Joy Neal Kidney's Blog, page 86

Donald Wilson, USS Yorktown Survivor–Saw the Torpedo Spread Coming

Donald Wilson, in his later years, sent this memory to the “Yorktown Crier” newsletter:

My experience, recollections on the Salvage crew, CV5

June 6, 1942

“In A.M. went on board CV-5, via Bos’n chair.

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“The repair work progressed. I retrieved my tools from steering-motor room. Assisted in connection submersible pumps (Electrical power from Hammann).

“The footing was treacherous. Made for slow going. The air state and foul. I know I sweat my tail off. Lunch was sent over from the Hammann. I was up for lunch and air. Sitting on the starboard side, hangar deck opening (curtain I believe), forward of the Officer of the Deck location. I was watching the Hammann alongside. Suddenly the GQ alarm took off on the Hammann and I looked out, on a mirror flat ocean, and could see the torpedo spread coming. Clear water, those torpedoes big, long, colorful and running slow. I, looking down, could see those damn props turning. A machine gunner on the Hammann was firing at them.

“Being my first experience for something like this I jumped up, moved a few paces aft, and was right where I started from when they hit. The way I saw it, one torpedo hit the Hammann, two of the other 3 that went astern of the Hammann hit the CV-5 and one missed. That[‘s] what I think I saw.

“The Hammann dropped to about 1 foot above the main deck. On an even keel fore and aft. Torpedo must of blew up inside. I noticed no breaking in two at this point. I’ve got a vivid picture of a crew member, on the Hammann setting depth bombs on safe, as the deck on the Hammann was awash, going down.

“There was a lot of loose items on the CV-5 banging around I headed for the fantail, where I made my first abandonment [June 4]. I recall having to jump down in[to the] after airplane elevator pit and climb up again, as the elevator dropped below the hangar deck level.

“Others were arriving on stern also.  delayed entering water, warned others there to hold it a bit. Good thing, a tremendous underwater explosion. God, I know my blood-pressure was high. Evidently either some of the depth charges went at 50’, or boilers or both I don’t know. I do know those in the water suffered.

“I caught the tug Vireo, which had moved astern the carrier to pick us up. From the Vireo (sea going tug) I transferred, I think to the Gwinn. . . . Slept on deck blanket near engine room exhaust. Kicked away on morning of the 7th. Watched the gallant CV-5 take the plunge.”

The USS Yorktown (CV-5) carried 90 aircraft and 2919 officers and crew. The ship lost 141 men during the Battle of Midway.

[image error]Notice the dates and return address on these two envelopes. The Yorktown had been sunk June 7. The survivors were at Pearl Harbor, but he couldn’t breathe a word of it in his letters.

EM 1/c Donald W. Wilson was awarded a citation from Admiral Nimitz for volunteering for the salvage attempt, and a Naval Commendation Medal.

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Two wounded crewmen hadn’t been located so were left aboard the ship after it was abandoned the first time. The daughter of one of the men, Seaman First Class George K. Weise, left a message at the end of this story about the the carrier being found in 1988, which I replied to.

Don Wilson is one of the five Wilson brothers remembered on the Dallas County Freedom Rock at Minburn, Iowa.

All five brothers served. Only two came home.

Their story is told in Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II by Joy Neal Kidney with Robin Grunder. 

 

Aeromancy: Short stories of imagination and dreams taking flight by Paul Berge

The Book

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Picture a fence. On one side stand wingless adults with stunted imaginations. On the other are kids of all ages who know that physical barriers can’t keep freed minds down. Aeromancy, by Paul Berge, takes sides and flies the reader across a landscape of dreams unlocked during his lifetime or two of flight. Ninety-one short stories present the irrational passion of those who inhabit the small airports where real aviation lives.

The characters are outcasts, aeromantics who shun perceived reality and, instead, casually lift into the sky where there are no limits to an open-cockpit mind. You’ll taxi old taildraggers across Midwestern grass airfields and challenge a lover to a Biplane Dual above the Hawaiian Islands. On a small airport along California’s Monterey Bay, you’ll meet a man, a dog, and a woman who flies into their lives to show that the spirit of life is free to anyone who falls in love.

Aeromancy takes you to the other side of the airport fence. If you’re already there, it’s reminder just how lucky we pilots are..

The Author

[image error]Wikileaked opening statement by Paul Berge from

investigation into reports of unbound joy in aviation“To the best of my knowledge, Senator, these are the facts of my life as I recall. Allowances must be made for the first 2-3 years as I was in not terribly observant. “I’m told I was born in Newark, New Jersey. The name of the hospital eludes me but it did have a diner across the street where my father drank coffee and smoked his pipe awaiting the news of my arrival. I was late, so he moved to a tavern down the block where he lost $13 shooting pool with some fat guy from Minnesota.

