War Ready: In My Father's Shadow

By Mary Lou Darst

For young Mary Lou, life was an adventure. Her father served in the military, and she traveled the world with him and her family. His assignments took them to Alaska, Virginia, Japan, Texas, and Germany, as part of the US Army's responsibilities in policing the world. This candid memoir recounts her family's life in new

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Lou Darst Books
• Release date: Jun 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958066010

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2011909964

War Ready: In My Father’s Shadow.

Copyright © 2011, 2022 by Mary Lou Darst.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher and author, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011909964

ISBN:

978-1-958066-00-3 [Paperback Edition]

978-1-958066-01-0 [eBook Edition]

Printed and bound in The United States of America.

Contents

Chronology

Introduction

Alaska

Alexandria, Virginia

Good-bye, Texas; Hello, Japan

Nara, Japan

Mama-san

Japanese Life

The Old House

The Park, the Temples, and Nara

The American Compound

A Japanese School

A Sunday Drive

Ah So Deska? (Is That So?)

Sayonara

Lampasas

A Trip to Blytheville, Arkansas

Transition

Atlantic Bound

Munich, Germany

Berchtesgaden

The Swimming Pool

An Old Woman

A Trip to Paris

An Education

A Camping Trip

The Mediterranean Cruise

The Amethyst Ring

SS America

Epilogue

About the Author

I dedicate this book to American military families

who have packed, pulled up stakes, said good-bye,

moved, and started over again and again so that

America could sleep peacefully at night.

With much love, I dedicate this book also to my

brother Frank who followed me on this journey

through life.

Thank you.

Acknowledgments

My thanks and deep gratitude to the following people, who were kind enough to read the manuscript in various stages and make suggestions and encouraging remarks. My wonderful editors---Mindy Reed, from Austin, Texas, and Nancy Hudson, from Missouri City, Texas---were invaluable, always available to answer questions, and razor-sharp in their assessments. Nancy also met with me and spent time talking about the book, which was very helpful. To the editors at iUniverse who saw the manuscript in ways that I never could, I am extremely grateful. To Peter Bowman, my partner, who so patiently encouraged me, listened to me, and without whose support I would never have written this book, I give my love and infinite thanks. I am especially indebted to my brother, Frank, who helped me write the Japan chapters by sharing stories and experiences I never knew. The book opened a door for conversations we’d never had before.

The technical support from Amy Baysinger, Laurie Lopez, and Jennifer Perez of Office Depot was above and beyond my expectations. The three girls made hundreds of manuscript copies for me to send to the reviewers. Amy was kind enough to complete the submission package while working long hours.

The following reviewers and readers offered invaluable observations, insights, encouragement, and comments. I am deeply indebted to Linda Gardner, Lex and Dana Ray, Inci Bowman, Beth Kingsley Hawkins, Cindy Wigg, Grace Martinez, Stephanie Visokay, and Terry Butterworth. I would also like to acknowledge my cousins Marcille Bruecher, Pat Bruecher, Jenn Hall, Sandra Sellers, Bertha Mary Stimac, Cathy Pearson---and her mother, Catharine Waldman, who was especially helpful---and my aunt, Jennie Lee Horton, who helped me early on with family history. The Book Club members Janice Hirsch, Ellen Lancaster, and Nancy Robinson were very helpful in their remarks. Each person’s comments helped the book to grow and helped me to write better. The Galveston Writers, Nick Adams, Grace Clifford, Allen Griffen, Diana Dettling, and Debbie Stoutemire, were especially supportive and encouraging. Finally, Michelle Sierpina of Galveston, Texas, and the Osher Leisure Learning Institute (OLLI) at the University of Texas Medical Branch provided the groundwork for me to start writing. Michelle’s generous support encouraged me to keep writing short stories. Alison Barker, the OLLI facilitator and my friend, listened to my short stories for four years, buffered sadness with comfort and love, and found positive things in every story. Special thanks go to Tom Bird of Sedona, Arizona, whose writing seminars allowed my inner child to feel safe, surface, and write.

