contributions to the war by farming and giving money. Don was glad that he did not have to go to war, but he was willing to go. Don and Nona are still in the small farming community they lived in during the war.

NONA AND DON CAMP

By Trisha Goolsby

Don Camp has lived in Whitman County for about eighty-five years. Don and Nona have been married for sixty-four years. Together they have two sons, one of whom served in the Vietnam War. The other son was stationed in Germany.

Farming was hard during the war because a lot of the help had gone off to fight the war. They had to feed their livestock wheat-hay. When harvest came around, they would use a pull binder which took four mules to pull. One day their barn caught fire. Their neighbors around them rushed over to help Don's family put out the fire. The wage for harvesting was three-fifty to five dollars a day. Wheat sold for sixty-one cents a bushel in 1940.

The Camps never served on the war front, but had family and friends who did. During the war Don and Nona stayed on the home front and farmed. Don was pardoned from the war to help his father farm and take care of the ranch. Don and Nona did help fight in their own way. They would come into town to watch for airplanes passing through the sky. Don and Nona had to learn all the names of the airplanes and what kind they were. Once they spotted a plane they had to write it down in a log book and call it in. They could go for weeks and not see a plane, then one day they would see two or three planes. People would build shacks to sit in to watch for the planes.

There were shortages of many things and gasoline and sugar were rationed. The attitude the people had on the home front was this: they had to do what they had to do. A lot of people would send care packages to friends and family in the war. The care packages would have cookies, clothing, and other things that would try to make the soldiers feel more at home, or at least somewhat comforted. The people on the home-front would make up fund-raisers to earn money for the war. Don's father bought an old school bell for one thousand dollars to help raise money for the war.

During the war LaCrosse was a very busy place. Nona told me they would have to rush through their chores in the morning, just so they could get a parking place when they got to town. Today LaCrosse is only a fourth of what it was in the 1940s. LaCrosse had a number of stores, theaters, and even a bowling alley. Also there were meat stores, dance halls, and hotels. There were three grain outfits in LaCrosse at that time.

One question I asked was, "Do you think the U.S. did the right thing getting into the war?" I found their answer interesting. Nona and Don told me they thought it was not the right thing to do. But they also said that if we didn't enter the war Japan would have kept coming. And, they told me, we had to do what we had to do, which meant the United States had to enter the war.

The following is another collaboration between the "teller of" and the "listener to" a story. Don Dorman's experiences were complex and varied including time spent in a Prisoner of War camp in Germany. While his stories could easily fill a book, we have presented an abridged version that we hope will encourage him to commit his entire story to print.

DON DORMAN

By Brian Thompson and Don Dorman

Don Dorman was at Washington State College (WSU) on December 7, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. It was just a calm, peaceful Sunday. He came home from church, walked into his fraternity house which was usually a hub of noise and commotion, and found it deadly silent. "There was not a sound, except for the radio playing," Dorman said. Then he heard the message: Pearl Harbor had been bombed.

Mr. Dorman enlisted in the Army Air Corps in Spokane at Geiger Field in September of 1942. He had graduated from High School in the summer of 1940 but needed some time to earn money to attend college. At that time you could stay in high school an extra year if you wanted, so he continued to take math, physics, and other science courses while he worked. "That extra year of High School really helped me," he noted. He studied at Washington State College in Pullman for two semesters, then his education was interrupted when he was called to duty in February, 1943.

When the call came he rode the rails to Ayers Junction, then switched to a passenger train going to Salt Lake City. He was ticketed for a sleeper car, but when he got to his space he found it occupied by a woman and baby, so he slept in a seat next to the conductor. "Everything was so crowded," he said shaking his head. "People were being moved all over the country." At Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City he was put on a troop train along with people from all over the country who had assembled there to be assigned to training posts. He was first sent to Sheppard Field in Wichita Falls, Texas, then went to Kelly/Randolf Field in San Antonio where he had a complete physical exam and some basic military training. For one thing, he learned how to keep the points of his shirt collar sharp by using a "spiffy." The First Lieutenant over him was so adamant about those collar points being kept sharp with a stay that Don and the rest of his unit gifted the man with gold spiffys when they completed their training.

