World War II Remembered

Food Was My Weapon

315 Food Was My Weapon • Jane Willits Mead von Salis Iwas very young during the war years, and I watched my brother in the Navy sailing off to the Pacific and my brother in the Air Force going to England. Both brothers advised me to stay in school and not do anything foolish like joining the military. I heeded their advice, but I did want to do something during summer vacations to help our war effort. Our summer home was in northern Westchester County, New York, still rural at that time. When we arrived there in the summer of 1942, my sister Betty and I set out to devise ways we could help win the War. We spent a lot of time scouring the woods, collecting tin cans, metal scraps, and once even the zinc lining of an old-fashioned wooden ice box; in those days there were no plastics to discard. We dutifully delivered our findings to the local collection center. But that hardly sufficed to make a dent in what I perceived was our potential usefulness. I realize now that I never had a very clear idea about how my efforts would help win the War. I am sure I was responding to the posters , slogans, and other propaganda about the need to conserve, avoid 316 World War II Remembered waste, be self-reliant. One of the ubiquitous slogans was “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Also, “victory gardens” were widely praised and encouraged. So Betty and I embarked on what became our main effort during every following summer until victory: the production of food. I persuaded my father to have a 20-by-40-foot piece of our meadow plowed up for a vegetable garden. It took me a lot of work to dig over the sod, rake the surface soil, and finally plant seeds—but what satisfaction it was to see straight rows of beans, corn, and carrots appear! Then, in the heat of summer, came hours of hoeing and weeding. I got everyone in the family to help—Mother, sister Betty, sister-in law Marianne, and visitors. It was a hot summer, but fortunately the lake was nearby and we could cool off with a good swim. I remember selling corn to Mrs. Faunce, who complained that there were worms in the ears. How could one complain, I wondered, about a worm, when the goal was winning the War? She wanted quality ; I wanted to defeat the Nazis, who we expected would invade us at any time. Indeed, we were sufficiently alarmed over the possibility of an attack by enemy paratroopers that, in the summer of 1943, several of us teen-agers received instruction by the local firemen in shooting a .22 rifle. Just where we thought the planes would come from, and be able to drop paratroopers, eludes me now, but at the time we took it very seriously. When the vegetables were ripe, Mother drove us to the central canning center in Bedford Hills. The local women from neighboring towns gathered to wash, sort, and fill Mason jars, then boil the sealed jars. Everyone took home her share to help tide us over the winter. By the summer of 1943, I had my junior driver’s license. I persuaded the local dairy farmer to let me drive his pickup truck, loaded with cans of milk, to the pasteurizing plant once or twice a week. I felt very important as I drove home with a precious load of cases filled with bottles of rich milk, covered with ice and a heavy tarp. The milk had wonderful cream on the top of each bottle. In fact, Mother could scoop off that top cream—and, with some effort, whip it into delicious whipped cream. And I must not forget the chickens! School ended early in May one year, and with my saved allowance I bought twenty-five baby chicks— Food Was My Weapon: Jane Willits Mead von Salis 317 actually twenty-six but, sadly, one died. They were dear little yellow fluff balls, peeping happily as I fed them fine chicken feed. As they grew, I had to have help making a chicken-wire fence, the bottom edge dug into the ground to discourage foxes and weasels. The chicks spent a happy summer, neither they nor I realizing how difficult the end of their story would be. The...