Buddy's War # 21 - The New Family

  •    May 10, 1944

A letter from Buddy and one from Dora and she sent me some pictures of Buddy. Wrote to Buddy and sent him a nice wedding present.

    •    May 13, 1944 [Day before Mother's Day]

Got a lovely pocketbook from Buddy and Dora.

    •    May 26, 1944

Letter from Dora w/picture of her and Buddy
— Diary Entries, Beula Keller Lehman

Separate letters from each of them and an obvious Mother’s Day gift from both. Over the two years he has been gone from home,Buddy appears to have been conscious of his mother and was a dutiful son with regular letters. Of course in those days it was a very common form of communication. Beula was writing letters to either Harold or Ruth at least three times per week. It cost money to make phone calls. A letter was 3 cents! (In 2019 money that is still only 43 cents! In spite of what we hear from time to time about the cost of letters, etc. They were- and remain- a very economical way to connect. ) It would appear that this has just become even more necessary than in the past. He would have been aware, I am sure, that his family is now in a state of shock over what has happened. Dora would have been just as aware from her side. Perhaps she understood the implications better than he did. Being aware of possible issues, she is no doubt trying to be a good daughter-in-law.

Beula seems to be accepting it- at least on the pages of her diary- and is  grateful. The two women will be facing some difficult separation ahead. Perhaps it was a good thing to make sure they were on good speaking terms. It is a new family for both of them.

Buddy's War #19 - Performing a Miracle

Before we get to the next months and the 10th being sent overseas, it is good to take a quick review of the US Army before the war began and the miracle performed in a short period. To say the strength of the US military was low would be an understatement. Politics, including isolationism, had to some extent tied the hands of President Roosevelt. Many hoped that the other European nations would take care of Hitler and Mussolini without US intervention. Roosevelt and others managed to finagle different ways of building readiness for what they felt was inevitable. It may only be through the lens of history that we can see that FDR and Churchill were correct and that Hitler’s advances were certainly one of the greatest threats to world peace and democracy that had ever been seen. It was a tightrope that they walked with finesse.

Even with that, however, in the months after Pearl Harbor, the United States was in the war but without a large and broad-based military. It was only the pre-Pearl Harbor draft which gave the foundation for what would become a huge fighting force. New armies and divisions were being created as long-range plans were developed and implemented in Washington for a war across both oceans and very far from home.



The 10th Armored Division was officially activated on July 15, 1942, at Fort Benning, Georgia. My dad’s 80th Armored Medical Battalion was an organic unit the 10th Armored- where the 10th went, the 80th went. When the 10th was created the new commander, Major General Paul Newgarden held a competition to give the unit a nickname. They took the name “The Tiger Division”. For the next year, Lester Nichols, author of the 10th Armored’s history, Impact, writes that the

training was especially rugged. There was the Tiger Camp with its night problems, forced marches, endurance tests, 'dry runs' and firing problems.

10th Armored Division, December 1942-  Fort Benning, Georgia

A division is somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 soldiers. Fort Benning and the many training camps like it, became small cities providing more than just training. They also sought to provide entertainment, activities, sports, and more than enough “fun and games” to keep the troops occupied when they weren’t too tired from the training that Tiger Camp provided.

In late June 1943, the Division packed up and left Fort Benning for what has become known as the Tennessee Maneuvers. These maneuvers were at the heart and soul of turning the American Army into a world-class fighting force.

The Tennessee Maneuver Area was a training area in Middle Tennessee  selected because the terrain resembled France, Belgium and Germany. In June 1941, Major General George S. Patton conducted maneuvers with the 2nd Armored Division in the Manchester, Tennessee vicinity, where he soundly defeated the opposing forces, using large-scale armored fighting. These maneuvers led to the creation of the Tennessee Maneuver Area.

In June 1942, Governor Prentice Cooper, announced that nine counties would be used as a maneuver area by the Second Army, and was eventually expanded to twenty-one counties by the time of closure in 1944. Cumberland University, in Lebanon, Tennessee was the location of the Headquarters for the Army Ground Forces field problems, commonly known as the Tennessee Maneuvers. (Nashville was the principal trailhead.)

Between 1942 and 1944, in seven large scale training exercises, more than 850,000 soldiers were trained in the Tennessee Maneuver Area.

The 10 Armored was there with the 101st Airborne Division, the 80th Infantry Division and the 83rd Infantry Division through June, July, and August 1943. (--Link)

Between the wars, German officer Erwin Rommel, as a young military attache, had visited Nashville and Middle Tennessee to study and follow the cavalry campaigns of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest to help him develop a pattern for the use of tank units as cavalry. This is part of what led General Patton to choose the area for his training in 1941.

Over the hills and valleys of twenty-one counties “Blue” and “Red” armies engaged in weekly strategic “problems,” with troops moved in and out according to a calendar of “phases” that lasted about four weeks apiece. In the military’s scenario Nashville was Cherbourg, without the bombing.

Maneuvers paused at noon on Thursday or Friday, when a light plane would fly over the mock battle lines, sounding a siren. Then thousands of soldiers would seek recreation in Nashville and the county seat towns. Facilities were limited, despite the best efforts of the U.S.O. and the American Red Cross; movie theaters and cafes were packed; drug store soda fountains were forced to shut down twice a day for cleanup. Each army PX was strained to the limit. Churches opened their doors and set up lounges; schools opened their gyms for weekend dances. The Grand Ole Opry had never drawn such crowds than during these months when Middle Tennessee hosted the army’s preparations for the eventual invasion of Normandy in 1944. (--Link)

According to Nichols the maneuvers themselves were


the scene of combat with chiggers, choking dust, sleepless nights, sore backs and aching feet. As always, the ‘enemy’ was constantly pursued. The battle umpires, too, were on hand to declare tank, track and truck ‘knocked out’ by a hidden ‘enemy’ anti-tank crew. (Impact!)

Other personal reports from other units indicated that the maneuvers were tough and often see as the toughest thing they ever did in the Army. Bob Wells who trained with the 100th Division through Tennessee Maneuvers wrote

In Tennessee we were as ‘in the field’ as we could be. When we slept it was in our pup tents, but each week for, as I remember, six weeks, we had problems Monday through Thursday. It was cold and wet, and I for one learned a lot about keeping myself together with no roof or facilities. (--Link)

Wells then records a poem written by and for the 35th Division vets. It begins:

The Tennessee Maneuvers
The devil was given permission one day,
to select a good place for the soldiers to play.
He looked around for a month or more wanting a place that would make them sore.

And, at last was delighted a country view
where the black walnut and the hickory grew, and vowed that Tennessee could not be beat
as a place for maneuvers in rain, snow, and sleet.

He scattered the rocks so the men could not sleep
and brought weather so cold it froze the sheep.
He then sent some rain, the bed rolls to soak
and a few cards and dice, so the men could stay broke.

And the final stanza

Now we’re on the last problem we’ve all done our part,
and at the end of this week the furloughs will start.
Then the men will go home with tall tales to tell
of the things that they did through this six weeks of hell.
— 35th Divisionaire. March 2008 Association Newsletter

The first week of September 1943 the 10th left Tennessee and settled at its new home, Camp Gordon near Augusta, Georgia. Here they would continue to train, grow and develop into a highly effective unit for the battles that lay ahead. Tiger Camp and lots of training continued.

By mid-May 1944, 75 years ago, training and planning were coming to an end. The war was waiting, and it appears as if they were ready. The US Military was working miracles and more were to come.

Buddy's War # 18- What a Shock

    •   May 4, 1944

Buddy called at 9:45 from Georgia saying he was married on Wednesday [the previous day, May 3.] Well the shock was awful

- Diary entry, Beula Keller Lehman

It may be that the shock is simply that he married someone other than the one he had been dating for years. It may have sunk in that the “friend” grandma mentions speaking to in a phone call from Georgia 13 days earlier is now Mrs. Harold Lehman.

