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Join host Kim Munson as she delves into the untold stories of service and sacrifice with her Aunt Irma. From her childhood during the Great Depression to meeting her future husband amidst the chaos of war, Aunt Irma opens up about life on the homefront. Discover the heartfelt letters exchanged during WWII, encapsulating a love story that endured the trials of separation and uncertainty.
SPEAKER 04 :
American war heroes from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They selflessly served, and these are their stories. America’s Veteran Stories with your host, Kim Munson.
SPEAKER 05 :
Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. This show precipitated from a trip that I took in 2016 with a group with the Denver Police Activities League that accompanied four D-Day veterans back to Normandy for the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings. And I return back to the States realizing that each story, each soldier’s story is different, and they’re important, and they need to be told. So I’ve had the great honor of interviewing over 130 World War II veterans. But we have an exceptionally special show for you today, and that is I am talking with my Aunt Irma, who she was married to my dad’s oldest brother, and he served in France during World War II. Aunt Irma, welcome to the show. Thank you. You know, as a kid, I was talking to my cousin Jeannie. I didn’t really realize that my Uncle Wayne, my Uncle Bob, and my Uncle Harold all had served in World War II. I just looked at you guys as people that I just loved to be around. And so it’s not until really that I started getting these stories that it’s like, oh my gosh, what those guys have done is pretty amazing. But a lot of times we don’t get to talk to the people that were back stateside. So, Aunt Irma, tell us a little bit about you. Where did you grow up and what was your childhood like?
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, well, I grew up in Eastonburg City. I grew up during the Depression and the Death Bowl years. But, you know, that being said… We didn’t know that we didn’t have a lot of food and minks because everybody was in the same boat. We always had plenty to eat and things. But that’s when I grew up around Bird City.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and how did you meet my Uncle Wayne?
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, that’s a funny story. And believe me, Tani takes it to the hills. When I was a freshman and Wayne was a junior, I walked out of my sister’s front door to go Christmas caroling. And as I walked by, Wayne was walking by. And so I walked with him to the schoolhouse, and we got into a truck and went Christmas caroling. There was quite a bunch of us, and we just drove around Bird City and Christmas Carol from the truck. Well, there was this teacher, Miss Frisbee, and Wayne had a nice-looking tan coat on and a pretty scarf around his neck. and you can imagine not too many people had scars around their neck during the Dirty 30s. And he had this scarf, and the teacher and I, when I was trying to get it off his neck, take it, and, oh, he would fight with this and everything to keep that around his neck. I didn’t know him at the time, but at a later time, he told me the reason he fought so much is because it was at the bottom of his pajamas, and they were pagey.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, that’s funny. That’s funny.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, that’s when I met Wayne, when I was a freshman. Did you start dating then? Yeah. No, no. It wasn’t until after I was out of high school that we started dating. He had had one year of college, and he was going back for the second year, and then he got his breath noticed. What year was that, Aunt Irma?
SPEAKER 05 :
1942, the fall of 1942. Okay.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Now, so it would have been in 41 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Do you remember where you were when you heard that that had occurred?
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, yes, I remember everything about it. It was on a Sunday. We had just gotten back from church, and we got a telephone call from my sister in California. My brother had already been in the service a year, and he had come to see her. And he had gone for a short time for a walk and he was going to come back and have lunch with her. But he never came back. She called and said he never came back. And then she was the one that told us that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. And, of course, then we put on our radios and listened, which was about noon, our time in Bird City. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. Remember it, Barry?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes. Well, so what happened to your brother? He never came back? What happened? Oh, no.
SPEAKER 11 :
No, he came back. Oh, okay. He was just in the long time. Oh, okay. He was in the service a long time. He’s about the first. He was one of the first ones that was drafted. He and Martin Bussey. And… And he was in New Guinea all the time during the war. He was a mechanic. Really? He was there all the time. Yeah, so he thought he had it pretty easy.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I heard that New Guinea wasn’t actually the easiest, that there were a lot of mosquitoes there and there was a lot of disease there. I mean, our guys did amazing, amazing things. Yes, mm-hmm. When did Uncle Wayne join the Army?
