The War Comes to Plum Street

9. Despair and Bitter Hope, 1944

9. Despair and Bitter Hope, 1944 Assignment: ETO THE HOLIDAY SURPRISE Ed and Gemma brought to their families and friends did not last long. Jess, Ethel, Marie, and Wanda were just as surprised to see them on Christmas Day as Fred and Lillian had been on Christmas Eve. It was a joyous but restrained Christmas, because there were not many things that a serviceman needed as gifts, and they did not spend much money on such things anyway. Gemma caught up on the news from Martha and from Sarah, but most of the time they spent together at the two houses they had left when they got married. They stayed at the hollow the first night, then went to Plum Street. Their reception at the little farm was warm, but the arrangements were less so. The only really comfortable room was the kitchen. At night the stoves there and upstairs died down and the house was always cold in the morning. Going to the outhouse first thing in the morning was a necessary, but not a very good, way to start the day. The bone-chilling cold and unpleasant odors had to be tolerated , and Gemma was glad when they went to stay in town the next day. Fred took his son aside just before he was to leave and told him that he had something for him. He had asked around and located an army model 1911 .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol that someone was willing to sell, and he had bought it. He wanted Despair and Bitter Hope, 1944 195 Ed to take it with him when he went overseas. Officers were authorized to wear sidearms, but they were not provided unless they were considered necessary. Fred, from his experience in the Great War and from reading the papers, must have thought it might come in handy. Ed wrapped it up and took it with him. Ed went to the plant on another day with his father to look around at the home front production efforts and to say hello to people they knew. He saw steel blocks in the forge room and similar ones down in the machine shop where they were being precision-ground to specifications. He asked the men working on them what they were, but they didn’t know. Ed told them that they were the firing blocks for the 40 mm anti-aircraft guns he had learned to fire at Fort Bliss. His own father and father-inlaw might have worked on any of the guns he and his crew would be using. On January 3, they said their good-byes again and headed back west. Train stations and trains everywhere they went were invariably packed with soldiers, sailors, and marines and their loved ones going to or from assignments just as Ed and Gemma were. Ed had just returned to Camp Haan when he learned that he had been selected to help fill a new unit (the 23rd Replacement Battalion) that would be going overseas. He had had a vague notion for some time that he had gotten on the bad side of his executive officer, a first lieutenant, but had never been able to put his finger on a specific incident that might have caused it. They never quite hit it off, somehow, and this was the only reason Ed could figure that he was being shipped out. The AA platoon that he had worked with was in good shape and performing well, and there had been no confrontations. It was a mystery. Strangest of all was his assignment. He was not going to another AA unit; he was assigned to a replacement battalion whose job would be to receive, process, and ship replacement soldiers for other units to their destinations. These units would be needed, of course, but why him? Why had the army spent all this time training him for ack-ack if a lieutenant could place him in a completely different unit out of mysterious personal pique? He was to go to Camp Cooke, just north of Lompoc, California . Camp Cooke was preliminary to his being shipped overseas, so Gemma could not go. Ed sold the Buick. What little there was 196 The War Comes to Plum Street Kenny Thompson came home on leave the end of February 1944, just before his crew flew their B-24 to England to join the...