Here we meet Dora Moldawsky. Her parents, Sam and Anna, came to the United States from Eastern Europe, most likely the Ukraine. It was the early 1900s, probably around 1904 before the Soviet Union, but not before the pogroms. That is no doubt why they made the trip to the United States. How they entered is a piece of the myth. In those mists of childhood overhearing, I remember something about them posing as brother and sister, even though already married.  All genealogical research points to them already being married when they got here. It makes an interesting story. Legal, illegal, or semi-legal immigrants, they came through the golden door of Ellis Island in New York Harbor next to the uplifted lamp of the Statue of Liberty.

Sam and Anna had three children. Dora, the youngest, was born in 1913. I have some pictures of Sam from the 1940s- a tall, handsome man, tanned and well dressed. Anna was the typical Jewish, eastern European Bubbe, grandmother. Sometime in the late 40s or early 50s, Sam had a leg amputated. Family lore had it due to diabetes, but a cousin later discovered other possible causes.

They were observant, Orthodox Jews. They kept Kosher and Sabbath. When we visited, the strict separation of meat and milk, for example, was hard for my brother and me to understand. Mom was not observant back in the Gentile wilds of Pennsylvania, Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform. When we were in Brooklyn I don’t remember any time when anyone went to services on Friday evening or Saturday morning. It is quite likely that at least the men went, but, since Sam died when I was nine or ten, it wouldn’t have been unusual for us not to even notice what was happening.

Sometime in her late 20s, Dora did her version of running away from home. In 1940 according to that year’s census records, she was still in Brooklyn, working as a bookkeeper at a wholesale dress house. In some magical and mysterious unknown way by 1943 at age 30 she ended up in Augusta, Georgia. Different versions of the story claim she was working as a secretary or did accounting or was a club singer in Augusta. Maybe all three. What is clear is that while there she met a GI from Pennsylvania who was eight years older than she was. That adds a certain amount of rebelliousness to her character. It would take a great deal of what her family would call chutzpah for her to be on her own, in 1944, and then get married to a gentile! This was as “mixed” a marriage as any other in 1944.

Sam and Anna must have loved her, though, they did not disown her. Beula’s diaries mention Harold and Dora both going to New York to visit and then, after Buddy was deployed, Dora coming to spend time with his family in Pennsylvania. Later pictures show Sam and Anna visiting in Pennsylvania with my brother and me, their two youngest grandchildren.

What we have here is a story with a glimpse into a far-different time. We have Harold Lehman, a run-away gentile from Pennsylvania standing at the Jewish USO of Camp Gordon, Georgia, marrying Dora Moldawsky, a run-away from her Brooklyn family.

People have asked me what it was like to grow up Jewish in Gentile, Bible-belt, Pennsylvania. My immediate answer often was, “I have no idea.” My brother and I grew up culturally Gentiles. I was living in the midst of my family’s home area. As I have mentioned before we were the 7th or 8th generation from my family tree in the West Branch/Pine Creek Valley. And they were all culturally, if not actively practicing Christians. Christmas was a big holiday in our family with a tree and a midnight Christmas Eve/Day party where my brother and I were awakened. We went out to open our presents, delivered by Santa Claus, with family and Dad’s workers there.

I know there was an awareness in the community that our mother was Jewish and that therefore I was, in some way or another, Jewish. Before 1964 each school day started with a reading from the Bible, the Lord’s Prayer,* and the Pledge of Allegiance. When I became aware of such things, I noted that I was always given a passage from the Old Testament. Socially, and practically, though, I was far more Gentile than Jewish. That does not mean I wasn’t aware of “Jewishness.” It was just far more prevalent and obvious to me that I was part of a Pennsylvania native family. I have no idea how others in town felt.

Seventy-five years ago today none of this was on the table, at least in any way I can see. Knowing my family, I am sure there was a great deal of uncertainty, fear, perhaps even anger, at what Buddy had just done. I would guess they had some of the same stereotypes and prejudices, especially about New York City Jews, as were common in the day. Beula never mentioned in her diary that Buddy’s wife was Jewish. I have a hunch that, like many a mixed marriage today, the tension would have been incredible. It is May 1944 and he is only a few months away from shipping out to Europe. As if that wasn’t enough stress, they would have to get used to a new and very unfamiliar family member.

*Footnote: Many years later, living in the Midwest, I learned that in a number of places in the United States this daily Bible reading and reciting the Lord's Prayer was NOT the practice. I had a roomful of church members look at me like I was crazy and dreaming when I said that we did that each morning. The reason was simple- there were Christian groups in the community that were not allowed to pray with others, Christians or not.

Buddy's War # 17- A Hint of Something to Come

    •    April 21, 1944

At 6.45 in the evening Buddy called from Augusta and his friend was there and I talked to her.
- Diary entry, Beula Keller Lehman

This is the first mention in the diaries of Buddy’s friend. Did Beula know that she was more than just a “friend” and was she using the euphemism to ignore the implications? Dad was 38 years old, never married. His brother Carl, 42, the eldest, was to be married by the end of June to his very long-time girlfriend.  His sister Ruth, 40, the middle child, had been married about 10 years. Dad had a history of a long time girlfriend that I have mentioned in other posts, whose tires he reportedly slashed when angry.

For all practical purposes Buddy was a small-town boy He spent most of his life in his hometown along the banks of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River and the nearby Pine Creek in North Central Pennsylvania.

The West Branch rambles through the Allegheny Plateau, before heading east at Lock Haven. Forty or so miles later it breaks south at Muncy leaving the valley. It will join the North Branch a few miles further and form the main river to the Chesapeake Bay. The east flowing section is in a wide, fertile valley, the transition between the Appalachian Ridge and Valley Province (- Link) to the south and the Allegheny Plateau (- Link) to the north. For those 40 miles Bald Eagle Mountain (- Link) bounds the river and the valley. Powerful, tall and green, the mountain is the edge of the world from either direction.

Then there is Pine Creek (- Link). Don’t let its name fool you. One historian commented that it deserves the name river rather than creek. It can be a powerhouse of liquid- or a rock strewn stream. It runs eighty miles from its start beyond Ansonia. It flows through the Allegheny Plateau heading south having carved what is known as The Gorge or the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. It flows into the Susquehanna a few miles from my hometown, near the site where an ancient Elm stood for centuries until felled by Dutch Elm disease. Under that elm, the Tiadaghton Elm, on July 4, 1776, a group of illegal settlers known as the Fair Play Men signed a declaration of independence from England as the same thing was happening in Philadelphia. (- Link)

Pine Creek is the Tiadaghton- its native name. We were always told it was the largest creek in the world; the major tributary of the West Branch of the Susquehanna. Pine Creek is the wild place, the wilderness on which one’s life foundation can be built, a wilderness at the bottom of a majestic pine bounded gorge. Get your feet wet in Pine Creek, the saying went, and you will always return.

Both Dad’s parents grew up in the same area on neighboring homesteads. The town, and the whole valley from Williamsport to Lock Haven as well as up Pine Creek was filled with all kinds of distant- and not too distant relatives. Everyone knew everyone.  Nevertheless, as I said in post #2, I have little concrete information about his childhood and young adult years.

As a small-town boy, he did become familiar with the city when he went to pharmacy school in Philadelphia. But his feet had been in Pine Creek. After his graduation in 1928 he returned home to the West Branch Valley and lived with his parents in the house where he had spent much of his youth, worked at a local pharmacy that he and his father eventually purchased.

I am sure that it would not have been too much to assume that Dad was going to marry someone local.

All of this was now several years past when Beula got to talk to Buddy’s “friend” 75 years ago. When and how he met this friend is lost in family history. From information in Beula’s diary it appears that Dad was renting from a family in Augusta, about 9 miles from Camp Gordon and probably working in a hospital at least part time. Sixteen years later the family would stop in Augusta on a return trip from Florida and visit with a family who we were told was where Mom was living at the time. I can only guess that it may have been the same place. Who knows? Sometimes facts are not possible to discover.

