This is a reminder that membership renewal fees of $25 are now due at the Shelby County Historical Society Museum. We, the volunteers, urge everyone to support the museum. If you would like a volunteer job at the museum, contact the museum at 936-598-3613 or 936-332-4847. You will find the hours spent volunteering very rewarding.

I am continuing the article written by Y.W. Rogers and Louis S. Muldrow about growing up in Center during the depression and World War II that I shared preciously.

A Vanishing Way of Life – The last few years before the war—when the country was recovering from the Great Depression of the 1930s – provided many good childhood memories.  The Depression, traumatic as it was for most people, really did not seem to touch the little world that my brother and I lived in. I knew my father sometimes accepted such things as goats, chickens, and vegetables as payment for his dental services.

In the last few years of the Depression leading up to December 7, 1941 it seems in retrospect that Shelby County residents had begun to pick up the pieces and make the most of what they had. I recall fondly that in temperate months of the year – and even in the heat of summer – stores around the town square would remain open on Saturday nights until 10 o’clock to accommodate the farmers who made only one shopping trip a week into town. Wagons and their teams were tied up all day around the Courthouse until farmers and their families were ready to hit the unpaved country roads for home, usually after dark.

Crowds of people circled the Square on covered sidewalks in a carnival-like atmosphere. My parents settled at a table at John C. Rogers Drug and visited with friends who came and went during the coarse of the evening. We kids started the afternoon early with a three-reel cowboy movie at the Rio Theater and by nightfall were ready for another  movie at the Crystal Theater across the Square. Fifteen cents bought a ticket and a bag of popcorn. Our parents had us check in with them frequently, but by-and-large we had freedom to roam the Square until it was time to go home. It was safe to do so in those days.

Jobs in the War Industries – For great numbers of people in East Texas, still hurting from the Depression, the war provided an opportunity to better themselves economically and still be an important part of the defense effort. They found employment in expanded war industries, many of them going to the big shipyards in the Orange, Texas area.(Note: my grandparents and parents worked in the shipyards in Orange before my dad joined the Army in 1944. My mother welded steel in the bottom of the ships.)

German Prisoners In Our Midst – After the Allied invasion of North Africa the Fairground was taken over for the establishment of a small Prisoner of War camp. A security fence or stockade was built around the property and floored tents were provided for the German POWs who sat out the war there. Several temporary buildings were constructed to provide such facilities as camp administration, shops, and a canteen.

Prisoners were put to work cutting pulpwood and planting pine seedlings, and they were transported each day from the camp to the forests and back in Army trucks. Usually, they rode through town with their heads bowed down. Somehow, I seem to remember that occasionally they would pass through the Square defiantly singing their spirited German songs. At least once they passed through displaying a crudely fashioned wooden swastika.

Local kids would often stand outside the fence and watch the prisoners play soccer, a game new to the young Americans. Tours of the camp by civilians were not allowed. However, this position as Mayor of Center earned my father a special invitation by the camp commander, and when POW officers were introduced to him they stood at attention and clicked their heels in respect for der Burgermeister. My dad learned that in Germany a mayor carried more status and authority than in the United States.  As soon as the war was over the camp was shut down. If there was ever a major problem or an escape, we never heard about it. Only one thing was left behind after closing the camp. It was a concrete swimming pool the POWs had built for their own use across the street from the camp. For several years after the war it was Center’s only municipal swimming pool, until it developed cracks and had to be filled in. Eventually the Center public school system built classrooms on the abandoned POW camp site.

A major effort by the government to get money to support the war was the sale of War Bonds. As I remember it, the cheapest bond was $18.75, redeemable in ten years for $25. There were higher denominations, of course, and Louis recalls how proud he was the day his father put down $750 for a bond worth $1000 at maturity. “I was almost in shock. And I am confident today, knowing what I know now, that $750 was a very substantial sum for our family to invest.”

Children and poorer people were encouraged to invest in the war effort by buying Savings Stamps. You would go to the Post Office to get a stamp book. Stamps were available there in denominations of 10, 25, and 50 cents, and $1.00. Buy stamps and put them in your book and, when you reach 18.75 worth, you turn your book in and get a bond worth $25 at maturity.