SPEAKER 11 :
He went to his second year of college at Fort Hayes, and he had gone down there to enroll. And then he got a call from his dad and said, your draft papers came in. He says, I think you better come home and enlist. So he did come home and enlist. But they found out there was a school in Kansas City. It was a radio school. So he went to Kansas City and went to a radio school. And then he was chosen to go to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to a high-tech school. at Nunwoody Institute for more training. So he went there and got his training for telephone.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Messages, yeah. And were you dating at that time yet? Yes, we were. Okay. Okay. What was your conversation like with yourself when you realized that his draft papers had come through and that he was going to enlist? What went through your mind, Aunt Irma?
SPEAKER 11 :
I don’t think anything other than, you know, just part of life, I think. That’s what I thought. Well, see, I lived at Bird City around the area all the time. I didn’t have… I would think I was going to go… to Denver or someplace and get a job, and then I would stop that job and I would get offered another job. So I never got, all during the war, I never got out of the area.
SPEAKER 05 :
Was there much rationing back in rural Kansas during that time?
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, yes. I was on the rationing. I worked at the rationing board when I was in St. Francis. We rationed sugar, coffee, shoes, tires, sugar, and gasoline, fuel oil for it to heat with, and that’s what I can think of. Right now, uh-huh. And that’s where I work. After I worked at another job, and then I, like I said, I never applied for a job. I would be offered another one. And so this is one that was offered to me. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, I don’t think that… On the rest. Yeah, I don’t think people really think about… What was going on at that time here stateside? You know, we live in such a land of plenty now. And the fact that people really, you know, tightened their belts and and did what they could to support our soldiers, both in the Pacific theater and in the European theater. So how much sugar coffee did people get?
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, I don’t remember for sure. Coffee, I think, was the pound, and sugar was probably the hardest thing to get by on without less was sugar. And coffee, well, you know, there wasn’t a lot of people that drank a lot of coffee then, but coffee was rationed. Sugar was probably the hardest thing. Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
And so you’re back in rural Kansas during this time. Hold on. I had my questions that I was going to ask you. Oh, I know. When Uncle Wayne left to go overseas, what was the goodbye like?
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, Mother Deeds and I went to Joplin, Missouri. That’s where Wayne was stationed at Camp Crowder. And we went to… Joplin, Missouri. And we stayed in. Wayne had a real good friend, an older couple that had kind of adopted him. And we stayed at her place, her and her husband’s place. She was a nurse. And he ran a big theater. And we stayed there all the time that we were down there. And we didn’t get to the base. Rain would come in. And then I just left. I mean, he left, and that was it.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, Jeannie, my cousin, said that actually you kept many of the letters that you and Uncle Wayne sent back and forth when he was over in Europe. And it wasn’t until just recently that your kids realized that these letters existed. So tell us about these letters, Aunt Irma.
SPEAKER 11 :
I have all of them. Wow. I have a suitcase full. And they were all there. The first ones, mine are there too, the ones I wrote to Wayne and Kansas City. So our courtship is in letters. And I have all those letters, and all of them when he was overseas. And there’s a suitcase full of them. And believe me, my grandson-in-laws love to read them. And my kids. My kids have all read them. And my granddaughters. Now the grandsons-in-laws are reading them, going through. Every once in a while, there’s something poking up. And one grandson-in-law had gotten that far. Yeah. Yeah. Someone says, why do you let him read? I said, Wayne was the perfect gentleman. I’m not ashamed of anything that’s in there. So, yeah, they’re reading them. And really, it would be… Quite the thing, because he told what he was doing, and he went in southern Italy, down there in the Mediterranean Sea, and then worked his way all the way up to the Rhine River and Paris. So his company went all that way. He was in a signal corps. That meant that he had to have… He kept the… He kept communications going between the front line and the generals. And they don’t have anything like they have now. They had to have a… repeater station or a central station that the front line would call back to him and he would connect them with the generals and everything anything and that’s how they that was their communication and there were five of them they were called detached regiments and they were detached because they set up that central station and ran it of course they had to run it 24 hours and And they would move when the front line would move more to get the Germans back. And he got as far as the Rhine River, and then about that time the Germans gave up in that theater.
SPEAKER 05 :
Do you know how far back he was from the front lines? I think many times we think that it was a pretty long distance, but it wasn’t, was it? I mean, it was relatively close.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well… We talked about that, and he says, yes, he could hear the fire, the bombs go off several times, but that’s as close as he got.
SPEAKER 05 :
Now, another question, I know at least early in the war that they actually had to run the wire for the communications, the Signal Corps. Did they have to do that, or do you know?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes, they still had to do that. They had nothing like they have now. They had radios. You could get a radio wave and maybe be a little bit easier, but they still had to have different things and use the radio. But most of the time, a lot of times it was wire because the front line wanted to talk to the generals.