What Beula and Bill or any of his siblings knew is pure, uneducated conjecture. Now, 75 years later we know where it was about to go.

Meanwhile,

◆ April 1944
◆ 75 Years Ago

    ◦    Adolf Eichmann and the Nazis offered the Hungarian rescue worker Joel Brand the "Blood for Goods" deal, proposing that one million Jews be allowed to leave Hungary for any Allied-occupied country except Palestine, in exchange for goods obtained outside of Hungary. The deal would never be made because the Allies believed it to be a trick and the British press slammed it as blackmail,
    ◦    A two-day meeting between Hitler and Benito Mussolini was held near Salzburg, and
    ◦    "It's Love-Love-Love" by Guy Lombardo and His Orchestra topped the Billboard singles charts.

Happy Anniversary # 47

We start another year!



We're the best partners this world's ever seen,
Together as close as can be.
Sometimes it's hard to find time in between,
To tell you what you are to me.

You are the rose of my heart,
You are the love of my life.
A flower not fading nor falling apart,
If you're tired, rest your head on my arm.
Rose of my heart.

When sorrow holds you in her arms of clay,
It's rain drops that fall from your eyes.
Your smile's like the sun come to earth for a day,
You brighten my blackest of skies.

You are the rose of my heart,
You are the love of my life.
A flower not fading nor falling apart,
If you're cold, let my love make you warm.
Rose of my heart.

So hard times or easy times, what do I care,
There's nothing I'd change if I could.
The tears and the laughter are things that we share,
Your hand in mine makes all times good.

You are the rose of my heart,
You are the love of my life.
A flower not fading nor falling apart,
You're my harbor in life's restless storm.Rose of my heart.

Rose of my heart.

Buddy's War # 16- Medical Training

◆ April 1944
◆ 75 Years Ago
Less than two months before the planned Allied invasion of France, American and British warplanes soften German defenses on the Normandy coast. (WW II timeline)

    Things will soon get far more hectic, surprising, and involved for my dad and his family. At this point 75 years ago it was all still in limbo. Through mid-April the only mention of Buddy this month in my grandmother’s diary was that she either received a letter from him or sent him one or a “box,” most likely of food. During this break in the action I have been researching the how and what of training for medics. I have found a number of helpful manuals and reports on the Internet. One is The Instructors’ Guide for Medical Department Mobilization, September 1942 and the other is part of the series on World War II history, this volume from 1974 on the Army Medical Department Medical Training in World War II. They give a clear picture of what the US Army Medical Department faced in the early years and how they developed the world class medical units that were indispensable. First, some background from the pre-war years as reported in the history.

    Training facilities of the U.S. Army Medical Department in 1939 reflected adaptation to peacetime medical requirements. From a World War I peak of over 340,000, the Medical Department’s strength had been reduced to a little over 11,500 officers and enlisted men by June 1939. … The five Medical Department field units that existed were either understrength or skeleton organizations; trained enlisted cadre could not have been provided in case of mobilization.

    Had the Medical Department been confronted with mobilization in the summer of 1939, the problems of creating a functioning organization capable of providing both routine health care and field medical support might have proved insurmountable. [Emphasis added.] The 2-year period that intervened provided an opportunity to adjust the program for the crisis that lay ahead. (Medical Training)

    Training that already existed was expanded slightly starting in 1939 after the start of the war in Europe when Germany’s invaded Poland. A report about the later development of replacement training centers on the website of the WW II US Medical Research Center clearly states the purpose:

The ultimate purpose of all Military Training is the assurance of Victory in war! An Army must be trained to do its job in the most effective manner if it is to reach victory with the least possible losses to the country. … Attached medical personnel and Medical Department units must be prepared to support the offensive spirit and actions of the Armed Forces. … Units must be trained to function effectively in any type of military operation. The well-trained medical unit will increase the offensive spirit by assuring combat personnel of adequate medical service at all times.

Medical personnel were therefore trained to be aggressive, resolute, and thoroughly capable…While the basis of initial training was the individual, the ultimate requirement was teamwork, from the smallest unit to the largest. (— Link)

    In order for that to happen, there was a basic program for medical personnel training. It appears that after the draft was begun in late 1940, the training looked something like this:

[E]nlisted men were to receive 13 weeks of basic training. [It] was divided into two phases: The first, a period of basic military training; and the second, a period of basic technical and tactical training. After 2 weeks of basic military training at the beginning of the cycle, the trainee was expected to be able to display and care for his uniform and equipment, to understand military courtesy, and to have acquired a fundamental knowledge of such basic military subjects as individual defense and march discipline.

The third to 13th weeks of the program were devoted to basic technical and tactical training. Training in basic military subjects continued, but after the second week of the cycle, the program stressed basic technical subjects that would prepare men either for specific duties or for further training at a medical unit or installation. During this period, men were also trained to march and execute tactical movements, to establish and operate battalion or regimental dispensaries, and to maneuver with the combat arms in the field….

Individuals qualified to be trained as technicians were selected at the end of the fourth, eighth, and 12th week of the cycle and sent to Medical Department special service schools or to enlisted technician schools for 8 to 12 weeks of technical training. (Quora)

    From other sources I have found that the Army earmarked medic candidates from the very first day they joined the Army. Sounds simple enough, but the truth of the matter is that in that time referred to as the period  of “Limited National Emergency”

Although there was extensive study and planning for the expansion of the Army Medical Department [during that period], little was actually done. …  The Army Medical Department was also handicapped by lack of funds to construct troop housing and classrooms at the training centers and to expand facilities at the technical and advanced technical training schools. The shortage of instructors at the training centers and technical schools was a chronic problem. Training equipment had to be improvised or simulated. Irregular arrivals and unscheduled transfers of trainees resulted in vast fluctuations in enrollments. (— Link)

    Looking at the 1942 Instructors’ Guide gives a decent outline of what the training was supposed to look like.

1) Basic Training- weeks one and two
The preliminary training of the individual enlisted man will be stressed. At the end of this period he should be able to wear properly, display, and care for his uniform and equipment; understand and correctly practice indoor and outdoor military courtesy; and have an applicatory knowledge of the essentials of all basic subjects prescribed in this program.

2) Technical Training- weeks 3-10
Emphasis is placed upon fundamental technical subjects which will fit him for actual practice or further training in a medical unit or installation. In addition to the technical subjects, specialist training, tactical and logistical training is begun. Fundamental technical subjects were covered such as establishment and operation of stations, collection and treatment of casualties in the field, the operation of regimental and battalion dispensaries; and the preparation for participation with the associated arms in field exercises and under combat conditions. 

3) Tactical Training- weeks 11-13
This period should be devoted largely to field and applicatory exercises. At the end of this period personnel intended for tactical medical units should be able to march and execute tactical movements with facility, establish and operate stations, collect and treat casualties in the field during day or night, operate battalion or regimental aid stations, and participate with the associated arms both in field exercises and under combat conditions.

4) Specialist Training- weeks 14-26
For a surgical technician this would include everything from nutrition and hygiene to ward management and air raid procedures. (Instructors' Manual)

    It appears that in the last quarter of 1941 the basic training portion was shortened to 11 weeks. But by then my dad would have already completed both basic and specialist training as outlined in the Manual.

    My Dad was part of the initial mobilization in the two years of 1939-1941. As I talked about in an earlier post, he registered for the draft as required on the first day in October 1940. His enlistment date was January 13, 1941. I assume that because of his own civilian training as a pharmacist he went though both basic training and medical orientation as listed above. The one thing that supports that assumption is a picture I have of medics from the hospital at Camp Blanding, Florida in late August 1941, over seven months into his year.

