Chapter 24 - 1943 Kazmer Grabon Drafted - Wedding Shoes for Cousin Jane in England

Chapter 24 Version 1

1943

Jane surveyed the Thanksgiving table and continued to tell her story while Kay Grabon set up his equipment.

“I bought shoes for cousin Jane in London like she asked me to in her last letter. When I brought them down to the post office, the clerk asked me whether they were new or used shoes. I told him they were new and he told me I could only send used shoes to Europe. He told me to take the shoes out of the box, put them on and walk around and make sure I scuffed up the bottoms. I put the shoes back in the box after I walked around in them in the post office and the clerk asked me again if they were new or used. So now I told him they were used which was true, I did use them” said Jane smiling as she told the story. “Cousin Jane didn’t say what kind of shoes she wanted so I sent her some brown walking shoes…used brown walking shoes.”

“OK, I have the camera on a timer. Smile and look into the lens 1, 2, 3…” said Kay as he scooted back into his chair. Later that evening, Kay developed the film so he could make some prints that weekend.

When he printed the photo he was pleased to see nearly all of the Borsuk clan although his wife Helen was hidden behind the candles. In the picture were Kay, Nancy, John, Mary Borsuk Polito with son Joe, Agata, Helen, Joe Polito and daughter Maryann, Frances, Jane and Sophie. Absent were Eddy who was down in North Carolina in the army and Rose Borsuk Miller.

Rose was married to Ralph Miller who was a coxswain in the Coast Guard. A coxswain is in charge of a small boat or responsible for the navigation and steering on a larger ship. Ralph was on an ocean going LST “chasing Japs all across the Pacific”. LST stands for “Landing Ship Tank” but Ralph referred to the designation as “Large Stationary Target”. A crew of 120 enlisted men and ten officers were required to man a full size LST that transported all types of supplies and troops to an amphibious landing on a beach. Smaller landing craft could have as few as a three man crew used to transport troops during a beach assault and these would be carried by the larger LST. The smaller craft were very dangerous for the troops as well as the crew as they were directly in harms way.

Until this time, Kay had not been drafted. His eyesight in his left eye was 20/200 which means that he could see at 20 feet what the average person could see at 200 feet. If his glasses broke, he would be pretty much blind out of one eye. Also, he worked at a defense related job. At Package Machinery he was a Bench Assembler. He “worked from detail drawings in assembly of gyro-compass, 50 and 30 cal. shell loading machines, 50 cal. disintegrating link machines and, prior to conversion of plant to warwork, on wrapping machines – made alterations for parts whenever necessary, operated engine lathes, milling machine and drill press – rated as a machinist when first employed.” For fun Kay was a target shooter with a 22-caliber rifle. A rifle was mechanical and he understood the mechanics. He made $43.20 per week. Good money in those days.

But in June of 1944 right after D-Day in Europe, Kay was drafted. He was listed for “Special Assignment” because of his defective vision. The military did a very good job in matching a person's job with their skills. One of the objectives at Sampson NTS was to score high enough on tests to get assigned to additional training. After basic training on 9/20/1944 he went to Torpedoman's Mate School at Great Lakes NTC in Illinois for 16 weeks and like Joe who went to Wentworth Institute in Boston to machinist school, there was a note in his records that he must be assigned to a job related to his skills. After training someone with a specialty skill for four months, the government wanted a return out of that investment. Kay graduated well up in his torpedomen class 14th out of 58 at Great Lakes.  His status was changed to S1c – Seaman First Class - on Jan 15, 1945.  He was transferred on Jan 19, 1945 to N.A.A.S. Fallon, Nevada as a TMV3c(T)(SA) with a rate change effective May 15, 1945. That would be a Torpedoman Mate V Third Class with the T being temporary for the duration of the war. The A may have stood for aviation.

