The Run Up to the Invasion of Europe
By Glenn N. Holliman
April 15, 1944, my father, Bishop Holliman (1919-2018)
received a ten-day leave in Boston after another tiring convoy trip to and from
the European Theater. He took the occasion to train to his home in Irondale,
Alabama.
Crowded, the trip took the
better part of two days to make the journey.
It took another two days back before his leave expired on April 25th,
hence only six days home.
Left in 1940, 20 year old Bishop Holliman, right and his friend, a Methodist minister, Paul Nelson Propst. Bishop would name his son, Glenn Nelson Holliman, after Paul with whom he maintained contact for the rest of Paul's life, one of the few pre-war friendships Bishop was able to maintain after the service.
The length of Bishop's military obligation, 3 years and 10 months, had weakened most of Bishop's many Methodist Church relationships. Charles Ferrell helped Bishop gain employment as a youth assistant for the North Alabama Methodist Conference, a job that enabled my father to pay much of his way through three years of Birmingham-Southern College from 1937-1941.
'Big Mama' was the family name given lovingly to The Rev. Charles Ferrell's mother. My Uncle Charles was assigned to the Ensley Highlands Methodist Church in the fall of 1944 after a pastorate in Huntsville, Alabama. Left to right are Charles H. Ferrell, his mother Loudelle, her daughter Carolyn and Mrs. Ferrell in black.
He had hoped to see his sister, Loudelle Holliman Ferrell
(1914-1998), who lived in Huntsville, Alabama with her husband, Charles, a
Methodist minister and their children – Hal, Carolyn and the latest addition,
two-year-old John Melton. Time and
distance did not permit a visit. His
brother-in-law Robert Daly, Sr. observed in his letters that gasoline rationing
now limited most civilians to three gallons a week.
Bishop, who had been at sea for much of the past eight
months, was fatigued. Generally, on his
destroyer, the USS Barker, he was on radio duty for four hours on and four
hours off around the clock. He wrote
Loudelle that he probably would not try to return home again between sea duty
unless he had longer leave time, that the emotional experience of saying good
bye to his parents and loved ones, and the coming and going was wearing on
him.
The truth is Bishop’s world had enlarged beyond his
childhood home and experiences. Forty
years later he wrote by late 1943, he finally felt at home in the Navy, had
learned his job and had some buddies on the USS Barker. After 2 ½ years in the military, his world
had grown larger – numerous trips to the Mediterranean and others up and down
the Eastern Seaboard. He had met persons
from all over the United States, persons of different cultures and faiths (or
no religious traditions). For my father
and millions of other, the war expanded personal horizons.
Right, Bishop Holliman and his brother Euhal at the Vena Daly home in Irondale, Alabama in 1967. Note the hats worn by men in that era!
His return north-bound train did stop in Attala (Gadsden,
Alabama) and his brother Euhal (1912-1989) and his family, wife Edna, and children
Jerry, Terry and Anne, turned out in their Sunday best to greet Bishop for the
few minutes as passengers got off and on.
My father wrote how touched he was by their short visit. Euhal, the father of three children and with
a fourth on the way (Jean born 1944), was called up for his physical but not
conscripted that spring of 1944, probably due to his family responsibilities
and his health. He had suffered debilitating
rheumatic fever as a baby.
Below at the home of Bishop Holliman in 1954, Johnson City, Tennessee. Far left and far right, twins born 1940, Jerry and Terry Holliman, Euhal's sons and middle, left and right, Glenn N. Holliman, b 1946 and Rebecca Holliman Payne, b 1950, all preparing for a game of baseball in the front yard. Jerry and Terry had traveled with their grandparents from Alabama to visit. Bishop was a field representative for the Social Security Administration, and made numerous relocations in the 1950s and early 1960s. We lived in Johnson City from 1952 to 1957.
His brothers Melton and Ralph (stationed in England), both worried Euhal might be drafted
and hoped he would not be due to the above noted reasons. Although 17 years of age separated Melton (b
1908), the oldest son of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman, and Ralph (b 1925),
the youngest son, the four brothers were close emotionally.
Their sister Virginia’s husband during that spring,
Walter Cornelius in the Army Air Corp was training in Mississippi and
Tennessee. The Holliman family as with
millions of others were now dealing with a long war, one that did not yet
suggest an end in sight.
Unknown to the American public, hundreds of thousands of
these soldiers, sailors and airmen were about to enter major battles in
Southeast Asia (Burma), the Pacific (the invasion of Saipan and the
Philippines and for the Holliman sons, France (D-Day and the sweep across
France). Before the summer and fall of
1944 would pass, tens of thousands of American homes would be receiving dreaded
telegrams from the War Department announcing the deaths of their sons.
Melton (1908-1958) who wrote daily from England to his wife,
Ida (1905-1995), remarked in early April 1944:
“Of course Honey, you know how much I miss
you and Patsy, b 1942. I am glad you have her
with you; she is so sweet. We are
fighting for the loved ones at home.
That is the reason we are here. So that she and you can live peacefully,
and she can grow up unafraid.”
Above in 1942, Melton and Ida Hughes Holliman. Melton wrote daily while in the Army to Ida and their young daughter, Patti (whom Melton called Patsy).
By late May, Melton was complaining that he had moved ten
times since arriving in England, that the mail had slowed and that he was
stationed at a port (evidently on the English Channel, a jumping off post for
the Invasion). Finally, on June 2, 1944 he had received a temporary assignment
in his military occupation, a pharmacist.
From finishing his training in January 1944, Melton had been
traveling and waiting, moving and waiting, perhaps not realizing that hundreds of thousands of other
men also were moving into position for the June 6th Invasion of
Europe. Historians have noted
that the U.S. military in England was like a ‘coiled spring’, tightly wound and
ready to be unleashed on a Nazi occupied continent. Melton, Ralph and Bishop were all part of the
great enterprise that was about to free western Europe from tyranny.
Left, Bishop's son, Glenn, b. 1946 passing through the Straits of Gibraltar, October 2018, 75 years after his father made the same journey to the Battle of Sicily, and 74 years after Bishop sailed through on June 5/6, 1944.
The night of June 5, 1944 my father’s destroyer
approached the Straits of Gibraltar moving from east to west, once again on
convoy duty.
That day, the U.S. Army
liberated Rome.
The next morning, Bishop
Holliman would hear over the ether waves the alert for all U.S. ships that the
great invasion of France was on. He and millions
of others hoped against hope that the end of the war was drawing neigh. We know
the brutal conflict would continue for another 11 months in Europe and Japan
would not surrender until August 1945.
And Melton
would be a casualty before the year of 1944 was out.
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