Buddy in upper right corner (cropped)

As I have said elsewhere, I have no diary from my grandmother to confirm any information. So far I have hit dead ends on following him in that first period of service. If, as I assume, he was trained in his eventual specialty- surgical technician- this all would have taken him until mid-July 1941. Did he stay for further training or to develop skills? Camp Blanding is not listed as a medical training facility in anything I have found. Was he sent home early since the space was needed for increased training when the draft was extended in 1941?

    All I know for sure are the dates above, the picture from Camp Blanding, and that by January 1942 (perhaps earlier) he was home and remained at home until activated in August ’42 into the 80th Armored Medical Battalion. Now, in April 1944, he was a medic with the 10 Armored Division’s medical battalion, no doubt “enjoying” these last months before going overseas. D-Day was less than six weeks away and then everything would change.

Buddy's War: #7- A Year of Coming and Going

This is part of a series that over two years will follow the story of my father in World War II 75 years ago. I did this five years ago in the series Following the 10th Armored, but I have been doing more research and expanding the ideas. The beginning posts will set the stage for the events of 1944 and 1945 when he was in Europe as part of the 10th Armored Division's 80th Armored Medical Battalion.

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• January 1, 1943

Well, we start a new year and I hope we all have good luck and good health. Father and I are all alone and it is a dark and dreary day.
— Diary entry, Beula Keller Lehman

As the new year begins Beula and Bill are home alone. Buddy has been in Georgia at Fort Benning since August. There, the newly formed and activated 10th Armored Division and its many battalions and companies are beginning the arduous task of building a world-class army after years of minimal development. I am going to post more about that task in some future posts. At this point I will focus more on this last full year of “peace” for the home front in Jersey Shore, PA. Over this and the next few posts, by the way, I am going to catch the dates of posts and the story up to the calendar. While there will be side stories, background, and updates, by next week we will be in the 75th Anniversary mode of these events that shattered an old world and defined the new one for three-quarters of a century.

For many, and Buddy was no exception, 1943 was a year of coming and going. In general life was still moving in a relatively normal fashion back home. Beula would regularly note in her diary about Carl or Ruth and their travels in and out of town. She continued her visits to the “club”, which is never named, the weather, her trips to the store, or just visiting with friends. She noted one day that she had to go to the “schoolhouse” to get her ration book and in another that her brother Henry brought a can of lard. There were the three to four times each week when letters were written, sent, or received.

In January, she noted on the 14th that it was “10 weeks ago today since father broke his arm” in the accident at work and, on the same day a letter from Harold that he might be home soon. He had been away since August 6. Two weeks later he called from Atlanta that he was traveling and her response was, “Gee, I am nervous." Perhaps there were still memories and concerns from the months prior to his being called back up when one thing after another kept happening. It would not be a surprise if she was wondering what this visit would bring. Had he changed? Would he go back to his reckless ways?”

He was delayed in Washington but made it home on January 30. In his two weeks at home there is little mention of him except for one entry halfway through when he went “out and did not come home.” He returned to Georgia the middle of February and called about six weeks later. “Gee, I was glad to hear from him and to hear everything was O.K.”

A second furlough happened in May. Dad arrived home on May 18 for a ten-day stay. Again, in the middle of the leave, one incident- “Harold went away. I don't know where he went. Gee it is lonesome.” On May 27 he left to return to Georgia. “I did not go to the station with him.Gee I miss him.” Then a few days later, she "wrote to Buddy. It is awful lonesome.”

On his return to Georgia the 10th Armored and his 80th Medical Battalion packed up and went to maneuvers in Tennessee. From June 21 to September 3, just shy of three months, they participated in a major training event. It was still a year away from their overseas deployment but it was a significant training which I have found mentioned in other sources from other Divisions. This was part of the intense development of a world-class military that would be heading overseas into war. I will talk more about this growth and development in a later post.

During the maneuvers there were still the letters. Mail was able to find them, as was promised in the newspaper, The Tiger's Tale, that the 10th Armored produced in Georgia. Beula, conscious of dates, noted in her diary on August 6 that is was “one year since Buddy left.” Then with maneuvers over the 10th moved to a new home near Augusta, Georgia, at Camp Gordon, where they would be for the next year. With the move complete Dad had another two-week leave in September and then again in November when he was home for fifteen days.

With that year we catch up to the calendar. He arrived home on November 16, 1943 for that 4th leave  of the year, seventy-five years ago this week.

Through all of this I continue to wonder what was going on in both their lives. Beula was, at this point, an obviously lonesome person. What the causes were, was it medically related, was it her age and medical history catching up to her, was it the tension Harold had brought into her life? We will never know. In any case, from this point on, in a clear and obvious change of language, Harold becomes, more often than not, “Buddy.” It was a more endearing, even intimate reference.

Buddy was Beula’s baby, her youngest child.
He is getting ready for war.

Buddy's War: #6- Turning Points

This is part of a series that over two years will follow the story of my father in World War II 75 years ago. I did this five years ago in the series Following the 10th Armored, but I have been doing more research and expanding the ideas. The beginning posts will set the stage for the events of 1944 and 1945 when he was in Europe as part of the 10th Armored Division's 80th Armored Medical Battalion.

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• January 1, 1942
Well, this is new year’s and it is a stormy day. It snowed and then it rained. Harold did not come home for lunch, so it has been a long day. Harold did not come home all night and I am just sick he is starting the new year in a bad way.
- Diary entry, Beula Keller Lehman

At one point in my planning for this series I thought about calling it “Buddy’s Wars”, “wars” being plural. I have a hunch that there was far more going on behind the scenes of my dad’s life than any of us will ever know. In earlier posts I have given some of the clues, slight though they be. They include his “running away from home” at age 35; his seeming intent on joining the Army and lying about his age so it would happen; the family memory of something to do with a German flag; the unusual mentions of the person I knew to be a one-time girlfriend. Sure I may be reading into all this from my own background in mental health and psychology, but the signs are there.

Dad, of course, wouldn’t have been the first to join the Army as a way of either escape or growing up. But he wasn’t a kid. He was an adult with a profession and a business. We will never know what it was that finally broke in 1940 when he lied about his age and registered for the draft. I kept the word war in the title as singular since it is all parts of his greater war. World War II may have finally given him something that he had been looking for.

I hope so, though he never talked about it with me.

As I said in the previous post, my dad was drafted and reported for duty in January of 1941. Where he went other than Camp Blanding in August. He was obviously then sent on some type of extended leave and by January 1942 was back home in northern Pennsylvania. As grandma’s diary entry says above, it was not a comfortable time for him. “I am sick he is starting the new year in a bad way” would indicate that Beula was worried, again, about her youngest child. It didn’t end with that. Over the next three months there were a number of posts about Harold, more than in any previous diary.


• 1-Feb - Harold did not come home
• 2-Feb - Harold did not come home last night nor for lunch today
• 3-Feb - Harold did not come home last night. Today at 1.15.
• 22-Mar - Harold did not get up. He did not get come home until 6.30 this morning. And I am just sick.
• 23- 27 Mar - [He came home late 6 more days in a row.]

Another memory surfaces; another of the myths of my father. At one point I was told that he got angry with his girlfriend and slashed her tires. In mid-January Beula had noted that dad was together with that girlfriend. That was the first such entry where they were together. Then this shows up in the diary a month after those six nights.

• 13-Apr - Harold did not come home until 2.30 and he did not come home for lunch. So I am not doing a darn thing. He was out last night cutting tires.

It was said so matter-of-factly, but with more than a little anger. “I am fed up,” Beula seems to be saying. “I am done trying to get anywhere with this son of mine.” I wonder how she knew what he was up to? I know that the girlfriend’s mother, as well as the girlfriend herself were friends of hers. It wouldn’t be unheard of in a small community like Jersey Shore for half the town to know by nightfall the next day. Twenty-some years later it would be just as difficult for either my brother or myself to get away with anything without being found out.