SPEAKER 05 :
I’m sure that they did. Well, you know what? Let’s go to break. This is Kim Munson, and I’m talking with my Aunt Irma. She is the wife of my dad’s oldest brother who served in World War II, and we thought it would be great to get the perspective of people that were here at home. But before we do that, one of my great partners is Hooters Restaurants is one of my great business partners. There’s five locations, one in Loveland, Aurora, Lone Tree, Westminster, and Colorado Springs. They have all kinds of specials, whether or not it’s football specials, game day specials, to-go, lunch specials, kids eat free. There’s all kinds of fun stuff going on over at Hooters restaurants. It’s great to get together with friends and just watch some sports, take your mind off of things that are going on there. For more information, go to HootersColorado.com. That’s HootersColorado.com. We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 07 :
RE-MAX realtor Karen Levine helps bring to life the individual stories of our servicemen and women. With her sponsorship of America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson, Karen honors the sacrifices of our military and is grateful for our freedom. As a member of the National Association of Realtors Board of Directors, Karen works to protect private property rights for all of us. Karen has a heart for our active duty military and veterans and is honored to help you buy or sell your home. Call Karen Levine at 303-877-7516 to help you navigate buying or selling your home. That’s 303-877-7516.
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Call now.
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All of Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of the Kim Munson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmunson.com. That’s Kim Munson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s time for more of America’s Veteran Stories with your host, Kim Munson.
SPEAKER 05 :
And on the line with me is Karen Levine. She is an award-winning realtor with Remax Alliance. We’ve been friends for many years. She’s a great negotiator. She’s a person to have on your side of the table whether or not you’re buying or selling your home or if you’re buying a new build. Karen Levine, it’s so great to have you as a partner of the America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson show.
SPEAKER 10 :
Kim, I just find it a privilege to get to be a sponsor of what I think is a very important program. We so appreciate the service of our veterans and to hear their stories and have an understanding of what they have done for us and for our nation. And I just appreciate that you are getting those stories out to people and that they’re hearing the sacrifices men and women have made on behalf of America.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and they really are a treasured portion of our population. And I know that when you are helping people buy and sell their homes, you really like to work with veterans.
SPEAKER 10 :
I love working with veterans. I just think it’s a privilege that I have as a real estate professional and as a realtor to help them achieve homeownership when they have sacrificed for us. And the VA loan that is available to veterans is such an awesome financing vehicle that allows veterans to get into homeownership with no down payment. And I love navigating that transaction for them, getting them to achieve homeownership and have an opportunity to build wealth by being homeowners.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and people can reach you, Karen Levine, at 303-877-7516. That’s 303-877-7516. And with mortgage rates so low right now, this is a great opportunity for veterans to And I so appreciate your sponsorship of America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Thank you so much, Karen Levine. Thank you, Kim. Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out my website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. And I am just thrilled to have on the line with me my Aunt Irma. She was married to my dad’s oldest brother who was deployed in… during World War II, and we thought it would be great to hear the stories of what’s happening stateside. And so I’ve learned a lot in this first segment, things that after all these years I never knew to ask these questions. So, Aunt Irma, this is absolutely fascinating. You mentioned during break that there was another thing that you wanted to make sure that our listeners heard about.
SPEAKER 11 :
Kim, your dad was 10 years younger than Wayne. And he went to a country school clear out in the country. And you have to realize that they didn’t have electricity. And if they had a radio, it was ran on a battery. So they didn’t use the radio a whole lot. Your dad will tell you that although he had two brothers in the Army and Air Force with danger, and he doesn’t remember, he didn’t know about the war. He didn’t realize what war was. Because we didn’t have magazines, papers, or anything at that time. So he says he really didn’t know what the war was like.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, the only thing that I remember, Aunt Irma, is my dad telling me that on that Sunday when Pearl Harbor was bombed, that he remembered coming into the house. And as you mentioned, Uncle Wayne, Uncle Harold, Uncle Don, Aunt Irma, Aunt Carol, you know, all of the older kids and Aunt Carol was, I need to know that story too, was dating Uncle Bob. But that my dad came in and he saw his dad sitting by the radio and he started to cry. And I thought that was really interesting because I don’t think he hardly ever saw that his father cried. And just Grandpa realized what was going to happen, that these guys were going to have to go. And I thought that stuck with me my whole life, Ann Arman.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes, yes, yes, that’s it. And Ed will tell you that he says, I didn’t realize it or something that war was like it was. I went to school. We were much younger. We didn’t have a lot of newspapers. And he says, I just didn’t know about it until later on. Yeah, because he went through the Korean War, so then he found out more about it, too. Right, right.
