An Alabama Family in World War II, Part 42

Melton falls Ill and is Evacuated from France

From early February to September 1944, Melton P. Holliman, (1908-1958),the first born child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman, moved from training in the United States to the European theater of war.  From his letters we know that Melton understood the status of a ‘replacement’ was a wretched position  in the Army.  From Camp Barkley in Texas, where Melton trained as a pharmacist and medic, to transit camps in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, he arrived in England in early April. 

There he languished somewhere in the U.K. until July 31, 1944, 55 days after D-Day.  The rapid advance of the Allied Armies at that time resulted in yet another replacement camp, sleeping on the ground for over a month in a shared pup tent near St. Lo, Normandy.

Right, Melton in England

General George Patton’s 3^rd Army roared through France in August, helped liberate Paris and moved faster than gasoline supplies could keep up with the Sherman tanks rolling toward the German border.  Melton boarded a truck and with other G.I.’s raced east, passing through towns filled with joyous French people celebrating their liberation from the Nazi regime. 

On September 1^st, he arrived at the 94^th Medical Battalion near Verdun, the World War I battlefield. For several months, still sleeping in a pup tent and slogging in the rain and mud, he served as a dental assistant.  Finally with his training, he began to serve wounded soldiers and his own morale soared.

His mail caught up with him, but the nights in October grew cold and the rain kept falling on his primitive sleeping arrangements.  He wrote that autumn that he never felt better, but on November 7^th  he went on sick call and was soon hospitalized.

My Uncle Melton was not a young man, then 36 years old, a Camel cigarette smoker, and for months had suffered with chronic bronchitis.  He did not want to worry his family in letters home from France, but for several months he had been having dizzy spells.  By November 17^th, he was evacuated to England to be further examined.   Diagnosed with high blood pressure, he faced the danger of a stroke. 

He was still in England on December 10^th,  but returned to the States immediately afterward by either air transport or fast ship to an Army hospital on Staten Island, New York before Christmas.  There Ida and Patti rushed to his bedside and stayed for four days.  While with them his dizzy spells continued.   His odyssey ended January 2, 1945 at Foster Army Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi.  There his mother and wife were able to visit.  By February 1945 he had his first leave in over a year and reunited with his family in Irondale, Alabama

 

Right, reunited with his beloved family, Ida and Patti in the swing at 2300 3^rd Avenue North in Irondale, Alabama, February 1945.  Out of his uniform, Melton relaxed in civilian clothes.

It was on this visit that my father, Bishop Holliman (1919-2018), on leave from the Navy, introduced his soon to be bride, my mother, Geraldine Stansbery to the family.

Above, left to right, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman (1923-2015),  Mary Daly Herrin, Vena Holliman Daly (1910-1990) and Pearl Caine Holliman (1887-1955) at the Daly House on a chilly February day in Alabama.

Below, two brothers, both still on active duty and on leave, Bishop (1919- 2018) and Melton (1908-1958) on a warm winter day in early 1945.

Melton would spend the rest of his war at the hospital in Mississippi on light duty.  As with millions of others that year, he was discharged and returned to his civilian career, in his case with Wythe Pharmaceuticals.  He had done his duty, but at the cost of precious months away from his wife and child, Patti.  And his health was never the same….