“After that it was the typical Eisenhower Era childhood in Westwood, New Jersey : TV dinners, Lionel Trains, Yoo-hoo, and Catholic guilt. At age 18, I joined the Army. There was well publicized war in Vietnam, and since my draft number was 323, and I was headed to college—a place I didn’t want to be—I joined up.

“They made me a pharmacist (no kidding; pharmacy specialist MOS: 91Q) and sent me to Monterey, California. Yeah, tough duty. Later, I was sent to Hawaii for 13 months, where I learned to body surf and fly airplanes. I still fly airplanes. In fact, that’s one of my first loves. I’m very egalitarian about loves, so have many firsts. The Vietnam war ended, no doubt in part due to my prescription filling abilities.

“I managed to stumble through four years of college and graduated with a BA in European History from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Tried graduate school but grew bored after a year, went home and wrote a novel called Bootleg Skies. Someone accidentally published it, so I wrote three more. Luck ran out while mounds of rejection slips piled up. So, remembering what Sister Belladonna told me in the third grade, ‘When you get lemons, make lemon daiquiris,’ I contacted a producer named Joe Pundzak (who also was the someone who published Bootleg Skies) and together we created the radio drama series, Rejection Slip Theater (RST).

“Didn’t make a nickel, but RST aired on WHO 1040 am, Sunday nights at nine for ten years and can still be heard on podcasts. In between fighting surfing wars in Hawaii, gleaning liberal arts degrees in California and producing weird radio, I’ve managed to work 17 years as a FAA air traffic controller, 13 at Des Moines International Airport. I’ve written for a handful of aviation magazines and was editor of IFR—which stands for Instrument Flight Rules—from 1999 to 2005. And thanks to one of the RST actors, Morgan Halgren, I was invited to host a travel series called Side Roads, on Iowa Public TV.

“I fly as often as possible and manage to do a little flight instructing in my 70-year old Aeronca 7AC Champ whenever weather and spare parts allow.

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“My wife, Kathy (a veterinarian), and I live outside Indianola, Iowa, not because they won’t let us in, but because we like woods and fields and power outages in winter. Our daughter, Emily, lives in New Jersey, and don’t think we don’t see the irony of that. My favorite movie is White Christmas; my favorite color is red because it’s easy to spell. My favorite book is Horton Hears a Who, favorite Beatle is John and favorite baseball player is dead. But, then, so is Lennon. These things happen.

“I don’t like neckties, but I’ve been to Italy and all but four states in the USA. I don’t play a musical instrument but once shook hands with Richard Nixon (true). I was in pharmacy specialist school at the Texas medical center where LBJ died and still get choked up when Old Yeller dies. That’s about it. I will now take questions and give evasive answers.”

My Thoughts

When you fly old airplanes it’s the journey that matters. – Paul Berge

I hadn’t planned to spend the weekend with my head in the clouds, so to speak. Captured by the beautiful writing in the back cover copy, I was irretrievably hooked.

I hate flying, but didn’t realize that having only been on airliners, I’ve never really experienced real flying. The compelling story about airplane ghosts had me lured almost ready to experience the real thing–in an open cockpit machine. But since I feel queasy on the kiddy rides at Adventureland, I’d better stick with this vicarious experience through Paul Berge’s compelling essays and stories.

Eleven fascinating chapters of short stories take you through Airport Kids, Romance in the Air, Learning to Fly, Ghosts, California Flyin’ and Mid-American Skies to Holiday Flights and The Whole Point of Flight.

You can’t skim poetry like you can prose. So many of these pieces are beautiful poetic. The lucky humans who love piloting small planes and being wrapped in the sky, and even for those of us who are sadly earth-bound, this is a delightful collection of stories to help us escape the “tyranny of gravity” through them.

Highly recommended.

Uncle Bill’s WWII

Dad and his younger brother farmed and carpentered together. I only knew them in those roles, but had picked up just a whiff of ancient history, that both had been pilots during a long-ago war.

Pilots! Dad and Uncle Bill? Flying planes?

An early memory of Uncle Bill is of his tall overalled figure standing up as he drove his John Deere tractor with its deep chug-chug echoing against the barn south of Dexter, Iowa, then later pull out of the barnyard onto the road with a string of wagons behind, giving us watching nieces a silly finger wave.

[image error]Uncle Bill on his John Deere, pulling his pickup and two gravity wagons from the south driveway of our farm and north along Old Creamery Road.

Uncle Bill was a John Deere man, eventually convincing my Massey-Harris-driving father to switch over. Both were Chevy fans, although uncle Bill adopted the automatic gearshift sooner than Dad (Warren), who believed they were much too unreliable. (Although he bought one as soon as his daughters left home, knowing how to drive a stick-shift.)

US Army Air Force

After Japan’s dastardly attack on Hawaii, which brought the U.S. into the fray, as Bill Neal wrote in his memoir, both he and Warren enlisted in the Air Force in 1942. Warren (Dad) was three years older and was soon called up for service. Bill wasn’t called up until early the next year, so he and Helen Cook decided to get married that December.