SPEAKER 05 :
So let’s continue to talk about these letters between you and Uncle Wayne. You said that the family has read them. And what do you think that your children and your grandchildren are possibly learning from these letters that were sent between you and Uncle Wayne during World War II?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I don’t know. He would tell everything that he could without having it being censored. I don’t know. I don’t know what to use letters that we that we communicated with.
SPEAKER 05 :
I think I guess I would think that it is a part of history that a lot of our young people don’t know. Like when I was talking to my cousin, your daughter, Jeannie, yesterday. About this, I’m like, we were in the presence of heroes as a kid. And I didn’t even realize it. These World War II veterans came back. They got married. They had their families. They didn’t talk about it. And my gosh, I wish I would have sat down with each of my uncles and asked them about their experiences there. And so I’ve got to think that your kids and your grandkids are getting a snippet of history that they… really weren’t aware of. And it’s so personal. It’s got to be a really great thing, the fact that you saved all those letters, Ann Irma.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, yes. Well, the grandson in school, every time a grandson would get in a certain place in school, they would come down and interview Wayne for a project or a paper that they had to write. So I don’t know if they still have those papers or not. I’ll have to ask them.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, that would be great. Yes, that would be great. How long were you apart? So he left in 42, is that right? Yes.
SPEAKER 11 :
And we married in the fall of 1945.
SPEAKER 05 :
So he was gone for over two years, is that right? Almost three, uh-huh. You know, I don’t think… Yeah, 42, 43, 44, 45, three years. You didn’t see each other for three years? Well, yeah, we saw. I went down to Camp Crowder. Oh, okay. Three times. Okay. But then when he went to Europe, how long was he in Europe?
SPEAKER 11 :
He was there from June until August of next year, over a year. June of 44? Yeah, 45. Okay, so did he go to Europe in June of 44 or of 45? No, 44. Okay. June of 44.
SPEAKER 05 :
So where was he during the D-Day landings? He didn’t go on D-Day, did he, onto shore?
SPEAKER 11 :
No, he wasn’t. He was in southern France then. He was in southern France where they took up right across from England. Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. But he got a lot of, yes, he knew a lot, which he couldn’t talk about.
SPEAKER 05 :
So as you’re mentioning southern France, now I can’t remember what the battle was, but I’ve talked to some veterans that there was also an invasion. Actually, my friend always corrects me. We didn’t invade. We liberated Europe. I need to make sure that I use that word. But that there was another kind of a D-Day in southern France. So as I’m thinking about this, so that must have been where he was. And as you mentioned, they weren’t that far back from the front lines. The front lines, they had to run lines to, you said it was the detachment group, and then that went back to the generals. Okay.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, you have to realize that they started the war over in Africa. Yes. And they had, what was that, General Patton? General Patton had bought them from Africa, across the Mediterranean, and then into southern France. And then when Mussolini gave up, or committed suicide, I can’t remember what it was, but he was gone then. Mussolini, uh-huh.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and Africa was so early. I actually have only interviewed one or two guys that were in northern Africa. One of them was a P-51 pilot. And, yeah, I think a lot of people don’t realize what happened early on in the war. But Uncle Wayne would have come in. He was not in northern Africa, was he?
SPEAKER 11 :
No, no, he wasn’t. They were already pushed up into France a ways. From six frames, and they were already in.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 11 :
Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Yeah. So what was happening just during this time with you back in Kansas? You were working with the rationing board. You were writing letters. What else was happening with you and Irma back here in Kansas?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I… I worked with a rationing board over a year, and then my girlfriend, Anna Marie Endor, thought we weren’t doing enough. All our friends were in the cities building ships or airplanes or something, so we thought we weren’t doing enough, so we thought we’d better get on the ball. So we resigned from that job, and I shouldn’t have because it was a very good civil service job. and went home. But we had applied to St. Mary’s Hospital in Manhattan because they had a nurse cadet program that was run by the government, I think. Anyway, we applied there. And when we got the letters back, there was only one opening. And Anna Marie’s sister had just graduated from high school, so she took it. And then Dr. Morehouse had heard that I had applied for there. So he come out. We just lived a mile from downtown. And he come out and wanted to know if I’d come over to the hospital in Benkerman to work. That Bernice, his sister Bernice, It could give me a lot of training. And I went over there and worked. And I did receive a lot of training over there. We only had two registered nurses and we had a hospital. We had to have around the clock service and everything. And I learned a lot there.
