I haven’t written in a while about “Hard Times in the Heartland.” On page 195 Dad writes from the battlefield in one of his frequent letters home: “Bee I and several others were awarded the Combat Infantry Expert Badge for our participation in battle. That means $5.00 more a month. “It quit snowing for a couple of days. It’s warming a little , but the thaw brings gummy mud. The melting snow around each foxhole makes a good target for…
I spent a lot of time at my grandparent’s home near Nevada, Mo during the turbulent years of WW II. Dad was first stationed in Fort Leavenworth, then Oregon. He spent a brief time in Waynesville before he shipped out for France, then Germany with the Army’s 70th Division. He arrived on the battlefield just after the Battle of the Bulge, 1944 at age 34. Since Mom held the position of store manager for the Edmiston’s Department Store in Fort…
The last stop in our journeys to follow my dad in the States during WW II was in Waynesville, MO. He was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood before the Army shipped the 70th Division to France. By then I was twenty months old and had already lived in Kansas, Oregon, and Missouri. My folks called this place “El Rancho.” We lived here with other couples because there was such a shortage of housing. Soon after this picture, Dad left to…