Young and at War

             Midge is any young girl. Midge is recently married, only about 20 years old, a high school graduate with no college education, facing the world with the optimism that belongs only to the young. “The whole world was young,” she told me. Young, free, and hopeful. Until a single event changed the lives of these young Americans. Midge remembers the day well.

            “The morning of Pearl Harbor…there were 2,000 planes that bombed the Americans. If you were to go to Hawaii you would see that they [the soldiers] are on a ship and there are 2,000 dead men because none of them got out. It was a very sad time to live.” “A day that will live in infamy,” Roosevelt declared in his famous speech. A day that will haunt the memories of so many Americans; the day America was pulled into WWII.

            Midge was married to a man named Joe who joined the forces and became a Marine. Not wanting to leave her husband, Midge left her work at the arsenal in Watervliet, New York to work on the Marine Base at Cherrypoint. “I had a job,” she said. “You couldn’t stay if you didn’t work.” She remembers what it was like working with the Marines. They “were a wild bunch. They took the wildest kids and made them Marines.”

            Midge was one of many girls who worked on the base. “There were lots of young girls…in the service and I found out after the war that young girls flew planes to England to give the boys something to fly.” Midge did clerical work, but “I never knew what the devil I was doing because everything was secret.” I was astonished; I had learned about these women in history class, the ones on the home front and the ones who flew planes. I remember learning that these women were America’s “secret weapon,” since they kept things running smoothly at home and dedicated themselves to the troops, helping American win the war.

            Despite Midge’s dislike of work on the Marine Base, she and the other girls found ways to amuse themselves. “There musta been a thousand girls and when a new marine would come in they would march him up the aisle and all the girls would sing to him. Some things were fun.”

            For Midge, the happy memories are a small comfort compared to the massive sense of loss all the young men and women in the service felt during WWII. “My brother got killed,” she said. “He was only 18 years old when he went away and his plane got shot down. But that was the way it goes. I mean, you had nothing to say about it.” Bobby, like so many other young men, had enlisted in the service to help his country. A couple of years ago, Midge and friend took a trip to Hawaii and looked up the Punch Bowl, which is a burial place for American soldiers, and they found Bob’s grave. “Some of these boys didn’t look old enough to get in a plane. They were so young… The service was brutal in a way,” she said. 

            Midge remembers the relief they all felt after the war ended, whistles blowing and the noises of happiness lining the streets. It was a jubilant celebration “in one way, and maybe not so happy in another.” After the war in the Pacific ended, Midge and her husband went home to a quiet life in Albany, New York with their infant son, Joe. “Little by little we had friends come home too. And most of them were pretty crazy [or mentally unstable after their experiences at war]. Some of them didn’t make it home.”

            Midge and her husband had three more children, “only a million” grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Her husband died when she was about 70 years old, which is when she decided she would see the rest of the world. She got a passport and travelled to all the places she had ever wanted to see, including the Aleutian Islands in Alaska and Europe.

She is now 93 years old. “The years went by and I was still around. I don’t know what happened,” she told me, with a laugh. Midge’s war story was too common, and her sacrifice and the sacrifices of all American servicemen and women during WWII will never be forgotten.

My name is Jillian DiPersio and I am a junior at Windham High School. After learning the stories of my own grandparents, I have been interviewing the elderly. Through my research and interviews I have been able to dig up some incredible bits of history from the lives of local residents, as well as learn about people who are the products of a different generation. If you or someone you know would like to share your stories, please contact me at jillian@dipersio.com.