SPEAKER 05 :
Now, were any soldiers coming back stateside or was this just people, you know, in the community that you were serving?
SPEAKER 11 :
It was a big one in Nebraska. It was just a community. The community.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, I find this fascinating. I didn’t know any of this about you, Aunt Irma, so I’m glad that I’m learning that. Let’s talk a bit about the other two uncles that actually served in World War II as well, and that was Uncle Wayne’s younger brother, Harold. So tell us what you remember about Harold and Aunt Jo, because I think people would be really interested in that.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, Arnold Harrell was a bombardier on, I can’t tell you the number of the airplane anymore, but he was the one that dropped the bombs. And I can’t remember how many missions he went on. He went on a lot. A lot of missions. We should probably talk to Johnny. He went on a lot of missions, and he had, oh, once the plane come in and it landed, okay. But I know… Of course, Wayne was in, Wayne could see where the, they had, did the bombing, and Wayne, his brother, he says, did you have to pow up the country so much? With those bombs? Yeah.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, and the- A lot of missions that he flew.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I can’t remember how many either, but it was a lot of missions. And those flights, I don’t know if a lot of people realized, initially on, a lot of those bombing raids did not have fighter air cover. Now, as we got further into the war, there were, but it was very dangerous. In fact, when I went to Normandy, one of the guys that we went with was in the Army Air Corps, And we lost 88,000 guys just from the Army Air Corps during World War II. I mean, that’s a staggering number to think about the sacrifice that was given there. Amazingly, Uncle Wayne, Uncle Harold, and Uncle Bob all came home safely, which that certainly was a blessing. Not all families were that lucky. And the other thing that I think I remember my father telling me is that Uncle Harold was back farming by the age of like 22 and 23, and I think that he had gone to a high rank. I want to say like lieutenant or something as well. Do you recall? Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes. After he graduated from Bombardier School, he was a first lieutenant, I think. Yes. Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
Now, was he dating Aunt Jo at that time when he went to war?
SPEAKER 11 :
No. It was a year or so after he came back that he dated Aunt Jo. In fact, we were surprised. He told us we were at a wedding in Hays at Carol and he comes down and he says, I’m engaged. And we had to ask, who to? Yeah, there was a lot of them. He was good luck, and there was a lot of gals after him. So then he told us Joanne. Of course, I remember Joanne because her mother ran the theater in Benkelman, and she always sold the popcorn. And so I knew who Joanne was, yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
So it surprised you when he came back and said that he was engaged. That is pretty funny. Yes, uh-huh. Yeah, right. Okay. So, Aunt Irma, we’re going to go to break. This is Kim Munson with America’s Veteran Stories. Be sure and check out our website. It is AmericasVeteranStories.com. I have the great honor of talking with my Aunt Irma. And, Aunt Irma, are we at a point where we can tell your age, or do you still like to keep that a secret? Oh, sure. Tell it.
SPEAKER 11 :
I’d love to.
SPEAKER 05 :
So what really made me think about this is my cousin said Aunt Irma was turning 96 here within the last couple of weeks. And like 96, that means that she has a World War II story. So that’s how we got this whole interview scheduled. So we’re going to go to break. This is Kim Munson. Stay tuned. On the line with me is one of my valued sponsors, and that is Loren Levy. He’s a mortgage specialist with Polygon Financial Group. He works with a number of different lenders, which is great for you, the client. And Loren Levy, welcome. Tell us, why are you a partner of America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson?
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, hey, Ken. Great to be back on with you. You know, when I had an opportunity to become a partner of yours on this project, I thought it was just a perfect fit. Anytime you can do things that try to help the people that have served our country, whether in action or not, you know, they have made sacrifices to help defend our country, and I just thought it was a great chance to try to give back a little bit and see if I couldn’t help those folks out.