Fallon Naval Air Station was among a group of military installations within bombing distance of the west coast that were opened after the start of WWII in case the Japanese invaded the continental US. It was near Pyramid Lake where the torpedo training would take place. After the war it became the location of the Top Gun training. Torpedoes were replaced with much more accurate rockets launched from planes after World War II. The only engagement where torpedoes were effective was at Pearl Harbor where the ships were at anchor. In other circumstances, the torpedoes were too easy to evade and the planes too easy to shoot down as they dropped their torpedoes.

Since Kay had made gyro-compasses that kept the torpedoes on track in his civilian job and his eyesight was far from ideal, a training job for torpedoes used in naval aviation was a good fit. Nevada even made sense as trained pilots would be close to the west coast for departure to the Pacific Theatre. While the training had some spectators on the beach at Pyramid Lake, the sunbathing was not without its hazards as torpedoes could sometimes go rogue and head toward the beach. The bathers would scatter avoiding the life threatening projectile as it plowed its way onto the beach - luckily without a detonation.

Unfortunately for Jane, her brother Eddy and brother-in-law Kay were the photographers in the family. As she graduated from high school in June of 1944, there was no one to take a picture of her at graduation. But she had her plans made. She was going to beauty school in September.

Chapter 23 - 1963 A Borsuk Siberian Odyssey Story

Chapter 23 Version 2

1963

“I have come here to tell you the story of my family” said Jane Iskra to the milling crowd of cousins and their children. Jane was the daughter Sophie Borsuk Iskra who was Ludwig Borsuk’s sister. She and her family were living in Poland at the outbreak of World War II.

“After the Russians and Germans attacked to begin World War II, we in eastern Poland in the Lublin area were now part of Russia again” she said. Jane Iskra went on but as she looked around in the basement of her cousin Jane’s house in Easthampton, it was clear that nobody was listening. She turned to Jane and said she would tell her story later to anyone who was interested.

The resurrection of Poland as an independent country in 1919 was the last of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points to be included in the resolution of World War I. By reconstituting the Polish homeland, Germany was stripped of it’s western provinces and the port city of Gdansk, Austria lost its Galician province including the cities of Krakow and Lwow, and Russia of its industrial eastern province that included Warsaw. With the defeat of the Russian czar by the Bolshevik communists in 1919, the new communist government in Russia was eager to regain its lost Polish lands and push the

spread of communism into industrial Europe. The Poles were unhappy that that its new borders excluded Vilnius in Lithuania and Lwow in the Ukraine region where there were large numbers of Poles in the cities but fewer ethnic Poles in the countryside.

The result was the Polish-Russian War of 1919-1921. The Russians were initially successful reaching the outskirts of Warsaw. But with Russian supply lines depleted by their rapid advance, the Poles and Russian met in the Battle of Warsaw where the Russians were routed. Joseph Stalin who was in charge of the Russian army in the Ukraine did not follow orders to go to Warsaw before the battle and instead moved against the Poles in Lwow. The result was that the Poles regained much of their historical lands to the east including Lwow and Brest-Litvosk. With the Russians losing more territory to the new Polish country, there was a long term resolve by the Russians to eventually regain their Polish province. The Germans also lost lands now in the Poland in the north and east that contained large German ethnic populations that they eyed as historically German lands.

The opportunity to extract retribution from Poland came in September of 1939. Hitler and Stalin came to an agreement to simultaneously attack Poland in a final partition of Polish lands. There was doubt from other countries that fascist Germany and communist Russia could ever agree to cooperate. Hitler and Stalin did. The prospect of settling old scores with the Polish proved to be too enticing. The Germans attacked from the north and south. The Russians stayed on the border until it was clear that the Poles would be defeated before crossing over Poland’s eastern border suffering few casualties. The French and British did not open up a western front attack on Germany as their mutual defense pact with Poland called for.

With few natural defensive positions in the Polish north, the Polish plan was to withdraw to the rugged hills in the Lwow area where there had been stored large cashes of ammunition and supplies. The unanticipated Russian advance into the Polish Ukraine made this strategy untenable. The Polish army withdrew to still neutral Romania and 150,000 Polish troops evacuated by sea to fight in western Europe along with a large contingent of the Polish air force. Many Polish pilots flew for the English Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Battle of Britain.

