An Alabama Family in World War II, Part 43

by Glenn N. Holliman

World War II Ends for an Alabama Family

In July 1944, the American Army broke out of the hedgerows of Normandy, France and after heavy fighting by September pushed the Nazi war machine beyond Paris and almost to the German border.  Then the rains began, foul weather that engulfed my Uncle Melton Holliman’s medical unit near the Colmar Pocket close to the Rhine River. 

As I wrote in my last World War II article, Melton, age 36, sleeping rough with an evacuation unit, became ill, high blood pressure, and was shipped back to England.  His condition was so serious he returned to the States, his time in Europe over.  By the summer of 1945, he was discharged and returned to his career as a pharmaceutical salesman in Mobile, Alabama.

My father, Bishop Holliman, left Boston in August 1944 escorting what must have been the slowest convoy in the North Atlantic, a 35 day crossing.  His destroyer, the Barker, a World War I ship of 900 tons, delivered a flotilla of tankers and oil barges into Falmount, England.  There the ship pushed off into the English Channel and almost engaged in gunfire with three English destroyers who the captain had mistaken for German E-Boats.  No harm done except some lost sleep.

After a few days patrolling off Cherbourne, France the ship escorted empty transports back to Falmouth and then to Belfast, Ireland.  There my father rented a bicycle and pedaled into the Irish county side.  Back on convoy duty, his ship sailed to the Azores.  There for two days he went ashore, played some baseball and swan in clear blue seas.  Another three weeks of escort duty brought my father back to Boston.

While my father plowed the ocean that summer and autumn, my Uncle Ralph Holliman crossed the Channel from his English posting, along with his air corp transport unit.  He had the best duty of all three brothers, stationed not far from Paris for the rest of the European War. A clerk, he made rank of sergeant, and even obtained an 8 day leave to England.

Left, Ralph at a desk, not in France, but years later at work.  He climbed the corporate ladder quickly moving his family eleven times in twelve years.

Below, Ralph wrote from France describing V-E Day in Paris!

With the surrenders of Germany and Japan in spring and summer of 1945, Ralph came home the summer of 1945 to his young wife, Motie and entered Birmingham-Southern College on the G.I. bill.  When their first child, Pamala, came along, he left school and went to work for American Bakeries, venturing into a long and lucrative career with that national company.


Left, Motie, Ralph's young wife and my mother, Gerry Stansberry Holliman, meeting for the first time in February 1945 in Irondale.  They were two of the three war brides of World War II, the other being Virginia Holliman Cornelius.

Back to my father – He had reconnected with Miss Geraldine Stansberry of Philadelphia in June 1944.  The stars must have been in alignment.  They had met in September 1942 and while sparks flew for my future mother, not so with my father.  She wrote him often; he seldom replied evidently not ready to settle down.  The summer of 1944 was different.  He fell in love, deeply and by October 1944 when docked for a month in Boston, invited her up and they spent time together. 

February 1945, Bishop finally received leave to go home to Irondale, Alabama (after sailing to the Caribbean and serving as a target for US submarines firing practice torpedoes). Gerry came down from Knoxville, Tennessee (her new home where she lived with her sister as her mother had died the year before). She stayed for a week with the Robert Daly’s, their home adjacent to the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman, my grandparents at 2300 N. 3^rd Street.  Melton, now stationed at Foster Army Hospital, Jackson, Mississippi and on light duty, took leave also and the two brothers had a reunion. 

Left, my parents in February 1945.



Right in February 1945 in Irondale, left to right, Robert Daly, Bishop Holliman in uniform and his father, Ulyss Holliman.

The visit was a success, and four months later (after another cruise to Ireland and back), my parents married June 26, 1945 in Philadelphia where his ship was docked.  The Germans had surrendered on May 8^th, and on August 15^th, the Japanese did also.  By early September my father, along with thousands of others, received his discharge.  He had served 3 years and 10 months, most of the time as a radioman listening for German U-Boats.    His most dangerous service had been at the 1943 invasion of Sicily when his ship was bombed by the Luftwaffe.

Right a summer day in 1945 in Irondale, Alabama before my father, Bishop Holliman, far right was discharged from the Navy.  Left to right, Vena Daly, Patti Holliman, Virginia Holliman Cornelius, Bob Daly, Gerry Holliman and her new husband, Bishop.

Christmas 1945, a brother-in-law (below) was still overseas, my Aunt Virginia Holliman’s high school beau and since 1942 husband, Walter Cornelius. He shipped to the Central Pacific in 1945, and spent months on the island of Saipan.  He would not get home until 1946.  Virginia (right) had given birth to their first daughter, Carol, in 1944.

