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8 “I’ll Be Seeing you” The long Wait Those months at Fort huachuca were like a honeymoon for many of the soldiers and their wives. It helped when Alta Johnston could forget that Gene would be shipping out soon, and they could just enjoy one another. Sometimes they would go to dance at the cantinas at night. Gene was an award-winning jitterbug enthusiast , and Alta loved dancing with him.Then they had to make the long climb up the hundred steps to their little house in Bisbee, Arizona. Carrying groceries was a major ordeal. When word came that the troops were ordered to maneuvers, and then to the war, Alta drove with three other wives back to Tennessee. She had to say too many goodbyes.1 Returning from Fort huachuca to her mother’s house on the farm, Alta began the long period of waiting. Waiting to hear from Gene that he was still alive. Waiting for news of the war. Waiting in line to buy rationed goods. And waiting for a dreaded telegram saying that Gene had been killed—a telegram that, thankfully , never came. life on the home front meant living under stress. At least food was more plentiful on a farm than it might have been for those in the city, and probably better than desert fare around Bisbee. Alta continued to teach school while Gene was away, which helped pass the long days with something meaningful. She read a lot, books like The Robe by lloyd C. Douglas and For Whom the Bell Tolls by ernest hemingway. listening to the radio, she heard The Shadow, Amos and Andy, and the news, along with the music of the big bands. “Is you Is or Is you Ain’t My Baby,” and “Don’t Sit under the AppleTree with Anyone else But Me” were songs that tormented her and the others left behind, as they wondered if their husbands would be faithful to them. Many of the wives would wonder and worry about that for the rest of their lives. But mainly the fear was whether their husbands would come back or come back whole. Alta hardly knew Gene when she married him, and she was pregnant with their first child when he left for the war.Their daughter nancy Jean was born in January 1945, when Gene was fighting his way up the Apennine Mountains against the 60 / Chapter 8 Germans. During those lonely days, Alta smoked lucky Strikes and tried to control her fear. A few letters would get through from Gene. Many others never made it. Waiting for the mail carrier with such longing and expectation was torturous; she waited by the window with a sense of dread. like all of her neighbors, Alta prayed a lot and went to church a lot. Any hardships on the home front seemed insignificant in view of the suffering of the soldiers in europe and the Pacific. Sometimes she unconsciously relished her freedom and was proud that she could cope with any situation alone; yet having been raised with the expectation of having a man to take care of her, she resented having to carry such a heavy burden.The independence that she experienced during the war and afterward made her unable to be truly submissive again. A whole generation of women later revolted, largely as a result of the war experiences and their educations.2 Alta wondered whether Gene would ever see his child, and whether their child would see her handsome father. how did she ever end up marrying such a wild man, fond of fast cars and the jitterbug? But his shy manner was irresistible. Gene knew if he were going to stay married to Alta, he could not have even an occasional beer; he had to be a teetotaler or no deal. When she married him, she never dreamed she would be an army wife for her whole marriage, moving every two years, always packing and always leaving friends, and spending so many years alone. Alta’s family had already known sorrow. her father was robbed and murdered in 1939. her mother, Margaret Ross, a healer, midwife, and clairvoyant, was part Cherokee. She had a premonition of her husband’s death because an owl appeared in the daylight near the house. Aldon, Alta’s brother, who was a Marine, was killed in the Philippines on the way from China.The Marines tried to claim it was a suicide rather than a murder...

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