Christmas Eve, 1941 - 70 Years Ago

Ron was four years old in this photo - and not only willing to share his hobby horse with me, but making certain his baby sister did not fall off. I think the horse was one of the gifts under the Christmas tree for his second Christmas in 1941.
What a Christmas that must have been. The United States had been at war for three weeks. The Adams County Free Press headline for December 25 (which came out on Christmas Eve) was announcing the county's first war casualty. John Henry Thuman's parents had received the "We regret to inform you" telegram the previous week. It was later confirmed that the nineteen year old Navy First Class hospital apprentice had been killed in Pearl Harbor December 8.
I'm sure Mom and Dad and Ronald had a traditional Christmas with the Lynam's and Ridnour's, but many of their friends and neighbors did not. Scheduled holiday leave for men already in the service was canceled. So many young men were signing up for service that the draft board was over-whelmed. Mothers with tears in their eyes must have been begging their sons to wait until after Christmas, yet feeling proud that they would not wait to enlist.

Tires and gasoline were rationed almost immediately. By the time additional rationing was organized in early 1942, Adams County recorded their second casualty. George M. Sullivan, an aerial engineer, was killed February 7 in a bomber crash in Brazil.
The county clerk was in charge of the 10,000 ration books issued in Adams county. In order to get them to the residents, the county superintendent of schools, Maude Friman, had the duty of delivering them to the district teachers for distribution. I've wondered who wrote my name on my ration book. Was it the teacher at Jasper # 2 in 1943? Ruth Lillie?

Ration book # 4 was issued in October, 1943. Even though I was a baby (November, 1943), I got my own ration book. I'm sure it helped for the folks to have, though as far as food was concerned, they were pretty self-sufficient - raising their own vegetables and meat, and having milk, cream and eggs from their own cows and chickens. About the only things they needed stamps for were sugar (a biggie), flour, coffee and tea. (In later years, Mom would by 10 pound bags of sugar every time it was on sale. I don't think she ever got over the rationing of it during the war.)
Dad had many cousins who served in WWII while he served as a "Soldier without uniform". This from a motivational page in the 1943 Sears Roebuck catalog: "You also serve - you who stand behind the plow, pledged to feed the Soldier, the Worker, The Ally, and with God's help, all the hungry victims of this war! You also serve - you who farm, you who pray and sacrifice. You'll feed the world even if it means plowing by lantern light, and harvesting by hand - even children's hands - even if it means putting up the trucks and going back to covered wagons once again...." I used to wonder if it bothered Dad that he wasn't in uniform. I know Mom told me he was deferred because he was a farmer. I probably didn't appreciate the service he rendered to his country.

There are still many stamps left in my ration book. The blue ones have a wheat symbol while the red ones have a cornucopia. The green ones show Lady Liberty's torch and the gray ones read simply 'spare'. Either they were for items my parents didn't need or for ones they couldn't get due to shortages.

On this Christmas Eve, seventy years after Pearl Harbor, rather than our young people going to war, they are returning home from a long and divisive one. Thank God they are coming, not going. Merry Christmas.