Dorman was then an Army Air Force Cadet and was moved to Fort Hayes Teacher's College in Kansas, a training detachment located on a community college campus. Next move was to Pine Bluff, Arkansas for Primary Training in PT-19s. His flight instructor started giving him a real bad time after about seven and a half hours of instruction. Finally when Don hit eight hours the guy growled at him to land, and he got out of the plane. Don wondered if he was going to be washed out. As the instructor stomped off he shouted, "Go up there and kill yourself."

Don was so excited, he flew up to two thousand feet instead of the required one thousand, but when he came back to earth he executed what he calls "the best landing I've ever done in my life." That training and solo flight got him moved on to Independence, Kansas and into Basic Training where they flew BT-14s and BT-13s to learn instrument flying.

"I didn't like the BT-13," claims Don. "It had a paper tail and shook real bad. The guys called it the 'Vultee Vibrator' for good reason." Also, it was very cold in Kansas that winter. Once he and a couple other Cadets, eager to get in some air time, tried for over an hour in freezing weather to start one of the BT-14s. They had to turn a crank on the wing to get it to turn over, which they did, repeatedly, until they finally coaxed it into a steady roar. Then their instructor came out of the warm shed nearby and took the plane up himself.

Next stop for Dorman was Moore Field in Mission, Texas where he completed Advanced Training in AT-6s, along with seven other men in his flight. They all got their Wings, but only half of them survived the war. Flight training procedure had changed and Don's class, 44-C, was retained for eight hours more of flight training in a P-40, another plane he didn't care much for because of its narrow landing gear. Also, it was torqued so he could only slow roll to the right, which nevertheless he and his buddies enjoyed doing. One day they were flying loose formation and came up on a B-24, a four-engine bomber. They all slow rolled by him, just showing off. Then the bomber pilot slow rolled his plane! He started at twenty thousand feet altitude and came out at ten thousand feet. "We all got out of there in a hurry!" Don laughed. "We didn't want to fly anywhere near that guy… he was crazy!"

Don and a friend bought a Plymouth coupe which they then drove to Richmond, Virginia, then to Blackstone, another training base, where he was introduced to the plane that brings a big smile to his face, the

P-47 Thunderbolt.

"We learned to strafe, bomb, and dog fight. We would go up together, fly by each other, break up, and go into vicious battle maneuvers. We practiced a lot and learned how to fight in the sky. One day when we landed we were all soaking wet from sweat from the intensity of flying combat action. The Thunderbolt handled great. It couldn't turn inside a German 109 or one of our P-51 Mustangs, but you could do a slow roll, chop the engine, hit rudder, pause, then full throttle and be right behind any airplane you were fighting."

Moving on to Dover, Delaware Dorman spent some time flying with loaded bombs out over the ocean looking for German submarines they knew were out there, but never saw one they could attack. He and a friend took off one day with irritant smoke they were to practice discharging. They were flying over Chesapeake Bay about sixty feet off the water when they came upon a Navy Cleveland class cruiser surrounded by small boats. Neither of them said a word to each other, they just opened their smoke valves and flew over the ship. There was no wind so the smoke just settled down until all they could see was the smoke stack of the cruiser sticking up out of the cloud of irritant smoke. Well, apparently the Navy was indeed irritated. The next day there was a terse notice on the Bulletin Board in operations directing all pilots "NOT to fly near Navy ships."

Then it was Don's turn to board a ship. He and about seventeen thousand others sailed on the Queen Elizabeth, built for one thousand passengers. They headed for Glasgow, England. The trip was profitable for Dorman who was able to send home about thirty-five hundred dollars from poker winnings. The first two months while he was at Atcham Field near Shrewsbury, England, he learned to fly with British pilots. One important thing he learned was not to come up directly behind a Lancaster Bomber in his P-47 or they would start firing.