SPEAKER 05 :
And there is great opportunity for veterans and military personnel right now in the mortgage arena. You and I were chatting before we did the call that there’s something very special, I think, for veterans.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, and the VA loan, which is available for all veterans or active duty folks, has always been a good program. And it’s always had good rates and allowed for no mortgage insurance for people that borrow or don’t have a big down payment. It also allows veterans to pay cash out of their home up to higher levels than regular loans. And on top of that, it’s always had great rates. You know, through the pandemic and just with some different specials and things, vendors have really low rates on these VA loans. We’re talking things in the lower two, two and a quarter, 2.375, where these veterans can really lower their payments and take advantage of these great rates.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, that’s something that would be a great idea. People can reach you, Lauren Levy, at 303-880-8881, 303-880-8881. You and I always say, when opportunity knocks at the door, you should open it. And this is a great opportunity for veterans right now, Lauren Levy.
SPEAKER 08 :
I agree 100%. If you have a rate anywhere over 2.875 or above, I think it’s a good time to be looking at doing even just a V8 streamline. They’re easy to do. They don’t take very long, and it can really save these veterans some important money right now.
SPEAKER 05 :
And again, call Lorne Levy at 303-880-8881. 303-880-8881. Lorne Levy, thank you so much for your partnership. Thank you, Kim.
SPEAKER 06 :
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SPEAKER 04 :
It’s time for more of America’s Veteran Stories with your host, Kim Munson.
SPEAKER 05 :
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SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you, Kim. We appreciate being on, and we are very proud to be a partner with everything you’ve got going on here.
SPEAKER 05 :
And one of the things, you have a wide array of knives at Castlegate Knife and Tool, but one of the things that you have is knives for military personnel. And I know that that tool, that is so critical for our military personnel to have something that they trust, that feels good in their hand, and you can help people out with that.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, the knives, we sell a whole variety of knives, from basic pocket knives to knives that are designed specifically as combat knives to take on deployment. We have a brand, for example, in the latter category called Spartan Blades, which is owned by two retired special forces companies. Green Berets out of North Carolina. We have another brand that’s run predominantly by retired Marines out of Arizona. So we’re very big on supporting the veteran community. Our business is veteran-owned. I was in the Army and for a brief time in the Air Force as well before I went into some intelligence activities. And our store general manager is a retired Marine, so we look very favorably on the community and the people who early on in their life, committed and sacrificed to their country. And we really look at that community as being our favorite community. We offer veterans a 10% discount on everything in the store, you know, every day of the year.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I really appreciate that. I appreciate your service. And Hal Van Herky, we are getting near the holidays. It’s hard to believe. And Castlegate Knife and Tool is a great place for people to do their holiday Christmas shopping.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, we find every year that people are excited when they find out we exist and if they want to come into the physical store located in Sedalia or reach out on our new website that we’re launching on the 18th and find out that knives are very good gifts every year. People love finding that extra little thing they can use as a stocking stuffer or find a knife for that hard knife. to a pleased person on your Christmas list or your father or somebody who says, oh, I don’t know what I want. Everybody likes knives. Everybody in the world owns a knife. It’s the one thing that unifies us all.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. More information, go to castlegate.com. That’s castlegate.com. Hal Van Herke, thank you so much. Thank you. Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out my website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. I’m thrilled and honored to have on the line with me my Aunt Irma. She just recently turned 96 years old. She was married to my father’s oldest brother. And my Uncle Wayne served in the European Theater in communications. And my friends, just think about this. This is not the kind of communications that we have now. They actually had to run the telephone wire many times while they were being shot at so that they could communicate the front lines back to the relay station, back to the generals, so that decisions could be made about the battles. And so a very important job there. And then we were just talking about my Uncle Harold, who was a bombardier in many, many missions over Germany. And many of the things that we needed to do, we were going after Hitler’s fuel depots, the rail depots, so that hopefully we could kind of starve them from energy on this big ship. Big machine, this big war machine that Hitler had built. And so, I mean, there were kids from all over the country, the small towns, the cities, that they went and they fought. And my friends, we stand on the shoulders of giants, on these men and women, the women back home that had… a lot of different sacrifices to support what was going on. So it’s just a real thrill to talk with my Aunt Irma. So Aunt Irma, there is a story. Well, let’s talk a little bit about Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob ended up marrying Uncle Wayne’s younger sister, Carol. So was Bob and Carol dating when Bob was deployed over to Europe?
