At Thanksgiving we had the customary dinner, with home-grown fowl and vegetables, pumpkin and mince pie, cranberry sauce and so on -- but at the table were only Daddy and Joe, the neighbor-boy helper, and I.
The day was spent by the men in the fields finishing the husking. It seemed easier to fill the day that way and we were glad we had plenty of work to do. When we heard from our service boys, we felt that we had all spent a similar wartime holiday and would make up for it at war's end.
Our Navy boy, in pre-flight school, wrote that their celebration consisted of 35 minutes for dinner instead of the usual 15. Our Army Signal Corps lieutenant wrote that "they had quite a turkey dinner all over camp, but it happened I had a special class during the noon hour, so I had a couple of hot dogs and a cup of coffee."
Our nephew in the Armored Forces spent Thanksgiving day en route from maneuvers at one field to a new location in Texas, and the other nephew, studying meteorology in the Army Air Corps in Rhode Island, had a typical Thanksgiving dinner, but strictly with soldiers -- and so far from home.
Not even Ruth and her family could be with us, as her husband is in such urgent war work that he can scarcely have any time away. A year ago, Wilbert was the only one who was absent. He spent his first Thanksgiving away from home at Camp Crowder, Mo., and then when Christmas came it was rather touching to have him write that his duty on Christmas day, along with others, was to keep the new arrivals getting homesick -- keep them at games or something so they wouldn't brood. The single men had let the married men take their share of this duty the day before Christmas so they could spend the actual holiday with their families. So our boy -- and I dare say the others were in exactly the situation -- just 21 and away from home on Christmas for the first time in his life, devoted himself to keeping others from getting homesick. Well, that's one way of keeping your mind off your own troubles.
Just before Wilbert left for the service a year ago the 14th of November, the two college boys managed to get home for a week-end to tell him goodbye, and we took some pictures. It so happened that one group we got of the boys was in their grandfather's yard beside the flagpole and the flag was flying in the autumn wind. Now, a year later, they are all in uniform, serving under that flag in New Jersey, Georgia and Texas, with two of them likely to ship out overseas by the first of the year. Growing up, as children are bound to do, they would have scattered any way within a year or so, but he war seems to point up the separation so. -- Hope.
Memory Gem
The sun shines after every storm; there is a solution for every problem; and the soul's highest duty is to be of good cheer. -- Emerson.