It would be the Christmas of 1946 before all were home to enjoy a grand family reunion.  World War II was over, the veterans found jobs and the Baby Boomer generation soon followed!

My father all his life remained modest about his long service in the Navy.  Yet he and my uncles, indeed the whole family sacrificed as did millions of others that first half of the 1940s.  

Happily the Holliman family of Irondale, Alabama suffered no deaths or physical wounds.  But the world, their world, would never be the same.  

A Post WWII Christmas for an Alabama Family

by Glenn N. Holliman

Christmas 1946 - All Together Again

It was the first Christmas when all the sons who had gone to war - Melton, Bishop and Ralph - and a son-in-law, Walter Cornelius, could be together with the extended family.  This Birmingham/Irondale, Alabama nuclear family was reunited after the travail of war.  All the persons pictured above still lived near the childhood home of the seven siblings - Melton, Vena, Euhal, Loudelle, Bishop, Virginia and Ralph.  Euhal and family lived in Gadsden and Melton's branch in Mobile.  In a few years this would change.

And in a few years there would be many more children, the 'Baby Boomers'!

This is a photograph I have starred at many times in my now long life.  The names placed under the photograph are all correct except the name 'Susan' in Virginia's lap.  That is Carol Cornelius born 1944.  Her sister Susan would come along in 1949.  As Charles and Loudelle Ferrell are referred to as Dad and Mother, perhaps cousin Charles H. Ferrell labeled us.

While examining this picture and rearranging others a few weeks ago (I have hundreds of photographs of the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman's descendants and happy to forward them to those requesting), I was amazed to discover a second photograph taken evidently right before or right after each other.  See if you spot the differences.  It took me a few minutes to do so.

Some eyes are open or now closed.  Grandpa Ulyss is closer to Pearl.  Patti is now on the front row, partially blocking Carolyn.  The bottom photograph is not as sharp; perhaps that is why a second was taken.

Mary, holding her brother Bob, is the oldest cousin and the remaining person who may remember the details of the pictures.  The rest of us were too young, and all the adults have passed away.

There are 12 grandchildren in this picture.  By 1956, there would be 19 grandchildren, but alas Grandmother Pearl had died in May 1955 and with that the Christmas reunions ceased to be.  Both Bishop and Ralph families had moved out of state for employment opportunities.

Who took the pictures?  I believe it was Virginia's good friend, Verlice Nichols, pictured below.  This picture was taken with the Robert and Vena Holliman Daly home in the background.  Many of the Holliman pictures were taken at this location adjacent to the Ulyss and Pearl home.  Why?  One the location of the sun, persons looking south and two, did the Daly family own the camera? 

After my father Bishop died in 2018, my sister Becky and I connected with Verlice, then in her late 90s living in an Arizona retirement home.  She telephoned us several times, and we talked of her memories of Irondale and growing up in the 1930s.  Sadly earlier this year we received a call that she had died suddenly.  Another chapter closed.

As I have reviewed hundreds of pictures the past month, I noticed that my grandfather often stared off into space when posing for pictures.  Notice in the two pictures above he does not look into the camera.

Above is the first known picture of Ulyss taken ca 1900.  The copy under the picture is by Rhodes B. Holliman (1928-2014), grandson of John Thomas Holliman (1844-1830), my generation's great grandfather.   From the beginning, Ulyss avoided a direct gaze at the camera.  Interesting.

Thanks for reading and hope this is helpful to those of new generations who wonder from whence they have come.

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….

Lost Pictures Found of the 1968 Reunion, Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman


1968 - A Summer of Discontent 

For those of us old enough to remember 1968, it was a wretched year.  Two political assassinations, inter-cities burning due to unresolved racial strive, an angry presidential election season, a war bitterly dividing a nation and the resulting tragedy of hundreds of young Americans and Vietnamese dying weekly.

I was thin as a rail, newly married, just graduated from college and headed for graduate school in history.  Current events intervened and Uncle Sam called me (read drafted) for military duty.  That July 1968, my young wife, Lynn, and I traveled to Gadsden, Alabama  from our home in Tennessee where I boarded a bus, traveled to Montgomery's military receiving station and passed my physical.  In August, I stepped across a line swearing to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.  Six months later I was in Vietnam.

Below, left to right, Motie, Ralph's wife, myself,
 Lynn and my sister, Becky, all of 18 in the background.



That July, 1968  E.C. and Mary Daly Herrin opened their home and spacious grounds for a Holliman family reunion.  Grandpa Uylss Holliman had died in 1965, and three years later a number of his children and their offspring gathered in Irondale, Alabama.  This was a happy respite for me, facing a difficult immediate future.  I remember the picnic as it was yesterday and not a half century ago.

