The War Years

By Jay Johnson

About the book - The War Years

World War II was a time of chaos and fear throughout the world. This is a narrative of one family's experience, as seen through the eyes of a child during the trials and tribulations of World War II. This war was so devastating to most of the world, but it held a much different significance for a few kids living in the middle of a military base during the world's struggle between nations.
As the world moved around their little community preparing for this terrible war, they lived in the safest place in the world, a military post in the middle of the United States of America. They were close to the tenseness of the soldiers preparing for war, but, in reality, they were only dealing with their own day-to-day experiences. They experienced daily contact with the "frontline" soldiers, moving throughout a military post soon to
be in harm's way.
This book is how the Author remembers growing up with a military family, and not what he knows now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781469114163

Jay Johnson

Jay Johnson earned his Ph.D. degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has held research positions at University of Alaska, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, where he served as Principal Research Physicist, co-director of the Princeton Center for Heliophysics, and Head of Space Physics from 2005-2016. He is currently a professor in the Department of Engineering and Computer Science at Andrews University, Michigan. He has published over 70 papers on theoretical plasma physics with emphasis on applications to space plasmas.

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Copyright © 2011 by Jay F. Johnson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

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or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the copyright owner.

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

FORWARD

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PART TWO

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

EPILOGUE

In memory of my parents:

Master Sergeant Hibbert O. Johnson and

Kathryn J. Johnson.

Dedicated to my brother and sister, who lived through the

war years with me. For my wife and our family who,

I hope will never have to see the horrors of war.

Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them. The kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

Matthew 19:13-15

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to thank Carolyn Hart for her knowledge and fortitude in being able to edit my writing.

My daughter Teri Neu, who helped smooth things out in the beginning.

Christine M. Lorusso (daughter) and Frank Lorusso, (son-in-law) alsoassisted with the final editing.

Matthew J. Johnson (son) for his sketches.

Steven F. Johnson (son) for putting the final touches to this book.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife Patricia whose love and patience have seen me through this.

FORWARD

World War II was a time of chaos and fear throughout the world. Preparations were being made, and most of all the anxiety of what was to come filled the minds of all. This is a narrative of one family’s experience, as seen through the eyes of a child during the trials and tribulations of World War II. This war was so devastating to most of the world, but it held a much different significance for a few kids living in the middle of a military base during the world’s struggle between nations. They only vaguely knew what was going on; they were hardly touched by this world in turmoil.

As the world moved around their little community preparing for this terrible war, they lived in the safest place in the world, a military post in the middle of the United States of America. They were close to the tenseness of the soldiers preparing for war, but, in reality, they were only dealing with their own day-to-day experiences. They experienced daily contact with the frontline soldiers, moving throughout a military post soon to be in harm’s way.

The culmination of many things, including the distance in time, things which have taken place after the war years and which have developed since, may have altered their thoughts and memories of what really happened during those years.

This is an attempt to put things down as I remember them, not what I know now. Some moments in history might not agree completely with what is thought to be the true facts. This may be due to the fact that some so-called facts are what a child believed to be true. They could, in fact, be in error. I do not apologize for possible errors. I only expect the reader to accept the narrative as the perceptions of a child and how he saw the years the world went to war.

How do you perceive World War II? If you were in the military, it was training with the dirty part of war, i.e., death, pain, and fear. If you are too young and missed the war, your perception is only what you have read, been told, or seen in the movies, mostly about the front lines where the shooting and bombing took place. You might have seen in movie scenes a family receiving a telegram concerning the death or injury of a loved one.

What was it like one day at a time, as the war and the community struggled on, when thoughts of the war came only when we were reminded in the newspapers, on the radio, or when a telegram came?

Everybody handled his or her life differently. Those who knew somebody in the thick of the war and knew this person was in danger of losing his or her life, grew old or weary, waiting for that person to return. But even when they knew people who were in the dirty part of the war, most went on with their lives.

As children here in the USA, the war affected us less; only the concerns of the adults at hand were reflected in our thoughts. The children in the thick of the war’s devastation were not as fortunate.

We children often thought of the children in the other parts of the world, where things were not so great. The war was right there at their front door. We were concerned with our grades in school, and they were concerned with whether the school was still there or not. We were off getting snacks, and these children had not eaten in days. We thought little about coats or blankets to protect us from the cold. Children of the war zone had little clothing, much less heavy coats and blankets.

There were happy times, fun times, scary times, and tearful times for us.