SPEAKER 11 :
No, they weren’t. Of course, Wayne had a detachment of the five men, and they were allowed a Jeep so that he could get around. So Wayne took this. He had communication, so he got a hold of Bob, and they met on a weekend. Wayne went and got him in a Jeep, and they went to Paris. So they had quite a time in Paris, and I always tease about it, and Bob tells me nothing happened. So anyway, they had a weekend in Paris. But I have to tell you that when Wayne got home, and we were married within four or five days after he got home.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, my gosh.
SPEAKER 11 :
So we went to Denver to get her. Well, Wayne called. Wayne’s ship was loaded. He was supposed to go through the Panama Canal and over to the Pacific area to fight the Pacific War. And then the war was over, so they were already loaded. So he got to come back to the United States pretty fast. So he got back to New York, and he called me, and he called me at the hospital where I worked, and he said, we’re going to get married tonight. He says, I said, oh. And then within 10 days, he had to ride a bus from New York City clear home, so it took him four or five days to get home. And so then we… And then we picked him up. I think, I don’t remember. I can think. Whether we picked him up or Bird City, I don’t remember. But then we were married. We decided to go to Denver on a Sunday morning and took Bob, which is Wayne’s friend, and then Carol. I had run around with Carol, Wayne’s sister, quite a bit during the war. So we took them with us, and we got two cases in the rings, and I got a suit and everything. Then we come back to Goodland, and I was going to get married, and Of course, I mean, call my pastor at Bird City, Dick Meredith. Well, he was at a convention, so he couldn’t. So we went to the Methodist. Bob, thank God for Bob. He went to the Methodist church here and got it all arranged so that we could get married here in Goodland. But we just got to the city building right before it closed. So, yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
That was in, you said, what year was that, Ann Irma?
SPEAKER 11 :
1945. 1945. Right after bombs landed on Japan. The war was over.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, let’s talk a little bit about that, because I know that there were many soldiers that had finished the work in the European theater, and many of them were told that they were going to be going to the Pacific theater, and… And, you know, the battle for Japan, as they looked at it, that many, many, many lives would be lost. In fact, I’ve talked to Pacific War veterans that have said that if the atom bomb was not dropped, that thousands and thousands of both Americans and Japanese would have died. So tell me about that. You know the war is over. The VE Day is done in Europe. Right. But now the prospect of Wayne going to the Pacific. What went through your mind at that time, Annerman?
SPEAKER 11 :
I didn’t know it. Oh. I didn’t know that he was, I didn’t know that his ship was loaded or anything like that. That was all afterwards that that happened. But let’s see, what was I going to say? The war with the Pacific, yeah, it was. That would have been a long way around. Yes, it was. President Truman decided to drop the bomb, and it did. It shortened the war for sure.
SPEAKER 05 :
What went through your mind when you heard that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan, or was it just incomprehensible what had happened?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, you know, you didn’t know anything about it. The only place you knew about it is if you went to the picture show and they had the newsreel. We only got the Bird City Times. We didn’t have a newspaper. And occasionally we would get a hold of Life or Look magazine and we could look at it. Other than that, we had no idea what the bomb did. You know, in a way…
SPEAKER 05 :
I was just going to say, in a way, we are so inundated these days with all kinds of information. It’s almost like we can’t make sense of it. I kind of like the idea of a little simpler life, Ann Irma.
SPEAKER 11 :
I agree. I’ll agree. Too much information.
SPEAKER 05 :
Too much. That’s right. Too much information. So Uncle Bob, where was he deployed in the European theater?
SPEAKER 11 :
You know, I’m not sure. I know it’s in France, but I don’t know much about it.
SPEAKER 05 :
Was he on the front lines, or do you know?
SPEAKER 11 :
I don’t think so.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, okay. And then did the romance develop when Bob and Carol joined you in waiting to come up to Denver? Is that where they started to like each other?
SPEAKER 11 :
No, when they went with us to Denver, they weren’t dating. But a year later, a little over a year later, they were married. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Now, talk about when these guys all came back from the service. So, you know, so many guys had gone and served. They come back and get married and start families. Tell us a little bit more about that. It must have been great to have all these guys coming home.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes, it was great. Of course, we lived down on the creek place, so you know what that was like. It was like a big picnic ground with all those trees. And we got back shortly, and we had, on a Sunday, we had a big gathering. And with the vets, like Wayne, some from Wayne’s and Harold’s and everything. So we had a lot of people there. And I know that Dwayne Harris met his wife there down at our place. They got married later. We got together a lot after the war.