By the time Bill was sent his orders, Dad had earned his wings in Texas and was starting to teach advanced cadets.

Bill Neal also became a cadet, receiving his wings and commission the spring of 1944.

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CBI Theater

After Transition Training in the C-47 Skytrain cargo plane, he got orders for the CBI (China-Burma-India) theater of war. He left Helen at home in Iowa with her parents and pregnant, loaded into a C-54 cargo plane in Miami, and flew across the Atlantic to Bermuda, the Azores, Tripoli, and stopping at Cairo, Egypt, long enough to see the Sphinx and the Pyramids. Then over the Taj Mahal to Calcutta, India, and on to Dinjan, where he was assigned to the 11th Squadron, 3rd Combat Cargo Group, 10th Air Force.

Bill flew thirteen grueling missions over the famous “Hump”–the Himalayas–in a non-pressurized C-47.  

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They hauled everything from 55-gallon drums of airplane gasoline to PX supplies, equipment, guns, and troops (including Chinese) mostly from bases in India’s Assam Valley to bases in Burma, and also to our Indian, British, and Chinese Allies in the hills and mountains of Burma and China. He even dropped horse feed into areas where there weren’t many roads, where supplies were mainly hauled in by horse and mule.

C-47s could not clear the tallest Himalayan peaks, so the pilots picked out lower “saddles” to slip through. On one occasion, when Bill was giving a new pilot a check-ride, one engine began to run out of control. The kid thought it was a simulated test and just grinned at Bill, who took over and flew two hours on one engine to get to the nearest base. 

According to Gen. Curtis LeMay, who then commanded the CBI Theater for the Army Air Force, the Hump was 1200 miles of the worst flying imaginable, a “smorgasbord of meteorological treachery” with violent downdrafts, high winds, and sudden snowstorms. Most of the men who crashed in the Himalayas never came back. Recovery groups are still trying to search for missing planes and men, although India’s government has not been cooperative.

Bill became a First Pilot and was promoted to First Lieutenant while overseas. After several missions, his unit was moved to Yunnanyi, China. He made one more trip over the Hump, as a passenger to come home after ten months abroad.

Home to Iowa

Instead of taking a plane, Bill came home on a Liberty Ship–through the Suez Canal, Mediterranean Sea, and across the Atlantic to the East Coast. They couldn’t receive or send mail while they were on the ship. He knew he must have a baby son or daughter waiting for him at home, but none of the Red Cross messages had reached him.

As soon as he could find a phone, he called Helen at her parents to learn that he had a daughter, born during a tornado. The hospital had lost power and was on a generator when Judith Kay was born.

It’s amazing to me that my dad and his brother were pilots in their younger lives, and that they never talked about it while we were growing up around them. I wished I’d asked questions back then.

But Judith Kay did ask questions of her dad, and in 1970 she visited some of the places he’d seen during a time that the world was at war–Calcutta, the Taj Mahal, New Delhi, Nepal–right before she was born.

 

Bill Neal’s Medals

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Distinguished Flying Cross with three oak leaf clusters  (left)

Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters (middle)

Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Ribbon with three battle stars  (should have)

Chinese Liberation Medal  (right–gold with red & blue)

WWII Victory Medal (should have)

(CBI emblem is in the lower right)

Memorial Day Dinner at the Dexter Presbyterian Church

Since 1970, the last Monday in May has been designated Memorial Day in order to have a three-day holiday “to begin summer.” That change in the date really wiped out a fond institution for the Presbyterian Church in Dexter, even for the whole town.

Traditionally, Decoration Day, or Memorial Day, was observed on May 30 in the United States from 1868 to 1970.

That sacred day is for remembering and honoring those who lost their lives who died serving their country.

Thinking back to the days when it was always on May 30, even families without someone lost during war commemorated that day by visiting their ancestors’ graves, “decorating” them with peonies, iris, and other flowers from their gardens.

[image error]The Dexter Cemetery is on both sides of this road, south of town.

Dozens of people would return to the small town of Dexter, Iowa.

During the 1950s the town’s population was never more than 670 souls. Sometimes Dexter had a cafe, sometimes not. Where would visitors be able to find dinner–at noon in a farming community–without driving to a neighboring town?

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The First Presbyterian Church sits right along the highway in Dexter. It has a basement large enough for Father-Son Banquets. A kitchen and, in those days, a large women’s group that met once a month. They decided to offer scalloped chicken dinners, using the proceeds to pay for of the church’s use and for missions. The dinners were usually served with a Jell-o salad, green beans or corn, a roll, and of course–pie.

The women made plans and divvied up the tasks. Their young daughters tended the tables. We girls poured coffee and water, and cleaned up on several of those Memorial Days, while dozens of people had mini-reunions at the tables and up and down the stairs of the church.