Jane Iskra told this story after the party was over.

Sophie, her husband, and three children were arrested by the Russians for “political” reasons – probably because of their literacy and the books found in the house. After the Russians came, they confiscated farms and all officials and teachers were to be relocated to Russian Siberia. All of their books were burned. The Iskra family was sent to Siberia. Normally, the family members would be separated with children going to various camps scattered over large distances throughout Siberia. Sophie’s husband was ill so Sophie and her older daughter, Jane, were allowed to stay together to care for him. The toddler daughter was allowed to stay because they told the Russians the toddler was still nursing.

The eleven year old son was taken to a camp nearly 1,000 miles from the rest of the family. He promptly gathered some food and set out to return to his family. The first night out, the boy was robbed of all of his food and possessions. He never again trusted anyone, hiding by day and traveling by night. Getting his bearings by the stars as his father had taught him, he lived off the berries of the Siberian summer and stowed away on freight trains until he had made his way back to his family.

The reunited family was helped by the underground via train to Karachi, India (Pakistan). The toddler, smuggled out as laundry, was wrapped in a sheet and told to be quiet when crossing the border. From Karachi, the family made its way to London, England by ship rounding the southern tip of Africa. Sophie stayed in England after the war. Daughter Jane went on to teach school in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. On a separate visit to Massachusetts, Jane said that her mother Sophie asked her why she went to cold Canada after having all the cold they had in Siberia. Jane later moved to a warmer climate in South Africa.

“And I do want to thank you for the shoes you sent me during the war when I was in England. I needed those shoes to wear for my wedding and my younger sister also wore them at her wedding” said Jane Iskra on her trip to Easthampton.

In England, Jane Iskra wrote to her cousins in Easthampton and asked that they keep in touch with her and that they send her a pair of shoes. Enclosed was a photo from England of Jane in a luxurious fur coat but her shoes were not shown in the photo. She enclosed a piece of string that was the length of her foot so that the shoes would be the correct size. Jane Borsuk thought that her cousins had a particularly nice fur coat but she needs shoes? Jane Borsuk took the string and bought a new pair of shoes not knowing the correct width. In taking them to the post office she found that new shoes could not be sent but used shoes could. Jane took the shoes and wore them a bit to scuff up the soles before sending them to England.

Chapter 22 - 1943 Jane's DAR Trip to Boston; Henry Joins the Marines

Chapter 22 Version 2

1943

“Jane, can I talk to you for a minute?” asked Aurelia’s mother Helena when Jane arrived at Aurelia’s house on Ferry Street. Jane nodded.

“Aurelia has been talking about quitting high school and going to work full time. Her sisters did this but Aurelia is a senior and I would really like to see her graduate from high school” said Helena.

“She has been asking me to quit and to go to work with her. But I want to graduate and then go to beauty school. I will try and keep Aurelia in school until graduation” said

Jane to Aurelia’s mother.

Jane was a good student and some of her teachers recommended that she go on to college and become a teacher. However, she had already made up her mind to go to hairdressing school. Her teachers had chosen her to be the school representative at a DAR day at the Boston State House. She went by train and met another representative going from Amherst on the train. Both girls were assigned to a DAR representative who took them out to lunch after a morning of meetings and presentations from state lawmakers. When the DAR rep found out that none of the girls in the group had ever been to Boston before, she declared “Then we need to see Boston!”. For most people in Western Massachusetts, Boston was a world away. Instead of going back for the afternoon sessions at the statehouse, the DAR rep and her lunch companions were off to see the Old North Church, the Boston Common and other historical sites. They passed many men in military uniform who were in Boston training and working on the war effort. On the train back to Boston, Jane thought about who Aurelia’s Henry could be or whether there was actually a Henry in Aurelia’s future.

There was a Henry. Aurelia’s Henry was closer than she could have imagined. He worked at 1 Ferry Street down the street where Aurelia lived and he lived at 37 Ward Avenue just a block away from Jane’s house on West Lake Street.