Then there was one more entry about this…

• 14-April - Harold did not come home last night. Came in at 1 went to bed. He is working tonite. But gee I am sick. I don't see how I can stand it any longer

….and then silence about any problems. Things began to look up. No problems are mentioned after that. In the few times he is mentioned, dad shows up as doing things around the house, being home, being a dutiful son. I will continue to do digging into newspapers of the time to see if there was anything ever reported on this, but I doubt it. Something, however, made him change. I doubt it was the anger or fears of his mother. Perhaps it was a run-in with the police about it. Perhaps it was his own fear of what he had done.

Then it was time to go.

On July 15, 1942 the 10th Armored Division was activated at Fort Benning, Georgia. Ten days later Harold got the notice that he was to return to service twelve days later. The progress of my dad back to the Army and into World War II shows up ever so clearly in Beula’s diary beginning just eight months after Pearl Harbor.

• 6-Aug - Took Harold to the station. Left for New Cumberland. Gee I do miss him.
• 14-Aug - Harold called at 7 saying he was leaving New Cumberland tomorrow.
• 15-Aug - Harold called from Washington- he is leaving for Georgia. 28 of them going.
• 20-Aug - Got a letter from Harold. He is at Ft. Benning, Georgia.
• 29-Aug - Gee but I am lonesome. I miss Buddy.

• 1-Sep - O gee I am so homesick. Wish I could talk to Buddy.

This is the first time she consistently refers to Harold as “Buddy.” It was an almost unused nickname up to this point. Here and there she referred to him that way, but most of the time it is by name. She mentions him as Buddy only two more times in September and then as Harold for the rest of the year. He will become Buddy almost entirely from then on. Through the end of the year, and the war itself, there will be many references to letters, cards, and boxes going back and forth. I wish I had even a few of those letters. But they are long gone until postcards at the end of the war.


Buddy’s war has taken on a new direction. He is in Georgia with the 10th Armored Division as part of its organic medical battalion, the 80th. For the next thirty-seven months World War II will transform him into the man I knew. His parents, Beula and Bill, and his siblings Carl and Ruth will be at home.

In November grandpa fell off a box car onto a flat car at work and hurt his wrist. (He is 66-years old.) A couple weeks later she writes:

• November 26, 1942 (Thanksgiving Day)
It is a lovely day and we are alone. But we are thankful we are well. Having a roast chicken.
- Diary entry, Beula Keller Lehman

She then writes on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day that even with both Carl and Ruth around, she misses Harold. It won’t be the last time.

• December 24, 1942
Looking for Harold.
• December 25, 1942
Looked for Harold. I am disappointed.
- Diary entries, Beula Keller Lehman

Buddy's War: #5- A Missing Year

This is part of a series that over two years will follow the story of my father in World War II 75 years ago. I did this five years ago in the series Following the 10th Armored, but I have been doing more research and expanding the ideas. The beginning posts will set the stage for the events of 1944 and 1945 when he was in Europe as part of the 10th Armored Division's 80th Armored Medical Battalion.

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Draft Registration Card

• Living in Bethesda, Montgomery Co., Maryland
• Working for People’s Drugs in Washington, DC
• William listed as next of kin
• Age 33
• Birthdate listed as 11/19/1906
• Signed H K Lehman
• Oct 16, 1940
• Light complexion, Blue eyes, brown hair,
• 5’6” 165 pounds

I have no diary for 1941. I have looked through boxes and asked my brother to do the same. It is not to be found. But I am not totally lost. First, available online above is the information from his draft card. As Beula reported on October 17 last year, my dad did register on the first day of registration for the first ever peacetime draft in US history. It is where I got any information I have had about where he was living since Beula never mentioned it. He did “run away” to Maryland and was living in the DC suburb of Bethesda while working at a pharmacy in the city. Looking at Google Maps, it appears to be about nine miles to the store, which was about a mile from the White House.

Two things stand out about the draft registration card. One was the signature. He often used his initials instead of a name. To many he was later known as “H K” and his store was either referred to as Lehman’s Pharmacy or H K Lehman Pharmacy. For me that was a moment of familiarity and, well, comfort. This is my dad.

More interesting is the age/birth date. One of the old story lines in movies and TV is about the young man who lies about his age to join the army. It usually meant they said they were older than they were. There was even an episode of M*A*S*H with Ron Howard playing the soldier who was actually younger than he said. But my dad, I guess in line with the Lehman idea of being different, lied in the other direction. As it would indicate on his military ID card a few years later, he is listed as a year younger than he really was. As of his registration date he was only 5 weeks shy of his 35th birthday, not his 34th. The upper limit for registration at that point was age 35.

I guess he wanted to make sure he got registered. The first enlistees were inducted the day before his actual 35th birthday. Since it was by lottery, it looks like he may not have been called right away.

Additional Enlistment Information 

• Enlistment Date: 13 Jan 1941
• Enlistment State: Maryland
• Enlistment City: Baltimore
• Grade: Private
• Term of Enlistment: Enlistment for assignment to another corps area
• Component: Selectees (Enlisted Men)
• Source: Civil Life
• Education: 3 years of college
• Civil Occupation: Pharmacists
• Marital Status: Single, without dependents

Did he actually enlist or was he drafted? The enlistment information above would imply it was not voluntary, referring to the component as “selectees”. But I have not yet been able to explore that. Nor have I yet been able to explore what “enlistment for assignment to another corps area” means. I have not yet been able to explore where he went next or what training he would undergo. With no diary I also have no collateral information from my grandmother. All I have is a picture dated August from Camp Blanding, FL.

Camp Blanding itself has an interesting history. It was established in northeastern Florida as a small National Guard camp. It’s history adds that it

is an example of an aptly timed, albeit humble commencement, for a soon valuable commodity. This young post's uses during [World War II] include service as a training site for a multitude of units, a basic training complex for the Infantry, and a Prisoner of War Camp. The contributions of Camp Blanding, Florida, under-publicized as they may be, were significant to the war effort.

The construction of the new facility… began in the latter half of 1939 following the conversion of Camp Clifford R. Foster in Jacksonville, formerly Camp Joseph E Johnson, from a National Guard Post into the Jacksonville Naval Air Station. Soon thereafter, a handful of Jacksonville residents united to form and Air Base Committee.

This fund raising body drew the responsibility for securing $400,000 to help finance construction of a replacement facility in the city's vicinity. It is unlikely that they realized in just a few short years this site would be the largest Infantry Replacement Training Center in the U.S. Army.

The original dimensions of the post were 28,200 acres, however, this bloomed into a sprawling site in excess of 170,000 acres following the federalization of the post in 1940. Thus, the once tiny station suddenly became the second largest training site in the nation in terms of physical size.

[T]he War Department initiated a rapid construction wave in 1941, resulting in the establishment of 10,000 new buildings. Still, the ballooning population of the Post far out paced the process of construction, and by 1942, there were some 60,000 troops quartered at the site. In conjunction with this development, construction estimates soared from the Guard Post, to $27.5 million for this federalized facility.

A shortage of quality labor to aid the process of construction presented a problem to contractors charged with this task. In response, one such company initiated a plan placing novice builders next to more experienced workers, thus allowing the former to learn from the latter. After the company organized this system, a standard mess hall could be cut to size in the lumber yard in 10 minutes, and erected in the field in 25 minutes.

In a short time, Camp Blanding included 125 miles of paved roads, in excess of one million square yards of motor parking areas, eighty one miles of water lines, twenty six and a half miles of railroad, and over two hundred fifty miles of electrical wiring. More important, the reservation boasted a highly advanced artillery range, and top notch rifle, anti-aircraft, mortar and grenade ranges. (Link to Camp Blanding history)

None of this indicates anything about my dad’s training since all I have at this point connecting him to the Post is the picture of a group of medics in August. But what the story of Camp Blanding illustrates is the amazing beginnings of a build up of the American military as had never before been seen. I will talk more about this at a later time, especially in relation to the medical services. Of main historical interest to me is the planning and foresight of President Franklin Roosevelt. From all I have read he knew that the day would come when the United States entered the European war. He did a great deal to make sure that when the day came the US would not be caught completely unprepared.