Changing the date of Memorial Day, making a three-day weekend instead, put an end to those wonderful scalloped chicken dinners in the basement of the Dexter Presbyterian Church.

——-

Scalloped Chicken

1 quart cooked chicken, cubed

1 ½ quart bread, cubed

1 quart chicken broth

¾ cup melted butter

4 Tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon sage

4 Tablespoons chicken fat

¼ cup chicken broth

¾ teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons chopped onion

Put layer of chicken in a 9 X 13” baking dish. Make gravy with 1 quart broth, the flour and chicken fat. Lightly mix remaining ingredients with a fork for dressing. Cover the chicken with the dry dressing, then pour gravy evenly over the top. Bake at 350 degrees until browned, about 35 minutes.

Adapted from the Centennial Cookbook by the 20th Century Club, Dexter, Iowa

Found Mom’s recipe:

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Escalloped Chicken

1 quart coarsely cubed stewed chicken

1 quart broth

4 Tablespoons flour

1 1/2 quart dry bread crumbs, cut in 1/2 inch cubes

1/4 cup cream or chicken stock

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

2 Tablespoons finely chopped onion

small pinch of sage

Layer chicken on bottom of casserole dish or cake pan. Make gravy with the broth and flour. Toss together bread crumbs, cream or stock, seasonings, and onions. Pour gravy over the top. Bake (350 degrees) until brown on top.

Blaze of Light: The Inspiring True Story of Green Beret Medic Gary Beikirch, Medal of Honor Recipient

The Book

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For fans of Unbroken and Hacksaw Ridge comes the powerful true story of a Medal of Honor recipient who faced more than his fair share of battles—and overcame them through perseverance and faith.

 

“What Gary Beikirch did to receive his medal is unforgettable—and the story of what he overcame afterward is as big and moving as they come.”—Gary Sinise

 

After dawn the siege began. It was April 1, 1970, and Army Green Beret medic Gary Beikirch knew the odds were stacked against their survival. Some 10,000 enemy soldiers sought to obliterate the twelve American Special Forces troops and 400 indigenous fighters who stood fast to defend 2,300 women and children inside the village of Dak Seang. For his valor and selflessness during the ruthless siege, Beikirch would be awarded a Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest and most prestigious military decoration.

But Gary returned home wounded in body, mind, and soul. To find himself again, Gary retreated to a cave in the mountains of New England, where a redemptive encounter with God allowed Gary to find peace.

New York Times best-selling author Marcus Brotherton chronicles the incredible true story of a person who changed from lost to found. Gripping and unforgettable, and written with a rich and vivid narrative voice, Blaze of Light will inspire you to answer hurt with ingenuity, to reach for faith, and to find clarity and peace within any season of storm.

The Author

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Marcus Brotherton is a New York Times bestselling author and collaborative writer known for his books with high-profile public figures, humanitarians, inspirational leaders, and military personnel.

He’s the recipient of a Christy Award for writing excellence, an Editor’s Choice distinction from the Historical Novel Society, and a Christopher Award for literature that “affirms the highest values of the human spirit.”

Marcus appeared in the World War II documentary ‘A Company of Heroes,’ shown on PBS stations nationwide and internationally.

My Thoughts

Marcus Brotherton has captured forever the almost-unbelievable story of Gary Beikirch who has lived through inconceivable war experiences. Some of the most interesting episodes showed how he was imbedded with Montagnard fighters.

After he came home from Vietnam, a Green Beret medic, so broken, body and mind, it’s amazing that survived both the war and the physical recovery. But his journey to mental health took much, much longer. He almost couldn’t grasp that he’d been awarded a Medal of Honor. It took years for him to accept that it was part of God’s plan because of what he’d been through. There are extensive notes in the book, and also several photos. This gritty book is highly recommended.

While reading the book, Our American Stories ran his interview.

Gary Beikirch on YouTube.  Another one.

 

Artist Ray Sorensens’s Freedom Rocks: Iowa Memorial Day Treasures

Memorial Day is when our nation pauses to remember those in war. But what if you have no family member who died as a result of their military service? 

To rediscover the meaning of this solemn day, how about visiting one or two of Iowa’s iconic Freedom Rocks. 

Ray “Bubba” Sorensen was still a teenager when Iowa’s Freedom Rock phenomenon began. Inspired by the movie “Saving Private Ryan,” and wanting to give veterans a unique recognition on Memorial Day, he painted patriotic scenes on a 12-foot-boulder in 1999 for the first time.

The original Freedom Rock sits along Iowa Highway 25 near Menlo in western Iowa, about a mile south of Interstate 80.

A native of Greenfield, the artist paints this one every year in time for Memorial Day, to thank our veterans and their families for their service and sacrifice. Only the Huey helicopter stays, as since 2006 its pain has been mixed with the ashes of Vietnam veterans.

