RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR
YEARS. 1940-1945
I was born in 1940.
My first remembrance of those
war years is that I could see real hate in everybody’s eyes as they
chanted “kill the Nazis.” The chant “kill the Nazis” became
“kill the Germans” by the end of the war.
There were 13 countries
overrun by the Axis powers (Fascists), Germany, Spain, Italy, and
finally Japan.
The U. S. issued 13 different
commemorative five cent postage flag stamps depicting all of these
overrun countries.
A link to the stamps: Click here.
I obtained a three by four
foot world map that I framed and made into a stamp map where I
affixed and labeled the countries stamps, and so opened my education
in geography and interest in world history.
In 1944 when I was four years
old, I ran away from home. Getting a beating, slapped around, and
having soap rubbed in my eyes got me going. Mom said that I hurt her
and now she was going to hurt me.Grandma’s apartment was nine
blocks away, and I was on my way.
Wartime gasoline rationing
made the streets quiet, and the East End Drug where Grandma’s
apartment was located I knew well. It was my best-loved sanctuary…I
loved Grandma, and she loved me. She named me stakkar, and
said in
Norwegian that means “poor
thing.” Grandma was
fully aware of her daughter’s
personality
and her eccentric
dangerous
behavior.
Great
aromas wafted
up from Grandma’s humble
little
kitchen where Scandinavian cookies were always in abundance. Her
dessert
specialty was prunes whipped up in whipping cream, oh so good!
Grandma
was also a “poor thing.” When Grandma
was sixteen years old
she
and four
of her
brothers
set sail
for America saying a final farewell to family and friends, and
returning was not going to be
an option.
Grandma
told me a story about when the sailors played a prank on her bringing
her a banana to see what she would do with it. Her little Norwegian
village was isolated amd
only accessible by boat in
good weather with no electric or phone where
they spoke only an Old
Norse dialect.
She had never seen a banana.
Grandma
and her brothers headed west
in America and did
not stop
until they reached a place where they could speak Norse. North
Dakota is where they settled,
but it
was not yet a state, and Indian raids were serious business. You
could see a long way in
Dakota Territory but you
couldn’t see much. There
wasn’t anything to obstruct your view, not
even a tree for a bird to sit
in…they had to hop around on the ground. The soil was fabulously
rich, and farming was a dream come true, not like rock bound Norway.
Land was free for the taking.
Grandma
married Edwin
Benson, a landed Norwegian.
He and his brother weren't
taught any work ethics, and after the parents died the farm was lost.
The sad part was that oil
was later
discovered on the farm land.
Grandpa
Benson took a job as a watchman on the railroad when
he moved to Superior,
Wisconsin, with his wife and
three daughters.
When the great depression hit
and the “Hoover Days” began the family took up residence in a
humble shanty in the woods east of Brule, Wisconsin.
My
father married my mother, Myrtle Benson, the
second of the three daughters and
provided
her widowed mother
Bertha an apartment above his
East End Drug
Store.
Back to my runaway story, yes
it was “poor thing” Grandma.
Grandma’s apartment:
Prominently displayed on her
living room wall was a large sepia photo of her younger brother in
his military dress uniform. He died in 1918.
I met one of Grandma’s
brothers, Ingvald, who was a cook aboard a Great Lakes ore carrier
that frequently called at Duluth-Superior harbor. He would always
came to visit his sister Bertha arriving by city bus. One day when I
was with my father in his car in downtown Superior, I spotted Ingvald
at the corner of Belknap and Tower where he would transfer to the
East End bus line. My Dad stopped and picked up Ingvald and drove
him to Grandma’s apartment above the East End Drug Store. Gasoline
was rationed at this time. but Dad received gasoline ration stamps
because his drug store did home deliveries of medicine. Dad’s blue
Studebaker coupe had to out last the war, rusted out floor boards and
all.
Back to Grandma’s apartment,
and my runaway story:
Grandma had a still working
very old desk top tube radio that we would tune into for noon time
weather and news plus some favorite evening broadcasts. During the
war news was especially important for us and couldn’t be missed.
Her
well-worn
dining
room table and chairs were
part of a set with a
bureau
of drawers filled with
her
few valuables.
She
treasured an envelope from her family in the Old County. It had been
opened and resealed with an
ornate tape decorated with Nazi
swastikas.
Inside
the envelope the letter had been meticulously blanked out to censor
the message. This was my
first
hand look at Fascism that was spreading across Europe with lightning
speed and killing thousands in its wake. From
the very northern tip of Norway on
the Arctic Ocean at
Kirkenes all the way south to the Straits
of Gibraltar in southern Spain fascism had total control of the
west coast of Europe. This was frighting and resistance was
imperative. The U. S. was at the same time battling
fanatic Kamikaze
Imperial fascist
Japan
in
the Pacific Ocean.
I have to interject that in
1944 I was only four years old, but I have to expand on this
monumental story of my family’s involvement of resistance to
Hitler’s Nazi invasion of little neutral Norway with a population
of 3 million.
In the predawn hours of April
10, 1940, three German battle ships flying British flags stealthy and
deceptively entered the Oslo Fjord refusing to halt on demand and
identify themselves. My Grandfather’s nephew then performing his military duty (national guard), took aim with his
Krupp German made cannon and sent 1,600 of the deceptive invading
Nazi’s to the bottom of Oslo harbor. Neutral Norway whether they
wanted it or not had entering the war and would be brutally occupied.
They would be just one of the thirteen invaded countries of WWII.
Grandma’s oldest daughter,
Esther enlisted in the military and was off to war. Her youngest
daughter Nelly Bergland married a career military man who served five
years in Europe during WWII, and was later sent off to Korea.
My dad’s older brother
Lawrence was inducted into the army infantry and shipped off to North
Africa and then to Italy where he was involved in the bloodiest
invasion battle of WWII at Anzio, Italy. That brutal experience
altered him for life.
Dr. Rudy Christianson, my
father’s very best friend, I called him my “Uncle Rudy” gave
his life to the war effort taking amphetamines “speed” so that
he could do his life saving surgery until he literary dropped. Less
than three years after the war his heart quit.
My father was deferred from
military service because he was vital to the efforts at home, but his
father, born in 1879, was eligible to be called to service. I
remember my father, born in 1908, telling me that regarding military
inscription of his father, he told him,
“How could they take an old
man like you?”
Back to Grandma’s apartment:
I was safe with Grandma.
There came a knock on the door
and Grandma had me hide in her bedroom. There was a police man
inquiring about me. Grandma protected me, and she sent the policeman
on his way.
In retrospect looking back on
this incident I learned about poisonous personalities and how
deceptive and cunning they could be. Bipolar psychopathic
personalities are impossible to live with and absolutely no positive
outcome can ever be expected.
What
sparked my memories?
I
recently listened to the audio version of the book, The Rise and
Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. I
highly recommend it. It is apropos to our current times.
View my author's page on Amazon.