The nation may have been unprepared, but FDR was not when, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the US base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. America was now in World War II.

Where was Buddy? I have no idea for sure. I will keep digging. But when the calendar turns to 1942 I do know he was home, most likely waiting to be activated when the other “corps area” was ready.

At the end of 1941 the 10th Armored Division and the 80th Armored Medical Battalion did not yet exist. But now, it was only a matter of time. None of us would ever be the same again.

Buddy's War: #4- 1940- A Family in Turmoil

This is part of a series that over two years will follow the story of my father in World War II 75 years ago. I did this five years ago in the series Following the 10th Armored, but I have been doing more research and expanding the ideas. The beginning posts will set the stage for the events of 1944 and 1945 when he was in Europe as part of the 10th Armored Division's 80th Armored Medical Battalion.

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• June 27, 1940
Harold did not come home last night…. left after dinner [tonight] and did not come home for supper. Gee, I am almost crazy.

• July 13, 1940
Harold was mad and did not eat any supper and left. Said he was never coming home.
- Diary entries, Beula Keller Lehman

With these two diary entries, Beula opens the curtain ever so slightly on what may have been a family secret. As Europe was being enveloped in a second “Great War” my father was about to add turmoil far more personal and painful to his family. In reality, I have no idea whether he was adding turmoil or just continuing it. For some reason, perhaps simply intuition, overheard but forgotten stories, or my reflection on the older Harold Lehman I knew as a child, I get the feeling that what was about to happen in mid-1940 was not anything particularly new. I do not have any of my grandmother’s diaries prior to 1940 so I cannot dig for clues. In the ones I do have she almost never gives hints of what was going on beneath the surface of her life.

I can deduce several things.

◆ She is often lonely, deeply lonely. Many times she speaks of missing her daughter, Ruth. She talks about being home alone when my grandfather was off working on the railroad, or perhaps also helping run the pharmacy he co-owned with my Dad. There is throughout an almost overwhelming sadness and loneliness.

 ◆ She is not in good health. She often says she is tired, not feeling well, suffering from a headache.

◆ She did have a number of friends who were regular visitors and with whom she periodically did things.

◆ She often mentions a person that I was told about in later years as my Dad’s girlfriend at the time. She is never called that, but she is in and out of the stories of the year, including when Beula goes into the hospital. I did not find any entry that puts her with my Dad. But from what I understood, everyone expected them to get married someday.

As mid-year approaches, things begin to fall apart. Ruth and Carl are never seen as a source of worry. It is her youngest child, Harold, who is. In mid-1940 he is 34 years old. He will be 35 by Thanksgiving. He is an apparently successful pharmacist, owning his own drug store. There was some type of legal issue I found in an old newspaper that had something to do with my grandfather selling some medication to someone when my dad, the pharmacist, was not there. It did not appear as anything major and the law had changed by the time it was settled.

He is almost never mentioned in the diary entries until that one on June 27. There is no indication of any issue that might be involved. Three weeks later, by July 13, it is has gone beyond resolution. A simple matter-of-fact statement of dad’s anger, leaving, and promise never to come home.

I can see him doing that. Anger, a short-fused temper, was one of his personality traits. Others have told me the same thing about him. Basically, in so many words, don’t get Harold mad. Who got him angry? Who else was at dinner on July 13? We are never told. For several days she mentions that she hasn’t heard from him. Four days after he left she comments that she “heard that Harold was in New York.” Then nothing.

On September 7 she writes that it is eight weeks since he left. She calls him “Buddy” in that entry, the first and only time she uses that nickname in 1940. On the 8th he sends for his clothes. She never mentions where he is. Only putting later things together do I know that he was somewhere in Maryland, most likely around Bethesda and Montgomery County.

Throughout this whole period of time, Beula has been getting sicker and spent many a day in bed. She finally has blood tests done around September 8. The doctor calls and says she has to go into the hospital, which she does on September 14. She will remain there over one month, not getting out if bed for almost four weeks. Three days after admission, the handwriting in the diary changes to what to me is instantly recognizable as her daughter’s. The same day it is noted that they sent a telegram to Harold who arrives the next day. He remains home for ten days during which time he is at the hospital part of every day, as were Ruth and my grandfather.

Whatever was wrong it appears to have been serious. They hired private duty nurses for part of the time to be with her twenty-four hours a day. Lots of people visited. The presumed girlfriend was one of the most regular. She came on her own and with others, but I didn’t see any time when she came with Harold. A week after dad leaves the handwriting returns to Beula’s and three days later she sits up out of bed for the first time. She goes home on October 15. From this period on there are regular letters to and from Harold. As usual there are very few personal comments that give a hint to what was going on.

One, however, is the start of what will be the most significant change in his life.

• October, 17, 1940
Letter from Harold. He registered. I think he feels better now.
- Diary entry, Beula Keller Lehman

This is one day after the first peacetime draft registration began in the United States.

The 1940 law instituted conscription in peacetime, requiring the registration of all men between 21 and 35, with selection for one year's service by a national lottery. President Roosevelt's signing of the Selective Training and Service Act on September 16, 1940, began the first peacetime draft in the United States. … This act came when other preparations, such as increased training and equipment production, had not yet been approved…. The act set a cap of 900,000 men to be in training at any given time, and limited military service to 12 months unless Congress deemed it necessary to extend such service in the interest of national defense…The draft began in October 1940, with the first men entering military service on November 18. (Wikipedia)

I have no idea what Beula meant when she said that she thought he felt better after registering. Any reflecting on it would be completely out of nothingness. The only way I ever heard this described was that Harold “ran away from home” when he was 35, was working in Maryland, and was drafted. Had he remained at home, the owner of an essential business, he would probably never have been drafted. Somehow I get the idea from Beula that in some way or another dad wanted to go. He had no choice but to register, obviously. But there is at least the hint that there was more going on.

Whatever the full story, in October of 1940 the world turmoil and the Lehman family chaos was merging, as it would for many families in the United States. The world as it has been known is about to end. While Pearl Harbor is still a year away, the changes. What Herman Wouk would call the Winds of War were being stirred. No part of the world would be spared.

A month later on November 19 Beula writes that it is the first time Harold is not at home for his birthday in 12 years. (Last time was when he was in college.) She concludes, “It makes me homesick.”

It was a tough year for Beula. My grandfather spent some days in the hospital after a work accident. He is now 64 years old. Beula at 65 had spent a month in the hospital in obviously critical condition. Her son, at 34, had run away to join the Army. There wasn’t much left to say.

• December 31, 1940
Well the old year will soon be gone. Hope next year will be better. I had three awful things happen this year.
- Diary entry, Beula Keller Lehman

Buddy's War: #3- 1940- A World Falling Apart

This is part of a series that over two years will follow the story of my father in World War II 75 years ago. I did this five years ago in the series Following the 10th Armored, but I have been doing more research and expanding the ideas. The beginning posts will set the stage for the events of 1944 and 1945 when he was in Europe as part of the 10th Armored Division's 80th Armored Medical Battalion.

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• January 1, 1940:

New Year and a lovely day. Dad, Harold, and I were alone for dinner. 3:30 Mabelle (sic) and Carl came and stopped for a few minutes.

- Diary entry, Beula Keller Lehman

My entry into the World War II era was the diaries of my grandmother Beula. I never knew her. She died at age 72, six months before I was born. I had ignored them for years. They sat in a box in closets and attics and back rooms. I opened one or two once or twice but found them uninteresting. All she seemed to talk about was doing chores, cleaning, and visiting with friends. Opening them at random was no help. When I decided I wanted to get serious about this research, I started reading. They were a mini-treasure chest of information. Sprinkled with the mundane and daily were hints of the man I was looking for. The myth would become reality.