As Sorensen’s art has matured, so has his vision for 99 Freedom Rocks across Iowa, every one unique to that county’s history. The goal isn’t to depict every local hero, not even all branches of the service, but each is part of the whole.

Spelled out on his website, TheFreedomRock.com, Ray Sorensen’s goals are to honor America’s veterans, contribute to Iowa tourism, and to provide for his family. 

His handsome work provides focal points for what’s good about each local area, provides tourism, and preservation of what is precious and should never be forgotten.

Tourism. The new Dallas County Freedom Rock is in Minburn, one of Iowa’s smallest towns, population 365.

[image error]Ray “Bubba” Sorensen, at work on the Dallas County Freedom Rock, Minburn, Iowa, July 20, 2019. Photo by Larry Cornelison, Dallas County Freedom Rock committee chairman.

The shimmering outstretched wings of an American Bald Eagle seem to support five young men in uniform on Minburn’s boulder. The American flag shields them from above.

[image error]Photo by Travis Wuebker, May 2020.

Those young men honored on the Dallas County Freedom Rock are my mother’s brothers. 

One by one, all five left a Minburn farm to serve in World War II. Only two came home.

Artist Ray “Bubba” Sorensen captured each brother’s personality, each one with such clear, compelling brown eyes.

I’ve lived with the World War II letters of those young brothers ever since their mother Leora died in 1987. I’m sure my grandmother, Leora Wilson, would be gratified to know that her family’s enormous sacrifice will never be forgotten, remembered so poignantly on this imposing monument.

Two dozen years ago, I began writing about the Wilson family. Some of my journaling included prayers. Prayers that their losses would be remembered, that maybe people would want to see where their stories had taken place.

Two dozen years ago, Ray “Bubba” Sorensen was still in junior high. He’d never even thought about painting a rock.

Sports greats, Nile Kinnick (of Adel) and Bob Feller (Van Meter), are depicted on the north side of the Dallas County Freedom Rock. Both served in World War II. Kinnick lost his life in a training mishap and was never found.

[image error]Photo by Travis Wuebker, May 2020.

One of the Wilson brothers has also never been found. Another was killed in a training accident. The third was killed in action and is buried in an American cemetery in France.

The Dallas County memorial is located along Highway 169, just south of the restored Minburn depot, which is now the Nineteen14 bar and grill.

Yes, memorial. It reminds me that in the Old Testament, Joshua was instructed to take stones from the Jordan River as memorials to their history, so that future children would ask what those stones meant.

Memorial Day weekend is the perfect time for families to take their children to see one or more of the Freedom Rocks, to explain what Iowa’s treasured tributes mean. 

Each Freedom Rock is accompanied by a storyboard, which helps explain who the pictured local heroes are and why they should be recognized. 

What a moving way to experience an attractive dose of history and heroes, ponder service and sacrifice, what patriotism is, and why every year we pause to remember. 

Ray Sorensen’s vision for his iconic Freedom Rocks, one in each county, is a treasure for all Iowans.

The Poppies of Flanders Fields–Guest Post by Denzil Walton (from Belgium)

Why were the poppies of Flanders Fields so numerous? And how did they become the symbol of remembrance?

Were the fields of Flanders always covered in poppies?

Not to such an extent as during the First World War. Actually, and quite surprisingly, in the early years of the 20th century there were hardly any poppies in the fields of Flanders, Belgium. At least nothing like there were by the end of the First World War.

The reason for their comparative absence is that the soils of Flanders and the north-west of France were fairly poor. The corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas) thrives on richly manured, ploughed land. One British soldier remarked in 1914 that the fields in the area of the Somme (in northern France) were far poorer for poppies than his native Norfolk in England.

When did the poppies of Flanders Fields first appear in huge numbers?

It was in the second year of the war – in 1915 – that the first records appeared in letters sent home of no-man’s land being “ablaze” with scarlet poppies. From this time onwards, letters written by soldiers constantly referred to the fields of poppies, and featured heavily in soldier’s poems. Such as this one by Lieutenant-Colonel W. Campbell Galbraith.

RED POPPIES IN THE CORN

I’ve seen them in the morning light,

When white mists drifted by.

I’ve seen them in the dusk o’ night

Glow ‘gainst the starry sky.

The slender waving blossoms red,

Mid yellow fields forlorn.

A glory on the scene they shed,

Red Poppies in the Corn.

I’ve seen them, too, those blossoms red,

Show ‘gainst the Trench lines’ screen.

A crimson stream that waved and spread

Thro’ all the brown and green.

I’ve seen them dyed a deeper hue

Than ever nature gave,

Shell-torn from slopes on which they grew

To cover many a grave.

Bright blossoms fair by nature set

Along the dusty ways,

You cheered us, in the battle’s fret,

Thro’ long and weary days.