SPEAKER 05 :
I want to go back to something that you said at the beginning, and that was growing up, that you grew up during the Depression and the Dirty 30s. Tell our listeners what the Dirty 30s was like in western Kansas.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, we just lived a mile from town. We’d have dust storms, and the dust was so bad that you took a paintbrush and a dustpan and wiped it out of the windows and in front of the windows. That’s how bad the dirt blew in. And, of course, during that time, And we didn’t have a lot of moisture. It’s about like now. We didn’t have a lot of moisture. So my sister and brother and I heard cattle in the greater ditches so that the milk cows would have enough to eat. So we did that for several summers. That was our summer job was to herd the cattle. And it was. It was all right because we could herd the cattle a mile east and the neighbor’s kids heard them from the east down that far and we got to play with them. I had no regrets for the 30s because we just made the best of it. Everybody did. We didn’t know that we didn’t have a lot of stuff. We just accepted it. We know more about it now than we did then.
SPEAKER 05 :
Because you just lived it at that time, right?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, just lived it. Uh-huh. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. That’s right. Okay. Aunt Irma, what are some of the things that you would like to make sure that our listeners know about World War II, the service that my uncles gave during that time? What would be the message that you would give to our listeners?
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh… It was something that just happened. Everybody got in and worked. I went to the factory, made airplanes, made ships. Everybody, and we had victory gardens. My goodness, everybody had a big garden. And we just all pitched in and got through it. Yeah, we didn’t think, to tell the truth, we didn’t think much of it. We just went in it and did the best we could. Yes, that’s like I thought. I just thought I wasn’t doing enough, but… I would quit one job, and then I’d be offered another one. So I guess I was supposed to stay in northwest Kansas, and I did.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, yeah, I think it was a good place to stay. And, yeah, Victory Gardens. Tell our listeners who are probably younger, what was a Victory Garden?
SPEAKER 11 :
It’s a garden. We just called it Victor Garden. We put everything in it. Of course, that wasn’t a lot of new stuff because everybody just about had gardens anyway. It was the city folks that put in gardens so that they could have fresh vegetables and everything. Other than that, we always had a garden at home. Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
And then what about the Korean War, which was a little bit later? What can you tell us about that as that began?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, you know, I don’t remember much about the Korean War. Because by that time, we had, I don’t know how many children we had, three or four. We didn’t have electricity when we were first married. We went four years without electricity, without a refrigerator, and electricity, water, indoor bathroom, all of that. And that happened about that time, and we had a family, and we Didn’t pay much attention to it.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, you were just a little busy just kind of taking care of the regular things in life, right?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes, and that’s what someone asked me, what I thought about what to do with the atomic bomb after we were finished with it. That’s what I thought. I didn’t think anything. I didn’t have time. Right. I thought, just let them… I can think back now. Let them take care of it. I… I had work cut out for me.
SPEAKER 05 :
Most definitely. Well, Aunt Irma, it’s an amazing generation. And as I mentioned to my cousin Jeannie that we would get together in the park. I remember it as a kid. And the aunts and uncles would sit around and talk, and we would play. And I had no idea. what Uncle Wayne and Uncle Bob and Uncle Harold had gone through. And I really wish that I would have sat down and really had a conversation with each of them. But my gosh, it has just been a great honor to get to talk with you about your experiences through the war, through the Depression, through the Dirty 30s. I really appreciate it. So thank you so much, Ann Arman.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes, yes, and what I wish I would have talked to Harold more. But, you know, people like that, lots of times they wouldn’t talk about it.
SPEAKER 05 :
I know. Black heroes. I know. They wouldn’t talk about it. I know. In fact, one of the World War II veterans that I talked to, it was not until 1977 that his kids even knew that he had been at D-Day. So, yeah, a lot of them didn’t talk about that either. So, Aunt Irma, I so appreciate this interview today and just thank you so much.
SPEAKER 11 :
I enjoyed it. Someone asked me if I was nervous. I said, no, because I lived it. Why did I have to be nervous about it? It’s been a pleasure.
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s been a pleasure for sure. So this is Kim Munson with America’s Veterans Stories signing off. God bless you and God bless America.
SPEAKER 04 :
Join us next time for America’s Veterans Stories with your host, Kim Munson. Until then, keep saluting our vets.
SPEAKER 01 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