Now, there are family stories and they sometimes can be corroborated from data from the town hall or from military records. If the stories are sparse in details, there are always story tellers who are more than happy to add details to make the stories more enjoyable for the listener or the reader. For Henry the stories were few with minimal description. The stories were 1) Henry lit his tent on fire trying to burn a spider while on the deck of an aircraft carrier; 2) Henry was involved as a marine in seven amphibious landing assaults; and 3) Henry could never have a lamp in his bedroom after the war as he would wake up swinging and destroying any lamps in the room. That is all we have for stories about Henry related to World War II. Anything else is an embellishment.

Henry’s military records do shed some light on what he did before and during World War II. Before the war he worked at Hampton Company on Ferry Street working his way up to foreman after 3 ½ years. As foreman, he was supervising 12 girls and making sure that they operated their fabric machines correctly. The next year he was promoted to shade matcher doing inventory control and shipping.

Until the end of 1942, a minor (under 21 years old) needed his parent’s waiver to join the military. Henry’s widowed mother Cornelia signed his waiver on Nov. 14, 1942 when he had just turned 20 years old. He joined the marines as a volunteer private on 12/7/1942 exactly one year after Pearl Harbor was attacked. A day later he was on Paris Island, South Carolina for basic training. There was no “hurry up and wait” for Henry. It was all “hurry up”.

After basic training, it was off to Camp Lejune in New River North Carolina for just four days before being transferred to the marine aviation base at Cherry Point North Carolina. On May 22, 1943 it was off to Ordinance School as a PFC – Private First Class – for 14 weeks in Jacksonville Florida. Henry graduated 55^th in a class of 86. He stayed in Jacksonville as an instructor that came with a promotion to corporal. On December 20^th, it was back to Cherry point as a chemical warfare specialist with a sergeant’s rank. But Henry was not done yet for 1943. By year end he had joined Squadron 533 VMF(N), a Marine night fighter squadron under the command of Major “Black Mac” Magruder. The squadron was nicknamed “Magruder’s Killers” and they were training to go to the Pacific. Henry was promoted to Staff Sergeant “Aviation Duty” Temporary on March 1, 1944. The five thirty-three left for Pearl Harbor on April 16, 1944 aboard the USS Long Island, an aircraft carrier.

Did Henry set his tent on fire on the deck of the USS Long Island? Henry’s military records make no mention of any such incident in Henry’s entire military career. It may be true or not be true but it makes a great story with or without embellishments. There is a picture of the USS Long Island on April 27 1944 with its aircraft to the front of the flight deck and a large tent visible at the rear of the flight deck. So the five thirty-three did move into the Pacific on an aircraft carrier with a tent on the flight deck. It took about nine or ten days to get from San Diego to Pearl Harbor so it is very possible that this is a picture of the USS Long Island with the five thirty-three on board including Henry.

The USS Long Island was the first escort carrier that was a converted cargo ship. A landing deck was installed atop the cargo ship and the Long Island was the first ship that proved that this conversion could be done. It also became a prototype for baby aircraft carriers in the future. It was deployed in the Pacific in 1942 and made an impact at the Battle of Guadalcanal. 

The 1951 movie Flying Leathernecks, starring John Wayne who never was in the military, made reference to the USS Long Island in the Guadalcanal battle. The movie also follows its VFM squadron to the Battle of Okinawa where the five thirty-three would eventually be involved.

Chapter 21 - 1943 Eddy Joins the Army Twice & Ouija Fortunes

Chapter 21 Version 1

1943

Jane looked at today’s mail and saw that there was a letter addressed to her. Her brother Eddy would write an occasional letter to her and she enjoyed hearing from him. He had graduated from Easthampton High School in 1933 so he had spent his high school years during the depths of the Great Depression that started with the stock market crash in 1929. The legacy of the depression shaped Eddy’s career throughout the 1930’s.