In addition, my friend, Grace Martinez, sent the book as a gift to her friend, Jo Ann Clark, also a military dependent who attended Munich High School, but five years after I did. In turn, Jo Ann recommended the book to her friend, Dr. Karin Pohl, in Munich, Germany, who read it, and invited the author to Munich in October of 2012 to read from the book with the help of a translator for the Americans in Munich Project, which honors the contributions of Americans who lived in Munich between 1945 and 1992.

It is through the kindness of Karin Pohl that I have been able to reconnect after fifty-three years, with Helga and Gerhard, who with their parents, so generously opened their hearts to an American family in Munich from March 1957 to December 1959. How very fortunate I am!

Chronology

1943-45 My father was in England, Wales, and Scotland during WW II. After the war he was stationed in Coffeyville, Kansas, and later in Cheyenne, Wyoming, for two years before he was stationed in Fairbanks, Alaska.

1949-51 Fairbanks, Alaska

1950-52 Bellaire, Texas. My father was in Korea

and then, later, Nara, Japan.

1952-54 Nara, Japan

1955-57 Lampasas, Texas

1957-59 Munich, Germany

1959 In December, we returned to the

United States for the last time.

Introduction

I grew up as a military dependent, part of a family whose life was dictated by relocation orders from the US Army. As a result of our government’s policy of policing the world after World War II, we traveled the globe, ready for change at a moment’s notice, absorbing bits of new cultures wherever we lived. Transitioning to the past in order to document my early life was an emotional journey. I wept as I wrote about leaving my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. When I wrote about saying good-bye to people from other countries, whom I loved so much and who loved me equally, I wept again. But writing this book helped me grow as a person too. I looked back at the life of a child through the eyes of an adult. I gained a better understanding of my parents’ reasoning for my brother and me. I saw their relationship from an adult’s perspective, felt the fear they must have felt moving to Japan seven years after the war and then to Germany six years later. Writing about people like Mama-san, Hatsie, Mr. and Mrs. Kimoto, and Mr. and Mrs. Gruckenberg, whom I loved as much as I did my own grandparents, I realized that I saw the world through a different pair of eyes than my parents had.

Being a military dependent left me feeling that I do not belong in any one place. It was easy to make friends among military families because we all had so much in common---Americans away from home, displaced, but well traveled. There were wrenching, heartbreaking good-byes; fear of the unknown; fear that an American military uniform would provoke a negative response; and the simmering fear that we would not return to our families. But there were also joys: experiencing history firsthand as we did in Nara, living in an old Japanese house in downtown and having tea with Mama-san on Saturday mornings. Living in Munich, we traveled through Europe--- taking in the Brussels World Fair; walking through the Coliseum in Rome, the streets of Pompeii, the Acropolis, and the streets of Tripoli, Libya; and shopping in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. There were new languages to learn, interactions with fascinating people, discoveries of similarities between our family and families in Asia and Europe. We also experienced the horrible realities of Hiroshima and Dachau. But despite all of these opportunities, coming home to our own family was the greatest joy.

It was not easy to live with my father, Carl Kennedy Hughes. He was away a lot, and by the time he came home, or we went to join him, we had all changed and were four strangers living under the same roof. He was always a soldier, a warrior, and he wanted us to be the same way. I never understood his rationale and have spent my life thinking about my father, wondering why he was the way he was and what made him that way. He was from Blytheville, Arkansas, and, to my knowledge, never traveled far from the area until he joined the Army Air Corps in 1940. While he was in England during the war, he was promoted from a sergeant to a second lieutenant and invited to join the Army Corps of Engineers. He was also appointed a secret operations agent for the US government . . . concerning military sabotage, espionage . . . traitors, etc. (according to his WWII diary). My mother, Sara Catharine Emmott Hughes, was born in Houston, Texas. She also never traveled away from home until she married my father and military life took them both around the world.