You gave us hope: if fate be kind,

We’ll see that longed-for morn,

When home again we march and find

Red Poppies in the Corn.

Lieutenant-Colonel W. Campbell Galbraith (1917)

Did poppies appear on other battlefields?

Yes, particularly on the Gallipoli peninsula in Ottoman Turkey. Allied troops landed here on 25th April 1915. The objective was to capture the city of Constantinople (now Istanbul) and knock Ottoman Turkey out of the war.

Trench warfare quickly took hold at Gallipoli, mirroring the fighting taking place on the Western Front. After eight months of heavy fighting, the Allies withdrew, in January 1916. It was a major Allied failure and a defining moment for the nation of Turkey.

Anyway, by the time the Allies left, whole swathes of the area were covered in poppies. A valley south of Anzac beach was named Poppy Valley.

Why did so many poppies appear during the First World War?

This is the key question, isn’t it? The war created prime conditions for poppies to flourish in Flanders and north-west France (and Gallipoli). Continual bombardment disturbed the soil and brought the seeds to the surface. They were fertilized by nitrogen in the explosives and lime from the shattered rubble of the buildings.

Most poignantly, the blood and the bones of the millions of men, horses, donkeys, dogs and other animals richly fertilized the soil.

The longer the war continued, the more men and animals died. The more men and animals died, the more the poppies thrived.

When did the poppy become the flower of remembrance?

It all started with Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian medical doctor. In May 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres he was working in a dressing station alongside the Yprelee Canal.

On 2nd May his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer of the Canadian Field Artillery was blown to bits by an artillery bombardment. As many of Helmer’s body parts as possible were somehow gathered and buried at Essex Farm Cemetery. At the funeral, McCrae stood in for the chaplain and took the service. Later that day when he came off duty, McCrae sat on the back of an ambulance and, looking over the fresh graves and the wild poppies, penned a poem.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

John McCrae (1917)

In Flanders Fields was published on 8th December 1915 in Punch and became an immediate sensation in the trenches and around the English-speaking world. The poppy became the symbol of the war dead. It was seen as representing the souls of those who died between 1914 and 1918, transformed into a million blood-red flowers.

What’s the origin of the wreath of artificial poppies?

John McCrae did not survive the war, dying of pneumonia on 28th January 1918 while commanding No. 3 Canadian General Hospital in Boulogne. His friends and comrades, unable to find wild poppies to lay on his grave, ordered a wreath of artificial poppies from Paris.

Was the poppy already an emblem of death?

Yes. Archaeologists exploring a cave in Spain in 1935 found baskets of poppy capsules laid beside human remains dating back to 4000 BC. On a 3,000-year-old statue from Minoan Crete, a Poppy Goddess statue wears an opium poppy headdress. According to classical Greek myths, poppies flowered along the banks of the River Lethe which flowed to Hades, and from which the dead had to drink to forget their former existence in the world of the living. Its petals are the color of blood, and the opium poppy is a source of morphine, a powerful painkiller which made the physical agonies of war more bearable, and which was a derivative of opium.

What’s the origin of the sale of poppies?

McCrae’s poem inspired an American academic, Moina Michael, to make and sell red silk poppies which were brought to England by a French woman, Anna Guérin. The British Legion, formed in 1921, ordered 9 million of these poppies and sold them on 11 November that year. The poppies sold out almost immediately and that first ever Poppy Appeal raised over £106,000 to help WW1 veterans with employment and housing. Poppy-wearing gathered momentum, and in 1933 poppies started to be made in a purpose-built factory in Richmond, which produces millions of poppies each year.

What are some good books on poppies?
WHERE POPPIES BLOW by John Lewis-Stempel

This is a wonderful book that I can highly recommend. I learned a lot, and ended up with even more respect for these mostly young men who lived and died in such an appalling war. But Lewis-Stempel also shows the amazingly close connections – both positive and negative – between the soldiers who fought on the front line and nature.

It starts with the positive aspects, and the surprising fact that no man’s land was, effectively, a bird reserve with a barbed wire perimeter: ‘If it weren’t for the birds, what a hell it would be’ says one soldier. Experiences with birds, especially when they were singing in the lulls, lifted their spirits: “They offered a touch of Heaven in Hell.”

Lewis-Stempel also covers the benefits of close connections with dogs, horses and mules on and beyond the Front Line, as well as gardening in all its varied aspects, even in prisoner-of-war camps. The swathes of poppies of course made a huge impact, tinged by the fact that “the blood of soldiers is the fertiliser for the poppy.”

But he also brings us down to earth with the horrendous accounts of infestations of lice and rats in the trenches; the massacres of horses and mules; even the bacteria and viruses that brought death.

The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry

This is a great starting point for anyone interested in reading more poetry from the Great War. It includes all the best known pieces by the well-known poets such as Sassoon, Owen, Brooke, Rosenberg etc., but also has an excellent range of poets that are rarely included in anthologies of war poems.