Eddy worked as a shader and then as an invoice/packer and finally a grey tender  (a fabric printer’s assistant) at the Hampton Company with periods of unemployment and six months as a punch press operator at Paragon Rubber. In June of 1935 after one of these layoffs in April, he enrolled in the Public Works Administration and in July was sent to Townsend, Mass to work in the CCC – the Civilian Conservation Corps. Many of the public roads and buildings in parks were constructed during this time along with reforestation efforts. Eddy was first assigned to do “timber stand improvement” for a month but was noticed as someone with intelligence and a drive to learn and succeed. He was assigned to run the camp canteen for two months, assistant hospital orderly for a month and finally assistant company clerk for seven months. “A highly intelligent type of enrollee, ambitious and dependable, capable of doing a variety of work” wrote his education advisor with an “excellent” rating on every assignment.

Eddy was always doing something extra. Before he took a job as a timekeeper at Watertown Arsenal in 1940, he took an eight month welding course at night at Chicopee Trade School. While a civilian clerk in the finance office of the Boston Army base in 1940 to 1942, he was a night student studying voice and a student teacher at the Boston Conservatory of Music for eight months. He did well in spite of the Great Depression by taking advantage of any opportunities that came his way or making his own opportunities.

Jane examined the letter and noticed that it was postmarked “Camp Davis – North Carolina”. Eddy went into the army as an enlisted man in January of 1942, a month after Pearl Harbor. The military again showed its ability to identify talents of recruits that could be put to good use. So Eddy found himself in the army as a clerk in the personnel office in Ft. Eustis, Virginia for ten months. He was then discharged from the army so that he could receive an appointment to Officer Candidate School in Camp Davis, North Carolina. The end of 1943 found him as a 2^nd Lieutenant in charge of a platoon of eighty-five men and $200,000 worth of vehicles and equipment. The letter explained that he was a platoon commander of the 247^th at Camp Edwards but was now back at Camp Davis for additional training with the 247^th. Eddy did not disclose that the training was to be using the new radar searchlight technology.

Jane tucked the letter into her bureau drawer and went downstairs to greet Aurelia who came over for the afternoon.

“I have an idea that we should both get full time jobs and quit school. There are job openings down at the mill” said  Aurelia.

“For today lets just see what the Ouija Board says about who we will marry” countered Jane changing the subject.

Jane took the box containing the Ouija Board from the drawer in the front room. She lifted out the board itself which was a dark brown color and had the alphabet in a rainbow shape across the center of the board. The words “Yes” and “No” were in the top corners. A set of numbers were on a straight line below the alphabet rainbow. Below the numbers at the bottom of the board were the words “Good Bye”. If the spirit of the Ouija Board was not going to be cooperative, it would point to “Good Bye” indicating that you should find a different pastime today. The two girls pulled up two chairs facing each other with their knees touching and the Ouija Board balancing on their laps.

The heart shaped slider was then removed from the box and placed on the board. The six inch heart had just enough room to lightly place all eight fingers of each girl on opposite sides of the slider. A small window with a petite metal nail used as a pointer was located in the center of the slider. If operating correctly, the psychic energy from the fingertips would move the slider effortlessly across the board stopping to spell words or indicating yes or no to questions posed. Both people using the slider would feel like the other person was pushing the slider around the board.

“Who am I going to marry?” asked Aurelia wasting no time to get to the important question for a high school senior girl. The slider wasted no time. H–E-N-R-Y was spelled out before the slider came to a halt.

“I don’t even know anyone named Henry!” exclaimed Aurelia. She repeated the question and the slider quickly gave her the same answer. It was Jane’s turn.

“Who am I going to marry?” asked Jane. The slider again wasted no time. Z-Y-W-A-R was spelled out. “No that is Aurelia’s name!” Jane said and retried the question. Z-Y-W-A-R was the answer.

“Well, we are not getting anywhere with this Ouija Board today. I know where we can get a card reading for a quarter up on Holyoke Street” said Jane. Off the two girls went walking past Nashawannuck Pond and up Cottage Street.

“She told me ‘You will never be rich but you will never be hungry’ and ‘You will marry someone who is out on the water’” said Jane to Aurelia after the woman read her cards. “What did she tell you?” asked Jane.

“I am not telling” said Aurelia and Jane never knew what the fortune teller told her best friend.