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CHAPTER NINE

Remember Pearl Harbor!

Thank goodness that familial love and affection are not something to be hidden these days. Love was not a common word in our household, nor was the show of caring of any sort to be seen in our home.

Having grown up fat and feeling unwanted, I could have used a little affection and encouragement. By the time I was out of high school I felt as though there was not a soul who cared about me, one way or another, including Cecil and Pearl, my parents. I made several efforts to take correspondence courses, in order to better myself, but was always discouraged by my father who said in no uncertain terms that they were all ripoffs.

I could have had at least a partial scholarship at Parsons College in Fairfield, about forty miles away, but the family had no use for higher education, and I picked up the same attitude. I tried to go into a couple of business ventures, but got nowhere on that. By the end of 1941 I was at the point of doing anything I could to get away from home, and into more pleasant surroundings.

On Sunday afternoon of December 7th, I went to the Bybee Grocery, having nothing better to do, to listen to an old radio that I had fixed up and kept out of the way in the store's back room. The news came over of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

I knew what this meant, since I had been an avid follower of the war in Europe, had read Mein Kampf, and thought the America First movement was completely wacky.

I ran home to tell my family about the announcement I had heard, which was news to them. The next day, the United States declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy. I could not wait to enlist in some branch of service, since this was my golden opportunity to get away from what I considered to be a lifelong ball and chain.

Within a few weeks, Pearl took a job at the newly founded munitions plant near Burlington, leaving Clint quite shorthanded at the store. Hope, my sister, was working full time as an operator at the Farmers' Mutual Telephone Company, but helped out when she could.

I didn't give a thought to what was going to happen to the store that had carried our family through the depression. It was only much later that I realized that I had acted in a very selfish way toward my brother. Not that I would have changed my plans, but I could have delayed them a short time. My only thought was of my one opportunity to gain my freedom.

Within the year, Clint was forced to sell the store due to lack of help. He auctioned it off, lock, stock and barrel, right down to the last can of beans and fixture. Incidentally, he was stuck with several thousand dollars in unpaid grocery bills when he closed the business. He took a defense job in Burlington with the J. I. Case Company, having been deferred from the draft due to his health. Bob had already been deferred because he was a welder and was needed for the war effort.

I made arrangements in late January to take the after-midnight Wabash passenger train to Des Moines to enlist in the Army Air Corps (now the U.S. Air Force). I had never been to our capital city before in my life, but I winged it pretty well, I must say. Although Cecil did not approve of my enlisting, she could hardly object, things being what they were at the time. Dad, of course, spent most of his time away at his new job, and I don't remember getting any negative comments from him. He was very patriotic, as was I and most other Americans at the time.

My train was to leave in the early hours on a January 1942 Monday morning. On the day before, it being Sunday and the grocery was on morning-only hours, I had just stopped at my grandmother Bybee's home to deliver a few groceries. When I came out and started to walk the few remaining blocks to our house, there in front of the house getting out of a car was my brother, Bob, his wife, Sara and little Patsy, age three.

I have never had anything hit me quite so hard as the realization that somebody, he, Bob, cared enough about me to drive several hundred miles from Three Rivers, Michigan to see me off--into the service. I broke down and bawled like a baby, knowing that I was acting like one, and feeling like a fool. My biggest concern, even at that moment was this: Would my little niece remember this scene and think less of me when she was older?

After the usual Sunday at home, but with Bob and his family there, we arose about two a.m. Monday morning, in time for me to catch my train and get out of town. As I started to say goodbye, Mom broke down! It was the second ton of bricks to hit me within a 24-hour period: my mother also loved me and I had never realized it! Of course, I broke down again, and we had another time of crying. Although no one ever said so that day, I now knew that I was loved. Mom never could bring herself to say, "I love you." The best she ever got out, as far as I know, in answer to my saying that I loved her was, "I do, too." I suppose her background, and that of my father, was such that this was something that never was said "out loud." How tragic for all of us!

And after all this, when I reached Fort Des Moines, I was sent home because so many others were also trying to enlist. They told me to come back in two weeks, which I did. I had to send a telegram to Moulton, asking Bob to pick me up in Centerville, since there was no afternoon train to Moulton. By that time, Mom had settled down and it made me wonder how much her grief was really her possessiveness.

I went back to the recruiting station in the prescribed two weeks, this time without melodramatic scenes on the part of anyone. I was taken into the Army, but told to forget the Air Corps; it was already overcrowded with volunteers.

My first assignment at Fort Des Moines, a former cavalry post, was to groom the two horses that were still around as a token of something or other. I had left the farm when I was two years old, and I was scared to death of those huge beasts. I managed, somehow, to curry them and get through the days without either being kicked or trampled. Within two weeks, I was transferred to Camp Crowder, Missouri, a barely opened Signal Corps basic training camp.

Basic training, as such, was practically nonexistent. There were no guns or anything else for training, so we spent our time marching in the mud (no roads, yet), cleaning new barracks buildings and making up the cots for the next round of incoming recruits, sometimes introducing them to the short sheet.

Camp Crowder was located near the towns of Joplin and Neosho. None of us were much impressed, the camp being as miserable as it was. My one regret is that during the time I was there, and during a later stint there doing a refresher basic course (at which time they really put us through the proverbial wringer) I did not know that there were several Bybee families in that area. I had no interest in genealogy at that age, anyway, so I probably would not have looked them up, even if I had known they were there. If I had it to do today, I would make contact, knowing now that some of my not-too-distant relatives settled in that part of Missouri.

Fortunately for me, I was soon transferred to Kansas City, MO, to attend radio school. This more or less launched me into a later career of radio and electronics, although I had always leaned in that direction.

Like so many other young American men and women, the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese changed the courses of our lives, whether for good or for evil. It is doubtful, had this tragic event not happened, that I would ever have left my hometown permanently. All across the nation, lives were sent in different directions and into other careers.

Many never had a chance to return at all. I am one of the ones who were blessed.

Incidentally, my father, Pearl, did begin to show his affection for me while I was in the service. When I returned to Moulton after having been posted out of the country for a year and a half, we met on Moulton's Main Street. We embraced and shed some tears. From then on all went smoothly between the two of us.

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On to Chapter 10

Headline, December 8, 1941



The Bybees are patriots!



In the Signal Corps, at last!