The War Poems Of Wilfred Owen


For me, and for millions of others, Wilfred Owen is the most powerful of war poets. He composed nearly all of his poems in slightly over a year, from August 1917 to September 1918. In November 1918 he was killed in action at the age of 25, one week before the Armistice.




Where the poppies now grow  by Hilary Robinson

A delightfully written book that will introduce young children (e.g. aged 5 to 10) to trench warfare. It’s beautifully illustrated, and deals with a difficult subject with great tenderness and sympathy.

More about the First World War

Here are some other articles of mine about the First World War in Belgium:

What happened after the Armistice?  For thousands of Belgian people, the signing of the Armistice on 11 November 1918 marked the beginning of another grim struggle that was to last for decades.
Visiting the Menin Gate for the Last Post . What’s the origin of the Last Post and why is it played every day at the Menin Gate in Ypres?
How did the First World War start?  A timeline of events.




Where can I walk around Flanders Fields?

I describe a couple of walks through Flanders Fields. They start from the excellent Memorial Museum of Passchendaele, go into the surrounding countryside, and take in some of the most poignant cemeteries in Flanders Fields.

Any questions about Flanders Fields, poppies, or the First World War in Flanders, drop me a line and I will do my best to research the answer.

The USS Yorktown (CV-5) Located Three Miles Deep

After 56 years on the bottom of the ocean, the wreck of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) was finally located.

Oceanographer Dr. Robert D. Ballard, discoverer of the wrecks of the the wrecks of the Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck, located the historic Yorktown on May 19, 1998.  Yorktown located

“CV-5” indicates that the ship was only the fifth aircraft carrier in the US Navy. After the First World War, the Navy began experimenting with designs for an aircraft carrier. The first one was a converted ship, followed by USS Lexington (CV-2) and USS Saratoga (CV-3) which were built using hulls intended for battlecruisers.

The first carrier built from scratch was the USS Ranger (CV-4), smaller but with a more efficient use of space. Then, on May 21, 1934, the USS Yorktown (CV-5) was laid down at the Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company–the first of a new class of carriers, which included the USS Enterprise (CV-6). 

The February before construction of the Yorktown began, the Iowa brothers Delbert and Donald Wilson had joined the US Navy. They were assigned to the USS Chicago (CA-29), which had been launched in 1930.

By the time the USS Yorktown was launched (and christened by Eleanor Roosevelt), April 4, 1936, the Wilson brothers on the Chicago had just been put through the initiation the Navy dishes out whenever a crew member goes over the Equator for the first time. 

[image error]Eleanor Roosevelt christens Yorktown April 4, 1936. Photo: National Archives.

That September Donald Wilson got a promotion and began a Naval Electrical Interior Communications School (E.I.C.) at the Naval Research Laboratory, Anacostia Station, Bellevue, DC. Delbert stayed aboard the Chi, as they called the ship.

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After graduating, Donald put in for the crew of the new aircraft carrier Yorktown, and got orders to join in March of 1937. Work was still going on at Norfolk, Virginia. Donald had more schooling for rectifiers, amplifiers, vacuum, thyration, and Grid Glow tubes. Also infantry drills and watches.

“Talk about a modern ship,” he wrote home. “Well, the Yorktown is it! Everything up to date, though the crew’s quarters are nut much different from any of the other ships. It about twice as long as the ‘Chi’ and the flight deck, well you could have a couple of football fields on it.”

The Yorktown commissioning ceremonies were held at the Norfolk Operating Base on September 30, and began training exercises just off the coast of Virginia. Donald Wilson was a CV-5 plank owner, meaning that he was a member of the crew when it was commissioned.

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In his spare time when they were docked, Donald played baseball and football. He played semi-pro football with the Portsmouth Cubs of the Dixie League, getting paid $15 for each game.

All new or overhauled ships have a shakedown cruise to run tests to make sure  everything is in order. The Yorktown’s cruise was held in January 1938–heading to Puerto Rico, Haiti, Cuba, and Panama, then back to Norfolk to modify and repair issues that they’d found.

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In February, it also took part in Fleet Problem XX a huge war game that simulated an attack on the East Coast. Orders sent the carrier to join the Pacific Fleet, heading through the Panama Canal in April, 1938, based now at San Diego. There were routine exercises the rest of the year, then in April 1940, the carrier took part in Fleet Problems XXI, simulating defense of the islands of the Territory of Hawaii.

During those years, Donald did get back to Iowa a couple of times.

A year later, the carrier was secretly ordered back into the Atlantic, passed through the Canal, darkened and at night, obliterating anything that would identify the ship, to take part in neutrality patrols. After returning from one in November 1941, Donald jumped ship to come back to see his family in Iowa–certain that war would break out any day. It did.

