Triumphant Love: Wwii a Blink into Our Seventy Three Year Marriage

By Audrey Syse Fahlberg

My true story of a marriage that lasted seventy-three years and of our family during WWII, train travel to Texas, and the obstacles encountered while there.

Abilene, near Camp Berkeley, became our home; and Austin, near Camp Swift, before our soldier left for war in Italy with the Tenth Mountain Division as a frontline combat medic.

His Letters Home from Italy, family, love, and reverence gave us hope. War is a paradox of love and hate, birth and death, light and darknessand in all thingsprayer and the grace of God.

War is hella human mistake!

There may be something here a good learner would not want to miss: hopehope for the human condition.

War does not determine who is right, only who is left. Bertrand Russell

Audrey Syse Fahlberg

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493166763

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Copyright © 2014 by Audrey Syse Fahlberg.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014901597

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4931-6675-6

   Softcover   978-1-4931-6674-9

   eBook   978-1-4931-6676-3

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/19/2014

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CONTENTS

In The Beginning

Abilene

Austin, Texas, 1944

November 1944

December 1944

Christmas 1944

Author Bio

To My Family With Love

IN THE BEGINNING

Our story together began in 1938. One was born during WWI in 1918, and one was born four years later in 1922. As children, we experienced the Great Depression, which prepared us for events to follow. The verities of life came early.

In 1944, we had six years of love, a daughter, a small savings account, and an income of $200 a month. As a chemist, my husband provided well, but our lives changed abruptly when he was drafted into the army. Because of his education as a chemist, he became a combat medic with the ski troops—the Tenth Mountain Division—and left for Italy.

Our life became a paradox: war and love, with many occasions a good learner would not want to miss.

2012

It’s July 30, a beautiful day in Del Mar, California. The Pacific Ocean is reflecting the cloudless blue sky. Twenty-five majestic brown pelicans flying north directly over me caught my attention. I’m sitting alone on our favorite bench—the highest—located on the path we often walked together on the cliffs looking over the ocean. Together each day, we watched and counted the brown pelicans. I am alone this July 30, recalling the last anniversary, our seventy-third year together.

I have a hole in my heart—as again and again I remember his last words, I have always loved you since I first saw you, when you were fourteen, and, darling, I am leaving you now as I am embarking on a great adventure—the greatest I have ever prepared for. I’ll save a place for you. We’ll be together, and I’ll love you forever, forever—forever. We cried, we laughed, we prayed, as we had for seventy-three years. A lifetime! He died in my arms.

So I am quietly alone, though I know Jesus is always with me, that the Lord’s timing is His own and is never wrong. I wasn’t ready for my love to leave. In a few years, I will have lived a century, grateful for a life of special love that many never know.

I have read many accounts of the Tenth Mountain Division ski troopers but never stories of the soldiers’ families, so now after seventy-three years together, I have our story to tell.

Colorado has always claimed the ski troopers as their very own, where they trained in Leadville under winter conditions at ten thousand feet in the Rocky Mountains.

In Texas, in the heat of the summer sun, over one hundred degrees, they all pulled together for the Tenth Mountain Division to become the World War II warriors in the mountains of Italy.

In Texas, they practiced river crossings and bivouacking under combat conditions with live ammunition. Texas is where the Tenth Mountain Division arrived from Colorado as ski troopers, and they departed Texas as a complete fighting division that routed Hitler’s nine divisions from Italy. Texas, as well as Colorado, claims the Tenth Mountain Division and has placed a statue honoring the division in Austin, Texas.

1944

A train carrying soldiers headed for Texas from the north has our soldier’s family aboard. We are hoping God’s timing will help us reach Abilene to be with our soldier through this time of uncertainty before he leaves for war!

TRIUMPHANT LOVE

1944

Are we there yet, Mama? my child of four is asking. My unborn child is moving about within me. We are on the Texas & Pacific train heading for Abilene, Texas, an unknown place. It’s 1944. Our country is at war. I hear Texas is hot and dusty. The locals in Abilene are unfriendly to G. I. families. There are just too many coming to the small Texas town. There are just too many army camps, too many soldiers, too many kids with mothers following soldier husbands.

We’ll be there soon, honey. We’re in Texas, so it will be about three hours, I answer in the middle of the night. We’re almost there. We’ll be with Daddy soon. Our journey starts in Madison, Wisconsin, September 20. We are to arrive in Abilene, Texas, at 4:40 a.m., September 22. When I see the schedule, I wonder if we can do it:

With no place to live in Abilene, the first thing I must do is find a bulletin board in the train station to see what’s available, or maybe the suggestion offered in Fort Worth is a better plan. Little do I know the obstacles wartime will place along the way. My four-year-old child and I are what Abilene doesn’t need or want, but the youth and the spirit within remind that impossible just takes a little longer.

My family sees me packing, rearranging, and messing around for days in the garage where our things are stored. They know I have plans. I tell them, I’m going to Texas as soon as I can get packed. I want to be with my husband when the baby comes. I’d like to leave mid-September.

No grandchild of mine is going to be born on a train somewhere between here and Texas, Grandfather is shouting from the kitchen. I hear him though I’m in the garage. Then a door bangs. He means what he says!

My days are spent packing: two small suitcases to take with us, three boxes to be shipped later. I have no idea where we’ll be living. No shipping tags can be put on the boxes. One big box contains soft blankets, newly washed baby clothes, cotton diapers, and hard-to-find items like diaper safety pins and clothespins. Another box is packed with toys, books, puzzles, paper dolls, shoes, a coat, a Toot-a-Boot, Raggedy Ann and Andy, oh, yes, a dress with a hand-smocked bodice Grandma Vera made for Karen, and other items of clothing for us. I’m packing Christmas decorations and surprises in the third box.

I have little money and no idea of train schedules or costs. I pray for guidance and specifically for protection for our little family—and a miracle.

It’s four days before our planned departure. Grandpa comes in with train tickets, including Pullman reservations. Yes, you’ll have sleeping cars, lower berths. No grandchild of mine is going to be born in an upper berth. Grandpa, my husband’s father, is a professor of engineering, a metallurgist, at the University of Wisconsin. He worked on the radar system and was a consultant on war projects, well known and well liked. I call him Daddy. He is a tall Swede with thinning hair and big blue eyes. He carries himself proudly, and when he laughs, which is often, he is heard all over the house. He’s rather stout, and when he walks upstairs, his footfalls are heard downstairs. He is my cheerleader, and I love him. We have a full house—seven of us, one bathroom. When the going gets a bit too much, Karen and I walk to Vilas Park, read books, and watch the zoo monkeys eat the cereal and peanuts we bring for them. She’s only four; she never knows the anxiety I feel or hears my silent prayers or sees my tears. Often I wonder what Karen is feeling. She must be missing her daddy, her own room with books and toys, her playhouse and little friends.

*     *     *

1940-1944 Riverside Illinois

The year our daughter Karen was born, 1940, Hitler was