Patti Holliman Hairston, Melton and Ida's daughter, was present with her first child, Holly.

Virginia Holliman Cornelius in the foreground.  In 1968, Virginia was an up and coming banker en route career-wise to become in her time the highest ranking female banking executive in Alabama history. My mother, Gerry, stands behind her and E.C. Herrin in background.

For some reason Charles and Loudelle Holliman Ferrell and Ralph Holliman posed with arms folded.  Ralph's daughter Kathy, holds his arm.  Something about Holliman formality.  It was a time with men dressed in white shirts and ties for a picnic.  That would change in a generation.

Vena Holliman Daly, the matriarch of the family at that time, below with her niece, Carol Cornelius.  Carol now lives with her husband Chuck Morton in retirement village for North Americans in Mexico.  

For some reason fate decried that of all the male cousins, I drew the straw to go to blighted war in South East Asia.  As a result of passing my physical (half in my group failed), I was soon at Fort Benning, Georgia.  The brief Alabama reunion in the rear view mirror, it was a time of testing and maturing. 

Funny, I still feel naive and still trying to develop a bit of wisdom, this being 50 plus years later.  I wonder if the many grandchildren of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman have similar thoughts as we climb remorselessly into our very senior years?

By late October 1968, basic training was over (above), and even thinner,  I was soon en route to advanced training at Ft. Dix, New Jersey and Ft. Hamilton, New York.  By February 1, 1969, I was with the 1st Infantry Division north of Saigon, along with another 500,000 young Americans in an ill-fated attempt to intervene in an Asian civil war.

Next posting, back to World War II, and how our Alabama family held up during the crushing year of 1944.

Lost Pictures Found of 1968 Reunion, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

Lost and Now Found

Last summer I published on this site, photographs I had taken with a simple Kodak Instamatic camera of the Holliman/Daly/Ferrell/Herrin/Cornelius gathering in Irondale, Alabama, July 1968.  At that writing, I thought all the pictures of that day had been recovered, but fortunately I was wrong. 

Since then, my sister, Becky Holliman Payne of Cookeville, Tennessee, has found approximately 400 slides in memorabilia boxes of our Mother, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (1923-2015).  Our sister, Alice Holliman Murphy of Trophy Club, Texas scanned them and gave me electronic copies.  My Mother also had an Instamatic camera, a simple marvel of that time when one popped in a cartridge, and the film advanced after each picture.

So here are some of the ‘lost’ pictures she and my father took from 1967 to 1976. Step back then in time and find yourself or your parents and grandparents much younger, and several of us, much thinner and with other spouses.  This was over a half century ago, a summer of much disconnect in America with an unpopular war, two political assassinations and a Southern family adjusting to the Civil Rights revolution of that time.

Left to right, Alice Holliman Murphy, age 12, Mary Daly Herrin, b. 1931, the first grandchild of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman, Linda Herrin Bradley, now living in Orange Beach, Alabama, and my mother, Gerry Stansbery Holliman Feick.    

Below, Alice and Linda embrace David and Suzanne Herrin, Linda’s younger siblings. 

Above left to right, are Charles and Loudelle Ferrell.  Charles (1907-1999) was a United Methodist Church minister, a graduate of Birmingham-Southern and Yale Divinity School. Loudelle (1914-1998) was the third child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman to marry.  They had three children, Charles, Carolyn and John.

In the background are Jean Holliman and Tommie Holliman Allen, two of the six children of Euhal, far right gesturing with his hands, and Edna Westbrook Holliman (1916-1992), not pictured here.  In 1968, Euhal (1912-1989) and his family were living at 2300 3^rd Avenue North in Irondale in the home of his late parents, Ulyss (1884-1965) and Pearl (1888-1955).

Finally, in a white dress in the foreground is Kathy Holliman listening to her Uncle Euhal as is her father, Ralph Holliman (1924-2017).  Ralph was a corporate executive for American Bakeries in Chicago, eventually retiring to Gulf Shores, Alabama with his wife, Motie (1924-2003), not pictured here.

Below left to right is George Hairston, Patti Holliman’s husband.  Patti (in sun glasses) is the daughter of Melton (1908-1958) and Ida Holliman (1905-1995).  Next is Susan Cornelius Williams and her sister, Carol Cornelius Morton with her husband, Carl Blomstran.  Susan and Carol are the daughters of Walter (1922-2005) and Virginia Holliman Cornelius (1922-2011), the sixth child of Ulyss and Pearl Holliman.

Look soon for another posting and more photographs of this 1968 family gathering at the home of E.C. and Mary Daly Herrin in Irondale, Alabama.

An Alabama Family in World War II, Part 41

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 25^th, 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 6^th 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.