Paris had been liberated just two weeks before Dorman arrived in France in October of 1944. He was billeted in the former German Officer's Center at Chateaux Rothschild outside Paris where the grounds were liberally sprinkled with signs that said "Minen" or mine. The Germans had planted land mines all over the place as they evacuated. Dorman and a friend of his were celebrating a mission well done one evening and somehow forgot about the mine field and walked all the way across it in the dark, not giving any consideration to where they were walking. "That could have been it," Dorman said sheepishly.

He was next attached to the 406^th Fighter Group, 514^th Fighter Squadron, at Mourmelon La Grand, near Reims, France on the front lines. First Lieutenant Donald O. Dorman, Jr., had flown just six missions when on December 16, 1944 German General von Rundstedt launched a major attack that came to be known as The Battle of The Bulge. The next day Don flew a morning mission, then returned to base and volunteered to replace an ill pilot on an afternoon flight. Near Gilszem, Germany his formation came upon a German tank unit that had stopped in a woods to camouflage their tanks.

"We dropped our napalm bombs on them," Don said. "One of my bombs hit a tank, but I saw the igniter fall off and bounce away, so it didn't explode. We had to break away when an ack-ack position opened up on us. We came back around, three or four of us. I was flying 'tail-end Charlie.' We went down to strafe the gun position that was firing at us. I located the emplacement and dove down to hit it. I didn't see another gun off to my side. He made several hits. I could hear metal grinding, my engine quit, and I had fire coming up in the cockpit. I threw the canopy off, unfastened my seat belt, jumped up on the seat, dove for the trailing edge of the wing, and pulled the rip cord. My leg hit the tail of the plane as my chute opened. I swung once and hit the ground at the bottom of the swing, then rolled into the ack-ack hole I had been strafing seconds before. The German gunner very carefully removed my 45 automatic and with his knife cut the chute cords from around me. He said, 'For you the Var isst over!!'"

Dorman was temporarily placed in a civilian prison in the town of Trier, about two miles from where his plane had gone down, almost on the front line. He was locked in a cell on the top floor. A few days later American B-26s came over, dropping bombs, one of which hit the church across the street, and another hit the prison kitchen. Locked in his cell, huddled against the wall, windows blown in, bombs screaming, Don remembers, "I never felt so helpless and scared in my life."

Then a very odd thing happened. A German guard, risking his own life, made his way through the prison, unlocking all the cell doors. The prisoners rushed out and followed the guard to an air raid shelter under the prison. After the all-clear sounded that same guard put Don in a ground-level cell which contained a printing press and some parts. He and his cellmate, Rusty Price, a member of his squadron, were able to pass their time taking apart the press. They used long pieces of that metal to try to pry apart the prison bars. Don covered the noise by singing his high school and WSC fight songs. Their efforts were to no avail since the Germans had built the prison too well.

Dorman and Price later walked to Bitburg, then Don was shipped to Barth, Germany where he spent the balance of the war at Stalag Luft I. He was liberated in the second week of May 1945 by Russian troops. While in prison camp the twenty-three men with him in Room 10, Block 9, North Compound 3 agreed to pool and share all food that came to them including Red Cross parcels.

Their main staple was what he calls World War II Black Bread, made from the following recipe which came from the official record of the "Food Providing Ministry published (top secret) Berlin 24. XI 1941 by the Director of Ministry Herr Mansfeld and Herr Moritiz."

The recipe read, "It was agreed that the best mixture to bake black bread was: 50% bruised rye grain, 20% sliced sugar beets, 20% tree flour (saw dust), and 10% minced leaves and straw."

After the war Don returned to his studies at WSC, graduated in 1948, and returned to LaCrosse to farm his family land. He married Ruth Ellingwood in 1946. He is currently the mayor of LaCrosse.

The mayor's wife, Ruth Dorman, has a story to tell too. It is one of life in the throes of rationing and shortages, and also speaks of what it was like to be a young college woman and a USO girl.

RUTH DORMAN

By Brandi Weekes

Life on the homefront during Wold War II could easily have been characterized as exciting for Ruth Dorman. When the USO formed in Spokane, Ruth became one of the first USO girls.