As Beula wrote in her diary of the daily life in her home, the world was in the early stages of an already deadly war. Two days into the New Year President Franklin Roosevelt would address Congress and set the stage for a later request of nearly $900 million for defense ($16 billion in 2018 dollars). He asked the Congress to approve increased national defense spending "based not on panic but on common sense" and "to levy sufficient additional taxes" to help pay for it. (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1940) The officially neutral United States was getting as ready as possible for the day when we would enter the war - still nearly two years away! In the meantime Europe would continue to implode beneath the blitzkrieg tactics of the Nazis and the expansions of the Soviet Union. Some of the more famous first events of 1940 would be:

• British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin’s appeasement policy in ruins, Winston Churchill became PM.
• Unable to defeat the Nazis on the mainland of Europe, The British would stage the massive evacuation from Dunkirk
• Hitler and his troops would take Paris
• The Battle of Britain began with seemingly incessant bombing that would continue well into the war. London was bombed and the Blitz began.
• German Jews were ordered to wear yellow stars
• The Jews of Poland were ordered to move into the Warsaw Ghetto which two months later was cordoned off.

The United State was in the middle of a debate on isolationism. People like aviator Charles Lindberg and the US ambassador to Great Britain, Joseph Kennedy, would be some of its greatest proponents. A group known as the German-American Bund, later shown to be a Nazi-supported front, spoke out in favor of the work of the Nazis in Germany. Roosevelt kept up his not-so-secret plans to involve the United States in the war. The future of western civilization as he and Churchill saw it, was in grave danger. Between mid-September and mid- November the Congress enacted a “peace-time” draft, registration began, and the first draftees entered service.

Little to none of this shows up in Beula’s diary. A Roosevelt Democrat, she “listened to President's speech and it was good.” She enjoyed the blockbuster movie, Gone With the Wind and even mentions when others of the family saw it. Lots of family things are there. She goes to the club or lodge. There were several trips to Bethlehem to see her daughter, Ruth; son Carl and his long-time girlfriend Mabel are in and out. Beula is often not feeling well and my grandfather has an accident at work (the finger incident?) and is in the hospital for four days in May.

One incident, though, stands out in the first half of the year. On April 25 she wrote:

Got [up] at 845 and heard the kids making a lot of noise and I looked out and saw a man climbing the flag pole at the high school to take down a German flag that had been put up during the night.

The high school, which would become my junior high school in 1960, was less than half a block from her house. The report in the Jersey Shore Herald the next day reported that the incident was under investigation but was being hindered by the fact that there was uncertainty about what laws might have been broken. The article ended:

The incident appeared this afternoon to have been little more than the work of some local "crank" with the apparent result of centering interest as the scene of one of the first rural demonstrations of patriotism, fanned by the outbreak of the European war. (Jersey Shore Herald, April 26, 1940)

The reason the incident stands out in my mind is part of the family myth. Somewhere in the past was a memory of being told that one of the “hellion” actions of my father had been to be part of a group that put a Nazi flag on the high school flagpole. There is no indication in the diary of my dad’s involvement in this, but the fact that such an event took place adds weight to the myth.

In reality. until the end of June there are few mentions of my dad in the diary. He is mentioned even fewer times than either of his siblings. That will change mid-year.

Buddy's War: #2: Finding the Past

This is part of a series that over two years will follow the story of my father in World War II 75 years ago. I did this five years ago in the series Following the 10th Armored, but I have been doing more research and expanding the ideas. The beginning posts will set the stage for the events of 1944 and 1945 when he was in Europe as part of the 10th Armored Division's 80th Armored Medical Battalion.

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Much of what I thought I knew about my family was based on hearsay, rumor, gossip, and bits of overheard information. While much of what the “big ears of little pitchers” hear is filtered through misinterpretation, wishful thinking, and a family’s desire to maintain a semblance of normalcy, much of it may well be based on truth. And these truths become the stuff of myth, a family’s “creation story”. The story becomes enhanced and even embellished and its mythic element grows when we read out lives back into the past

How much of myth was fact? How many of the feelings are history? After many decades, it can be a daunting task to dig and open up the stories. Since this is the story of my father in World War II, he is the center of the myth. While not seen as a “patriarch” of the family, he is the center of what I needed to dig into to find the man I never had the chance to know.

Harold Keller Lehman. He was known as “Red” to his friends, “Buddy” to his mother. Born in November 1905, he was the youngest of three children of William H. and Beula Keller Lehman. Bill and Beula grew up on neighboring homesteads in the Pine Creek Valley, north of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, along the edge of the Allegheny Plateau. Both families were of German background. Bill’s grandfather and Beula’s father were born in Germany and came to the United States as children. However, through the Lehman-Kline (Klein) family, we could trace back to pre-Revolutionary days. As best as I can discover, my brother and I were the 9th generation born in the United States. All branches I have found settled somewhere in southeastern and central Pennsylvania. Many even came from the same general area in Germany.

Bill and Beula were the fourth generation of the family in the Pine Creek Valley. Beula was one of five who lived, with one older brother, one older sister and two younger brothers. Bill was one of fifteen children, the second oldest to survive infancy. They married at the end of the 19th Century in 1899.

Beula came from a farm family; like many in his family, Bill was a railroad man, a brakeman on the New York Central. In the late 1800s the area was the logging capital of the world. By 1900 the logging boom in the area had slowed, but the railroads continued to connect the valley to the greater world. The Pennsylvania and New York Central Railroads ran through the valley and the NYC had shops in Avis near where the Lehmans lived. Bill had a couple fingers on one hand shortened by getting them caught in the couplings of a freight. I never got the sense that the Lehmans were a close family, or were all that good at connecting with other sides of the family. All kinds of aunt-this or uncle-that were tossed around. By the mid-1950s their numbers were legion in the valley with more branches and leaves on the tree than I ever understood. I never met most of them. Even when they lived nearby.

The quintessential image for me is the family picture of my grandfather’s parents and siblings. At least one, my grandfather, is pasted into the picture. The story was that the whole family couldn’t stand to be around everyone at the same time. When I looked at the old family picture from the late 1890s I would chuckle at the story, the myth, of the family that couldn’t get along. It was my little family joke. Meanwhile, by the 1970s I left home and hardly looked back. Perhaps myth infuses us with direction or destiny? Perhaps we are predisposed to follow the old stories in whatever ways they may fit our lives.

True or not, though, myth is the story we tell ourselves. It is the “better story” as understood from the point of view of the wonderful novel, Life of Pi. Myth is the story that explains us- both our strengths and weaknesses. Myth gives order to the chaos of real life. It describes roots and explores meaning.

When we don’t have all the information, myth takes on more importance. Overheard data bits, oral tradition, pictures from an old scrapbook get enmeshed with what we feel about ourselves. They become as real as anything that actually happened. We can’t live well without myth. We can’t make sense of who we are without it. But at times neither can we see clearly what is right in front of us because of the fog of myth.

Harold shows up in a couple pictures I have from his high school days. In one he is a member of a record-setting undefeated football team.  During his junior year the team went undefeated and set what is still a national record of averaging over 75 points per game in a season of less than 10 games. According to records every game was a shutout. In another picture he is sitting cross-legged next to a cousin in the front row of what is labeled as the “yearbook committee”, the only male in the picture, and in a third, his 1924 class picture, he sits to the left of the class banner. He appears in a couple other pictures with friends on a camping trip and another at a beach. In all pictures there is a certain self-assurance that I identify with my own memories of him. He has a slight, almost mischievous grin that I also find on pictures of his siblings- and sons.

He was apparently a good student as he went off to college- the Philadelphia School of Pharmacy and Science. His brother Carl by now was working on the railroad and his sister Ruth was becoming a teacher or whatever then led her to work for Williamsport Wire and Rope which eventually was bought by Bethlehem Steel where she and her husband moved to what would later be part of my story in Bethlehem, PA.

