JB
Honorary Moderator Emeritus
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2001
- Messages
- 45,907
I was 8 years old.<br /><br />My home, Southern Pines, NC was close to Ft. Bragg and to Camp Mackall. Most of our neighbors were military families. . .82nd and 101st Airborne. The men had been gone for about a year.<br /><br />It was common to chide someone who was being slow at something by saying, "What are you waiting for, D Day?".<br /><br />We all thought somethng was about to happen. The volume of mail from England shot up. When the women gathered to knit and sew for the soldiers they plied one another for any news of what was up. The consensus was that D Day was close. Warm, hand knit socks and mittens went out in every mail, even in summer.<br /><br />We ate chickens we had raised and vegetables we had grown. It was unpatriotic to buy or eat food that our boys overseas needed. <br /><br />It was unpatriotic to burn gas or use up rubber tires that were needed for the war effort, so my Mom rode my sister's bike to her job at the nearby Golfing Resort Hotel that had been turned into an Air Corps school.<br /><br />When she wasn't at work, Mom operated a booth in town selling War Savings Stamps that could be turned in for War Bonds, and War Bonds. My siblings and I took turns helping her.<br /><br />We also did a scrap collection drive every month, collecting metals and rubber that could be recycled into war materials.<br /><br />In the evenings, Mom and the neighborhood women operated a Canteen for the servicemen from the school. Coffee, donuts and dancing in our living room.<br /><br />That is what I remember a country at war was like. Everone did something or many things to help win.<br /><br />Are we, the USA, at war or is it only our young men and women that are at war?