Ruth Ellingwood and her family moved to Spokane, Washington from Madison, Wisconsin in 1937. She attended Lewis and Clark High School where she graduated in June 1941. She and her classmates were well aware of an impending world crisis. They presented a poem chorus, based on John Brown's Body, at their graduation ceremony at the Fox Theater. The script was written by a classmate. During the summer Ellingwood worked for her father to raise tuition money for Eastern Washington College, then called Cheney Normal School, and began classes there in the fall.

On December 7, 1941, she had finished eating dinner in her dormitory and had gone upstairs to get an early start on her studies when a friend motioned to her. The radio was broadcasting the situation about Pearl Harbor. Life was forever changed for Ruth.

She wanted to join one of the women's service groups, but her father persuaded her to continue her education. After Ruth¹s freshman year of college, life took a dramatic change on the home front. Travel had been restricted and ration books were disbursed to all families for things such as food, butter and lard, gas, tires, and sugar. Even silk stockings were rationed. Ruth remembers women painting their legs with tan facial cream and using eye liner pencils to draw in the seams, which hosiery all had at that time.

Ruth had to work for a year before she could continue her education, so she found a job as a secretary in a real estate office in Spokane. She also rolled bandages for the Red Cross.

Spokane was the closest city to both Farragut Naval Training Station in Northern Idaho and Geiger Field, an Army Air Corps training base north of Spokane. On weekends those sailors and air men had nothing to do, so a USO center was formed in Spokane. Wanting to be a part of the war effort, Ruth signed up as one of the first USO girls. Vowing to never drink, leave the USO club site without permission, or date servicemen, USO girls provided amusement for servicemen on the weekends, holding dances and providing food and drink.

Ruth loved to dance. She remembers one Chief Petty Officer who had taught dancing in New York City at an Arthur Murray Dance Studio. He danced with every girl. Ruth stated, "When you danced with him you were really dancing." Dancing was an opportunity for the USO to help morale and offered a chance for relaxation.

In the fall of 1943, Ruth began school at Washington State College in Pullman. She joined a sorority and worked half days during the week, and from eight to one o'clock on Saturdays. All fraternities were vacated. The only males on campus were medicine and veterinary majors. Then the "90-day wonders" arrived to live on campus. They were college training detachment men preparing to be officers in just ninety days.

Ruth remembers several summers in Spokane during the war when she and her two younger sisters took the bus to go swimming at Comstock Pool on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. When they would get off the bus coming home, servicemen would follow them. Her mother would have watermelon, homemade ice cream made with honey since sugar was rationed, or sandwiches ready to serve whoever came just to give the young men a taste of home life far from their homes. Ruth wondered how her mother knew she and her sisters would bring home young men on those afternoons, but she always greeted them prepared!

In the summer of 1944, Ruth worked at a Receiving Hospital at Fort George Wright, Spokane. Receiving Hospitals housed soldiers who had been overseas for too long and needed rest or care for injuries. Ruth served as a secretary for the doctors in the psychiatric ward where the patients talked about traumatic war experiences, such as bomb raids. She then wrote up their case histories.

In October of 1945 Ruth met her future husband, Don Dorman, when he returned from overseas and went back to college. She graduated from Washington State College in June of 1946 with a BA in Foreign Language, a major in Spanish, and a minor in French and History. In September of 1946, Ruth and Don were married.

Ruth Dorman was one of the many women who helped the war effort through comfort and encouragement. She danced, listened, and offered memories. She fought the war from home, encouraging those who were to fight in combat abroad.

I'm not picking favorite stories, that would be tantamount to impossible, but I have to say I really appreciated the innovativeness of Cyndi Berthold. She listened to Opal Wise share her story, then wrote it in first person so we have what sounds like Opal telling her story in her own words. Opal liked it too, so for your enjoyment, here’s the life of a young Army wife from her own thoughts and heart.

OPAL WISE

By Cyndi Bertholf

Tollie had been in the service for about a month when I went to be with him. We lived in LaCrosse. My dad was worried about me going because I had just finished college and I had never traveled.

My dad said, &q