This book tells how we lived our lives in those troubled times and how our counterparts lived theirs. This shows the contrast with the troubled lives of children who experienced the war years, our relatives who were in battle, and our own naive existence here in the United States.

PART ONE

Army Life

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CHAPTER ONE

The way It Was

We considered our family to be a normal family, typical in the way the war touched so many of us. We also had fathers, brothers, uncles, and cousins in harm’s way, but we were remotely removed by distance and events. Red, John, Jack, Jay, and Jim, a nexus all in the thick of the war.

We children knew some of these warriors only by name because we had spent most of our short lives away from the family center, living on Army posts away from the family essence. They were the brothers, brothers-in-law, and nephews of our parents who loved and worried about them each day of the war.

Our father, a career soldier, had spent more than thirty years in our country’s service at the time of this account and had viewed war first hand during World War I. He did not retire until World War II was near its end. When we would all be sitting around in the evening after supper, Daddy would tell us of his experiences in the war. He tried to paint for us a true picture of what war was really like. At the same time, however, he included some of the humor he had experienced. Like most combatants, he did not like to talk about the sanguinary part of war.

Our father told us of the time when he and two other soldiers, along with a French soldier and an innkeeper, had been trapped in the wine cellar of a bombed café. They spent over a week in the cellar while the village changed hands between the Germans and the Allies, finally being rescued before the wine in the cellar ran out. Thirty years later, when one of the soldiers trapped with him showed up in a hotel lobby in Omaha, Nebraska they recognized each other instantly.

Father received the French Croix d’ Guerre from General P’etain while he was in France during World War I. He told us the story of how it came about. This is my recollection of our father’s telling us of this event:

The American unit he was attached to required directions for the upcoming battle against the Germans. These directions must come from the French, in order to coordinate operations. Dad was selected to carry the message from the French to the American lines. The French were positioned on a hill overlooking a small village. The Americans were situated about three miles away, on tree-covered rolling hills that were located on the opposite side of the village. On the French side of the village ran a river that had a long bridge running into the main road through the village.

My father’s orders were to go to the French, get the information, and return; it was about a six-mile roundtrip. Using a sidecar motorcycle, he rode onto the main road from the American side through the village, across the bridge, up the hill, and reported to the French command. Taking the message, he proceeded back down the hill toward the bridge.

When he was half way across the bridge, a German soldier stepped onto the road at the far side of the bridge. Being startled by this surprise appearance of the enemy where there wasn’t supposed to be any, Sergeant Johnson was, you might say, induced to put the leather to the pedal, and he took off as fast as the motorcycle would take him, instead of taking the other option of turning back to the safety of the Allied lines.

The German soldier took his rifle and leveled it at my father and was ready to fire, when the cycle hit him with full velocity, the weight of the motorcycle, and Sergeant Johnson. The sentry went flying into the air. The bike and rider continued through the village, which was now swarming with Germans who had just infiltrated into the village.

Unbeknown to anybody, during my father’s trip into the French lines, a German Company had moved into the village. This entire episode, my father explained, was a fight for his life.

General P’etain was watching the bridge with binoculars. Assuming the American was a brave soldier protecting the documents, instead of his life (as my father contended), thegeneral awarded him the medal. Our father laughed it off and said the document was probably someone’s laundry list.

missing image file

While fighting in the same area where Sgt. York chased a bunch of Germans out of their trenches, our father received the wounds that also got him his Purple Heart. He received a string of bullets up his left leg. This put him out of the war for a time, but he was back in when he was able to walk again. Sergeant H.O. Johnson received his second Croix d’ Gierre before the guns of World War I had gone silent.

We, his offspring, respected him and held him in awe. His word was the law. He was a strict man in many ways, but kind enough to be loved. This was a man who spent most of his life in the military, and he judged most things in the military way. He had run away from home at the age of sixteen to join the Navy, where he spent four years and then joined the Army.

While he was in the Navy, he learned to chew tobacco and smoke a pipe and as most sailors did in those early times, he got his tattoos. He was a large man, six foot two, weighing about two hundred and thirty pounds. He had a ruddy complexion and a prominent nose.

By the time we moved to Fort Knox, he had reached the rank of master sergeant with more than thirty years of service. There was hardly a half inch of space between his chevron rank and his time-in-service stripes on his sleeve. He always wore a campaign hat, the one that looks like Smokey the Bear’s hat. He was the only one on the entire post that did so. There was no doubt when you saw him from afar who he was. He was respected and feared by most of the soldiers on the post, including the officers, who respected