For Harold, a railroader’s son from the north woods heading into Philadelphia must have been a challenge; it would appear that he was able to handle it. In 1928 his senior yearbook shows a handsome, almost dapper, young man, same smile as before but now sporting the mustache that is, in my mind, almost a trademark. He never lost that mustache and every subsequent picture through his death shows it-including his military ID.

But more than the image is the description. They note two nicknames, “Shorty” and “Dutch.” He is called “short of stature but mighty in brain power.” They say that he has “enlivened many a session” with his “ready wit and can speak with authority on subjects other than Pharmacy.” He seems to have been the one to turn to when the “boys want to take in a show” as this is one of “the first things he looks into.” They refer to an easy ability around the labs but also note his shyness and humility around the opposite sex. 

The summary ends:

He likes football, appreciates sports, shy at women, is keen on cars and knows what Pharmacy is all about. He will succeed.

Between his college graduation in 1928 and the beginning of this story, Harold returned to his home became a local businessman and lived what may have been the life of a carefree bachelor. He lived with his parents in the house where he had spent much of his youth. It would be his sister’s house, and my home, when I graduated from college forty years later.

The myth here adds bits of data that give a slight shadow to the image. I remember one incident after his death when I was talking with one of his high school classmates who started laughing about how Red was somewhat of a “hellion.” Dad’s friend, realizing that he was talking to a high school student smiled and said something to the effect of “but you don’t really need to know any of that.”

World War II began in Europe on September 1, 1939.
Harold was two months shy of his 34th birthday.

Buddy's War: #1- May We Never Forget!

This is part of a series that over two years will follow the story of my father in World War II 75 years ago. I did this five years ago in the series Following the 10th Armored, but I have been doing more research and expanding the ideas. The beginning posts will set the stage for the events of 1944 and 1945 when he was in Europe as part of the 10th Armored Division's 80th Armored Medical Battalion.

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We are in danger of losing our memory of World War II. What may arguably have been the single greatest moment in US (and world) history is on the brink of losing its hold on our American psyche and soul. We seem to be losing the unique greatness of who we were and how we got there- the living (yet admittedly flawed) embodiment of our ideals and who we believed ourselves to be. We are forgetting what we fought for- and against.

This is not the first time this has happened in our history. After a generation or two, many great acts of history flow into myth and their raw facts are lost. The following generations then lose the real-life examples of what was involved. It is then that, having forgotten history, we are condemned to repeat it. In the early 20th Century the Civil War was lost as those who opposed it began to reassert control in the South, the KKK was established, and racism was legalized without slavery. In mid-Century there was a time of remembering and attempting to assert our ideals, perhaps partly due to World War II. The Civil Rights movement advanced the cause of the Civil War 100 years after Antietam, . But its reality and advances are continually up for grabs as America’s original sin never goes away. Incredibly, the story of the Civil War remains a matter of debate.

There are many things about World War II that defined us as a nation and as a world leader in the second half of the last Century. The willingness of the nation and that generation of men and women to sacrifice for the survival of democracy, western civilization, and freedom is possibly one of the most significant world-embracing actions in human history. The darkness  of that era is forgotten; the Holocaust is an academic subject; totalitarian government is seen by some as “effective”; Nazis can be good people. The catastrophic danger of forgetting is sitting on our doorstep.

I am a son of that “greatest generation”. My father was a medic in Europe during the last year of the war. I was born just three years after his return home, a Baby Boomer who was nursed and nurtured in the air of the World War II victory as were many of my generation. I grew up in a small rural community in northern Pennsylvania. There were veterans everywhere. My classmate's parents, my teachers, my neighbors were vets.

I never heard a word about it from my father. Admittedly I was too young to hear the real stories- TV newsreels and documentaries and movies were the story we heard. I was never privy to what it was like or to hear the stories- if they even shared them- from the nights at the American Legion or VFW.  Patriotism- pride in our soldiers and the courage of a nation that stood up for what it believed as right and honorable- was everywhere.

On my tenth birthday, hundreds of miles away in Philadelphia, my father had exploratory surgery to find the cause of his “spells.” They removed a non-malignant tumor. All that meant was it wouldn’t metastasize. He died six-years later, two and a half years after my mother, in a VA hospital, the final thank you from the country he served. With him went any possible access to his stories or experiences.

Death is an irrevocable divide and what wasn’t learned before the death may forever be lost; they become secrets, intentional or not. Much of what I think I know of my family is based on hearsay, rumor, gossip, and faintly remembered or overheard bits of information. “Little pitchers [may] have big ears,” but often what we hear is biased, misunderstood, misinterpreted, and colored by a lack of depth of understanding. The information becomes the stuff of myth, not unlike the “creation stories” of all native people worldwide. These are just narrower in their scope picking out a single branch or two of the human family tree. As time passes and more people die the more mythic becomes the story, potentially more enhanced by ones own experiences that are read back into the past.

All I ever learned of Dad's service was second hand from family members- mainly his sister who became my brother’s and my guardian. Not that I was all that interested at the time. What I knew about World War II was that it was big, important, and horrific. There were family stories that he had served in the 10th Armored Division under the mythic General Patton and that he was at the Battle of the Bulge. Other stories told of how he was too old to have been in the war, 39 years old and the owner of a pharmacy, when he went overseas. There was the family creation story of his meeting my mother in Georgia while in training and marrying her- a younger Jewish woman from Brooklyn- at the Jewish USO. He was, of course, not Jewish.

Then about six or seven years ago I began to do some more reading about the war as its seventieth anniversary approached and worked on family history. I opened my grandmother’s diaries for the first time in years and discovered, hidden between the everyday events were clues, bits and pieces that fit the “mythic” stories from my family. I was about to fall headlong into World War II. Four years ago I followed the 10th Armored and my father’s 80th Armored Medical Battalion in their year in Europe and wrote about it for my blog. I found things about what my Dad was involved in and learned some of his story as shaped by the events of that year. But I knew there had to be even more to the story than what I had found in a relatively cursory exploration.

We are now coming up on the 75th anniversary of the end of the war. I have been reading and researching continuing to look for more clues to what Red Lehman faced. For many this is history. For me and my generation, it is recent events. It is what made our parents' generation into what we now call the Greatest Generation. Perhaps it has taken me all these 70 years of my life to begin to understand what that means. I am humbled by it and am just here to tell a very small part of that story. As I see us forgetting the meaning and sacrifice of that era, I want to do what I can to see that it is not so easily set aside.

What is There to Say?

About the time this post is published we will probably be above 0 degrees F. for the first time in about 80 hours. It sure has made the news, broken records, closed schools, and given us Minnesotans something more to talk about.

Cold? Eh?

Ya betcha'

Stay warm.

Yes, there were those who brought out the old trope

When I was young...

and proceed to tell us about the two-way uphill climb, at least 5 miles long, in shoulder-deep snow with cold enough to freeze...

...well you know the story.

Don't believe it. It didn't happen. These are called record colds because, simply, they have never happened before. One of our local TV weather forecasters said that the longest streak below zero was 7 days

• and it was in 1912... 102 years ago.

I know, you remember, like I do, those bitter cold mornings walking to school. I was a school crossing guard the winter of 1959-60 when I was in 6th grade. I swear it was bitterly cold. Frigid.

So, just to prove it I searched for weather records online and found out that, well, it was warmer than I remember it. For example, in January and February the lowest temp was 14 degrees F. on Feb.14. There were three days in the beginning of March when there were single digit lows, but the high temps got almost to freezing.

That may be why it seemed to be so cold. The temps were never all that cold (compared to what we have just been going through.) Many days actually had high temps above freezing, not something that happens around here this time of year. We never got accustomed to the lower temperatures, because they didn't stay around all that long.

Isn't it a shame that our memories are not nearly as perfect as we like to think they are. In fact they are quite subjective. Telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth- but only as I remember it.

Elizabeth Loftus has a TED talk on the fiction of memory.

It's times like this that I believe her.