An Alabama Family in World War II, Part 40

Three Holliman Sons in Route to the Invasion of Europe

by Glenn N. Holliman

The sons and daughters of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman of Irondale, Alabama wrote hundreds of letters to each other during World War II.  The contents of this correspondence are now a precious history of one family and the travail of that global conflict.  Thanks to the sharing of my cousins and late father, I have scanned and saved them in one folder, available to all descendants. GNH

In early February 1944, Melton P. Holliman (1908-1958) oldest of the seven children of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman of Irondale, Alabama, finished his medical corp training at Camp Barkeley, Texas and traveled three days and four nights by train to Camp Reynolds near Greenville, Pennsylvania.  The huge train had 18 Pullman cars and carried 492 men. 

Below, Bishop and Melton Holliman in 1942, the year before Melton entered the Army at age 35 leaving behind wife Ida and daughter Patti.  Bishop, single, had joined the Navy the month before Pearl Harbor December 1941.

Melton arrived to 18 inches of snow and temperatures as low as 5f, quite a change from the Texas plains where he had spent five months learning to be a soldier in Uncle Sam’s rapidly expanding Army. According to Melton’s very home sick letters, the food was terrible and the weather, for an Alabama native, even more so. 

Camp Reynolds was a way station, a temporary posting for those troops about to be sent to England, an island said to be groaning of the weight of weapons, tanks, an Army Air Corp and a million or so G.I.s.  They were there for the forthcoming invasion of Nazi Europe, to topple Hitler and to liberate a broken Europe. 

Camp Reynolds, Greenville, Pennsylvania was potato field  in 1942.  By 1943, up to 75,000 troops at a time were passing through this replacement center awaiting transfer from training to assignments in either the Pacific or European Theaters.  Today the location is an industrial park, after briefly serving as a P.O.W. camp in 1945/46.

It was ‘hurry up and wait’ until early March 1944 when his group moved near to the transport docks in New York and Brooklyn.  There for yet another three weeks, Melton and many others waited for a ship to take them overseas.  There was leisure to see New York City for the first time and to write home about ‘the most wonderful view I have ever seen’ from atop the Empire State Building and the delicious steaks at Jack Dempsey’s Restaurant.  

He toured the then new Rockefeller Center, home of NBC Radio and Music Hall, and took long walks with his buddies along the side walks of New York, marveling at the diversity and size of the largest city in America. 

Once headed back to the deployment barracks, he marveled that the black soldiers did not sit in the rear of the bus and later that a Negro chaplain had preached to an audience of mainly white troops. 

His younger brother, Ralph (1925-2017) had arrived in England  in the autumn of 1943 after a rough ride on a troop ship over the North At antic.  While he could not tell the folks where he was in England, we now know he was an clerk with a headquarters company of the 9^th Army Air Force.  First he was based in Bournemouth near the English Channel and later near Oxford, England.  As duty stations and work went in that WWII Army, Ralph, an enlisted man, all 19 years old, was fortunate to log flights and keep company records of transports, airplanes that on D-Day would haul parachutists to Normandy and later fly supplies to the continent. 

Ralph wrote the folks back in Irondale of his trips to London and seeing Big Ben, Parliament, Buckingham Palace and other sights. He promised to take his young wife Motie to see the same some day (and he did so decades later).

Right, Ralph in 1941, age 16.  

For my father, Bishop (1919-2018), he spent most of the winter of 1944 at sea on the USS Barker, Destroyer 213, a radioman who listened for German U-Boats signals.  Christmas 1943 was spent at sea, and again in January convoy duty took him from Norfolk to Africa and Bay of Biscay and then back to Boston. 

He wrote “Our mission was to sink subs but as far as I know we didn’t sink any.  However, there aren’t that many left out there.  We had several exciting experiences and one or two narrow escapes.  All in all, it was a rough trip, and I am certainly glad it is over.”

Above, Bishop in Boston on liberty at the Bunker Hill Monument.

After ten days off the New England coast for sea trials and firing practice, it was back to Norfolk and another convoy in mid-February, this time to the Mediterranean to escort supply ships for General Mark Clark’s Army which was slowly pushing up the mountainous terrain of Central Italy. 

For Melton, classified a pharmacist now making $80 a month, almost all sent home to Ida and Patti, he wrote that he had a job to do and the sooner he got to it, the sooner the war would be over. 

“I hear the Allies bombed Rome and the monastery (Monte Cassino).  They shouldn’t have waited so long to do it.”

March 29, 1944 Melton sent a V-Mail that he had arrived in England.  Now three sons of Ulyss and Pearl were in the European Theater and the invasion of France was only months away.