Donald was on the Yorktown’s crew when it was damaged in the Battle of the Coral Sea and sunk at the Battle of Midway. After serving on a volunteer crew that tried to salvage the ship–and having to abandon ship a second time–he watched his carrier roll over and sink on June 7, 1942. 

His belongings lie at the bottom with the ship she served on “her whole life.”

Three miles beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean–deeper than any other shipwreck found before, sitting upright on the bottom, the Yorktown was in surprisingly good condition when Ballard located the famous ship. The fifth US aircraft carrier ever built has been left undisturbed, as it holds the remains of men lost decades before.

Uncle Donald Wilson died November 21, 1998, six months after his old Yorktown was located.

 

See: Return to Midway by Robert D. Ballard and Rick Archbold.

Violet Hill Cemetery, Perry, Iowa

Some readers of Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II have asked how to find the Wilson stones in Violet Hill Cemetery.

They are in the east section. As you turn north on the street that divides the cemetery, take the first right, through the arch with the name.

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Take the first left, follow that north to where the street divides. Stay to the right.

[image error]The three stones are near the largest evergreen tree here.
[image error]You’ll enter Violet Hill from the right, take the first left and follow around the curve to the right. The Wilson stones are among those evergreens at the left in the photo.
[image error]A closer view, among the evergreens in the middle.
[image error]The three stones are underlined in blue.
[image error]Leora Wilson arranging flowers at the family stones for Memorial Day. The one to the right is a cenotaph for her sons Dale and Daniel, who both lost their lives in combat during WWII. Danny is buried at the Lorraine American Cemetery, St. Avold, France. Only God knows where Dale’s remains lie His name is memorialized on the Wall of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines..
[image error]Junior Wilson was killed in training when the engine of his P-40 threw a rod during formation training. He was the first in the family to be buried in Perry’s Violet Hill Cemetery.
[image error]Updated information on the cenotaph for Dale and Daniel Wilson, making clear that they were both combat casualties.
[image error]The back of the tombstone of Clabe and Leora Wilson. When Doris and Darlene added information to their brothers’ stones, they also added the name of the ten Wilson children to the back of their parents’ stone. The oldest seven grew up together. Jack, Jean, and Marilyn died as children. They are buried at Union Cemetery, Guthrie Center, Iowa, in the Goff burial plot.

 

Clabe and Leora: Spring 1945

How does a couple cope when two of their sons are missing in action?

If you’re a farm couple who’ve recently bought a little house on your own acreage, and, if you’re Clabe and Leora Wilson, you’re going to stay busy. Busyness helps somewhat to think about something besides the worry of Dale (missing in New Guinea since November 1943) and Danny (MIA in Austria since February).

The buildings on the acreage near Perry, Iowa, needed painting, so Clabe set out to do that, using 20 gallons of white paint on the barn, the other out buildings, and the house–into July. He also hired out to help a neighbor make hay a couple of times.

Leora’s 200 White Rocks and 174 Barred Rock baby chicks had arrive in early April, causing her to awake at least twice during the night to check that they were okay.

They’d also set out 75 strawberry plants, grapes, raspberries, cleaned out the henhouse, and sowed grass seed.

Leora wrote letters–to Donald in the Pacific, Don’s wife Rose on the West Coast, Delbert and Evelyn on the East Coast, and Junior in Texas.

And President Franklin Roosevelt died, the only president the Wilson siblings had ever known. Harry Truman became the new president.

Robert Scar born, another Grandchild for Wilsons

Sam and Darlene and little Richard came for Sunday dinner every other week. At the end of April, Sam and Darlene left Richard with his grandparents. Robert Edward Scar was born May 2. Darlene said that a lot of his babyhood was lost in the fog of having two brothers missing in action.

Richard stayed with his grandparents through May, but by then their daughter Doris could help watch him, and she had moved in with her toddler. Her husband Warren was in heavy training to fly the B-17, then later was the commander of the B-29 Superfortress. The towns where the pilots were sent next were so small that there was no room for families.

The week after Robert was born, Germany surrendered and the country celebrated VE-Day (Victory in Europe). Surely now Danny Wilson would come out of hiding or maybe out of a hospital somewhere. Surely they’d hear from him any day, as other families had heard from their boys.

[image error]Sam Scar holding Robert. Richard in front of Darlene.

Days were celebrated, or at least observed. Mother’s Day was May 13th, also the 24th birthday of Dale and Darlene. Danny would have turned 22 on May 21.

[image error]How I kept track of where everyone was, logged their letters, activities

A bittersweet spring. Wilsons owned their very first property. Even the 1942 Plymouth was paid for. By then they had four grandchildren–two grandsons and two granddaughters, with another due that fall.

What blessings!

Richard Scar               Joy Neal                 Leora Darlene Wilson          Robert Scar

But one son, Donald, was still in combat in the Pacific aboard an aircraft carrier. And those two cherished younger sons missing in action.

What worries.