My father did not see me until I was two years old. I was born in August 1943 in Houston while he was in a military camp on the East Coast preparing to go to war. In October 1943 he left Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, for the war in England. He did not return to Houston until November 1945.

Peeking through the shrubs in the back yard of my grandparents’ house in Houston’s West End, I saw my father for the first time. He got out of a shiny black car wearing a khaki uniform with short sleeves. When he came into the backyard, I asked who he was. He jerked around in surprise and looked at me for a long time before he replied, My name is Carl Hughes. He stared at me a minute longer, then turned sharply, headed for the backdoor of the screened porch, and went inside. After a few minutes my grandmother came outside, smiling and happy. I asked her who that man was, and she said, That man is your father! At the time, I didn’t know that I was supposed to have a father because my grandfather had filled that role. My father didn’t stay at my grandparents’ house very long, and when he left, my mother and I went with him. Two years later, my brother, Frank, was traveling with us.

Wherever we were, my father instilled in us that we were representing our country. Our behavior, including any verbal remarks we made, could easily be misinterpreted. We would not only embarrass our family and the United States military, but also give non-Americans the wrong impression of the United States, and although our behavior was exemplary at all times, I longed for his love.

I started writing this book for my grandsons, but when I revisited my childhood travels, I realized there may be some historical significance to the story. Here also was an opportunity to examine my past to learn what shaped me and how I became the person I am. I wanted to know more about my father, whom I never understood, and to explore our relationship. In doing so, I grew emotionally. The more I wrote, the more I began to realize that he was not only an engineer, but also a warrior who regarded everyone around him as a soldier. Was this a result of his WWII experience in England? No one can tell me now. Still, I am grateful for the travel experiences and the knowledge that the world does not begin and end at my front door.

Alaska

After the war, my father was stationed in Coffeyville, Kansas, and then Cheyenne, Wyoming, where my brother, Frank, was born, and from there he was stationed in Fairbanks, Alaska, which was not yet part of the United States. We lived across from a forest so thick with trees, we couldn’t see the interior even in the brightest sunshine, but we could hear wolves howling at night, which terrified this five-year-old. My mother often came into my bedroom and reassured me with lots of hugs that the wolves weren’t going to come in and get us. Army housing---a three-bedroom duplex with hardwood floors, storm windows and doors, and a basement---was our home for eighteen months. The movers had already placed the army-issued furniture inside our new duplex; my father had seen to that before we arrived. But I missed my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins more than anyone could possibly know.

No sooner had we settled in than I began to itch and couldn’t stop scratching. Large red bumps appeared all over my body. Frank, eighteen months old, broke out with the same itchy red bumps. Several times a week, two nurses wearing dark blue capes, stiff white uniforms, and white caps with red crosses in the middle came to check on our progress. My mother applied calamine lotion to the itchy red bumps. Frank and I wore socks and mittens on our hands to keep from scratching. The chicken pox lasted about two weeks, but it took a little longer for all the scabs to dry up and fall off.

We had a number of unusual experiences while we lived in Alaska. One of the neighbors on the street behind us had a team of Huskies and a dog sled that he drove to the base every day. Sometimes the neighborhood children were treated to a dog-sled ride on Saturday afternoons. I was always afraid of the whip he used to move the dogs forward, although he never hit the dogs, only the snow-packed road. He talked to his dogs by yelling, Mush! Mush! Being the tallest, I stood at the back and held on to the sleigh while the other children sat in the front. Afterward, the dogs were friendly and enjoyed being petted. Their intense blue eyes and hairy tails attracted all the children.

One day my mother sent me on an errand across the street behind us. Remembering how friendly the dogs were when I was on the dogsled ride, I walked right up to the dogs so I could pet them---but they were eating. Before I knew it, those beautiful dogs turned on me---barking, growling, and jumping all over me. One of them bit me on the stomach. The owner’s wife came out and calmed the dogs. Luckily, they all had current vaccinations. My mother applied iodine to the wound on my stomach, and it healed in time.