The War News – Following the war news was an important part of our daily lives. Louis recalls that his father, “Choc Muldrow, would come home every night from work at the drugstore, get out his maps, and listen intently to the news on the radio. He would plot on his maps what was going on and where.”

My most meaningful and lasting impressions of WWII came from listening daily to radio news reports of the war’s progress. John and I would go home from school for lunch every day, and while we were eating we listened with our parents to reports on Allied air raids over Europe and how many of our aircraft were shot down. We heard daily about naval battles and island landings in the Pacific, including casualty reports. And then we went back to school for the afternoon.

Submarines at Galveston – The closest we ever came to being on an actual war venue was on annual week-long summer vacations to Galveston where the Army’s Fort Crockett was located virtually on the waterfront. Big coastal gun batteries lined the boulevard just across from the bench and the seawall. The guns protected entrance to Galveston harbor and the Houston ship channel. There were also anti-aircraft guns.

Blackouts were enforced all along the seawall, and customers had to pass through two black curtains to enter a restaurant. All the windows that faced the Gulf were covered so that German submarines lying in wait out in the Gulf could not use the shore lights to navigate by. On the mainland there was a big blimp hanger from which Nay blimps would fly over the Gulfon submarine search patrols. Nevertheless, several ships were sunk by German subs just outside the ship channel.

The Invasion – In the very late hours of June 5, 1844, my father received a phone call from a friend in the telephone company telling him that telephone traffic across the country had increased markedly, a pre-arranged signal that the invasion of Europe had begun. I never knew how he set that up.

We turned on our Zenith radio with a short-wave band and spent a long night listening to the eerie, wavering sounds of far-away voices as reports began to come in about the invasion. John remembers that in one report, from an invasion ship in the English Channel, we could hears big guns firing and a voice in the background shouting “I got him, I got him!” On the beaches of Frances – a few hours ahead of us in time zones – it had all begun on June 6, “D-Day.”

About daylight that morning, the family went to First Baptist Church to offer prayers for the invading servicemen. The invasion and the march toward Germany held our attention for a long time afterward. I was twelve years old and beginning to understand a lot more.

Victory – By my thirteenth birthday in early 1945 I was mature enough to keep up with battles and troop movements. After recovering from the setbacks of the Battle of the Bulge, the Allied forces pretty much had the German army on the run, and finally the enemy was left with nothing to do but surrender. Victor in Europe Day (V-E Day) came on May 8, 1945.

Louis Muldrow remembers that on that day “Mother and Alice Sue and I got in the car and drove around the square and down Shelbyville Street, blowing the car horn. Alice Sue (only seven) got scared by the shouting and horn blowing, and began to cry.”

Of course, we celebrated and thanked God for the end of the war in Europe. But, ending the war in the Pacific looked to be a long and bloody conflict with the invasion of the Japanese homeland. For that reason we were delighted to learn about our new super weapon, the Atomic Bomb. I felt sure that, with that terrible weapon in our hands, war would be a thing of the past. Within days after its use, Japan surrendered and we celebrated “V-J Day,” September 2, 1945

With the end of the war, life on the home front did not return to its pre-war norm. Rather, new norms were established. Nothing was ever the same again. So many circumstances of life were being changed and improved. But, it is sad to think that the serenity of life in the East Texas of 1938-19441 may never be seen again.

Legacy – I think that growing up through our first thirteen years – the most impressionable years of our lives – during the Great Depression and World War II nurtured in us very serious views on personal integrity, moral values, religion, politics, and world affairs. Our patriotism was set in concrete; and I was, and still am, convinced that the United States of America was a very special creation in the course of history.

I have unlimited admiration for those who wore the uniform of our country and fought the battles from tedium to terror all around the world. Many suffered the pain and disablement of wounds, and many paid the ultimate price, their lives cut short so that they did not get to enjoy the fruits of their victory. They fought not only to defend America but the concept of Liberty itself.

I once heard a noted sociologist say that he believed that most people form their lifelong values at about age ten. My own experience tends to confirm his theory. This may well apply to most of us who were kids during WW II. Because, for over four years, half a century ago, the most important thing in American life was not accumulating wealth or having fun, but working together to win a war.