A Texas Jubilee: Thirteen Stories from the Lone Star State

Twelve: Navy Blue and Gold (1944)

TWELVE Navy Blue and Gold 1 9 4 4 In the spring of 1944, the courthouse square in Bodark Springs, Texas, looked almost exactly the way it had during World War I. For that matter, it wasn’t much changed from the days of the Spanish-American War fifty years before. Of course there hadn’t been any cars parked around the square in 1898, and the courthouse, being only ten years old, still looked new. But there weren’t many cars on the square now. Gas was rationed, and most people’s tires were rags in this, the third year of the war. People mostly walked in town, and if they traveled, they were likely to ride the train or bus to Sherman and catch the Interurban trolley to Dallas. The square gleamed under one of those clear, brilliant days that come to East Texas between rains and thunderstorms and tornadoes in the spring. Tommy Earl Dell and Fred Hallmark had just got out of school. They sat on their bikes on the sidewalk in front of the Texas Power and Light Company office looking at the pictures of soldiers and sailors that filled both storefront windows of the power company. “I can’t wait to join up,” Tommy Earl said. And he sighed. 145 Fred joined the sigh and said, “Me neither. If they whip Hitler and Hirohito before we turn seventeen, we are going to miss the whole war. And I’d hate that because my brother Ben always writes home about how much fun he’s having.” “Where’s he at?” asked Tommy Earl, who had just turned thirteen and imagined himself defending Wake Island or being dug in on the beach at Guadalcanal. Fred, six months older and therefore half a year closer to going to war, turned from staring at Ben’s picture and said, “They won’t let him say, but Momma thinks he might be in England. He keeps talking about rain and fog in his letters.” “Boy, I can’t wait to join up. I may go marine. But then I have thought about joining the navy and learning a trade. That’s how Joe McBrier learned to be a machinist. In the navy back in nineteen and eighteen,” Tommy Earl said. Then he added, “My daddy said if he could go again, he’d still go in the army. He says you always have the ground under your feet and can fall down if they start to shoot. He was in the First Division in First World War. Did I tell you that?” “About a million times.” “Screw you.” “Screw you, too. And screw your daddy.” “How would you like me to knock you on your ass?” “How would you like to try?” Both boys had stomped down their kickstands and were climbing off their bikes when Mrs. Bertha Lawler came out of the power company and stopped to look back at her son Lewis’s picture up on the Gold Star shelf. The boys froze as Mrs. Lawler, who had taught both of them in the sixth grade, looked at the photo of her dead son. She turned to them and said, “Hello boys, are you all admiring our soldiers and sailors?” “Yessum,” they both said at once. They couldn’t think of 146 A Texas Jubilee anything to say, knowing that she was looking at the picture of her son who died when the USS Houston went down two years before. Lewis Lawler was the third boy from Bodark Springs to die in the war. James Walker died on the Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor and Raymond Byers was killed at Corregidor. Now, in the spring of 1944, there were twenty-six boys from Eastis County on the Gold Star shelf in the power company’s window. “Did you boys know that the power company started putting up these pictures as soon as they started drafting the boys for service in 1940?” “Nome,” they both said. But they knew. They knew more about the photos in the window than Mrs. Lawler did. Fred and Tommy Earl spent an hour or two a week looking in the windows and dreaming about being fighters against Hitler and Tojo. Either boy could have told you exactly where every picture was in the window and what kind of frame everybody’s picture was in. Most of the eight-by-ten frames...