During the winter, it was dark most of the day and very cold. Icicles hung off the edge of the duplex, and we had to look carefully at the roof before entering and leaving the house. My father made deep tracks in the snow when he walked to the frozen dirt road behind our duplex for his early morning jeep ride to the base. When I was in the first grade, to reach the school-bus stop, I had to step carefully into each of his tracks to keep from getting stuck in the snow. In the afternoon when I came home from school, it was dark again, and I repeated the pattern. Snow stayed on the ground all winter, and one Saturday morning, my mother helped me put on my snowsuit and let me go out to play on the front sidewalk. The yard was covered in snow up to my shoulders. Although the sidewalk was fairly well cleared, it wasn’t long before I fell off and got stuck.

Mother, Mother! Come get me! I’m stuck! I can’t move! No response. I called again. Mother, Mother! No response. Thick white snow seemed to envelop me the way my grandparents used to hug me. Did my mother want me frozen like an icicle? Tears began to roll down my cheeks. My arms were stuck in the snow, and I couldn’t wipe my face or my nose, which was running now. Mother, Motherrr! I started crying. She was inside with Frank. Did she not want me anymore? Is that why she let me come out and play in the snow, so I would get stuck and then freeze? My grandmother wouldn’t have let this happen. Mother, Motherrr!" I cried louder, and I was getting colder.

She opened the door a little bit and stuck her head out. What’s the matter? she asked.

I’m stuck! I cried. I can’t move! Come get me!

You don’t look stuck, she responded.

I’m stuck! I can’t move! Come get me! I shouted.

All right, she said. Just a minute, I have to put Frank in the playpen and put on my coat and boots. I need to get my mittens. Just a minute, I’ll be right there. Don’t cry, your tears might freeze on your face. Hurry up and come get me! I’m cold and I’m stuck!

It seemed like forever before she opened the door again. Now she was bundled up from head to toe. From the sidewalk, she waded through the snow and pulled me out.

How did you get so stuck? she asked. I told you just to play on the sidewalk.

I don’t know, I said tearfully. I just kind of walked and fell and then I couldn’t move.

We went inside, and she carefully wiped my nose and cheeks before removing my snowsuit and boots. Then she made some hot chocolate to warm me up. My grandmother would do that too, and I felt good again. I felt safe.

After my bath one night, my mother took me hurriedly into her bedroom to look out of the north window. She turned out the light and there I could see the magical movements of the aurora borealis. I was speechless. I pressed my face against the window to see every movement of this magic show, each color changing constantly.

What is that? I asked in astonishment.

Those are the northern lights, my mother said.

I saw giant fingerlike forms made from millions of tiny colored lights woven together, creating a constant waving motion in front of a black velvet curtain.

Can we see it every night? I asked.

No, my mother replied, it doesn’t appear all the time.

It was so beautiful and so unusual that I have never forgotten it.

On Thanksgiving Day, we dressed in our best clothes, and my father took us to a large hangar with tables and chairs set up inside. Thick white plates and military-issue silverware marked places on each long table. As we entered the hangar, familiar smells of Thanksgiving food greeted us. We sat at a table near the kitchen with some other people who only my father knew.

A woman wearing a fur coat spoke loudly, and everyone laughed, especially my father. She kept talking, and everyone kept laughing until my mother abruptly jumped up from the table with Frank in her arms and moved across the room to an empty table. My father took a drink of water and sent me to find out what was wrong with her.

My mother said she missed her parents and Grandmummy, her father’s mother from England, as well as the holiday celebration she used to have with her family in Houston. She was especially sad during holidays. I wanted to see her happy and tried my best to make her laugh when she was sad. No one knew that I also missed being at home with our family. As I reported her response to my father, the lady with the loud voice stopped talking and everyone else stopped laughing. He sent me to tell my mother that he wanted her to come back to the table and be with him. In a few minutes my mother returned; although she ate in silence, her eyes never left my father’s face. I commented that the mashed potatoes were really good, and everyone laughed. My father sent me to tell the sweaty, red-faced