RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR YEARS. 1940-1945 - John M. Grimsrud

 

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.

In Search of the "Old Country"

Written by John M. (Bing) Grimsrud
                                                                     
In many ways, it seems like a very long time ago and in many ways, it was.
I still have an indelible mental image of Grandpa Christ, “C.C.” Grimsrud, leaning back in his big gray stuffed easy chair after dinner with a far-off look in his eyes as he spoke of the “Old Country”.
The “Old Country”?
My young interest was perked and my curiosity was stirred as my mind searched for answers.
Where was this “Old Country”?
What was this “Old Country”?
Who lived in this “Old Country”?
Though the questions went unanswered, they remained alive and my curiosity haunted my dreams throughout my life.
By and by Grandpa passed away but that seed of curiosity he planted continued to live on in my mind until one day when I was a middle-aged person I just had to find out about the “Old Country”.
How ironic it all is now looking back over those years. As I write these words, I realize that I am now at the age of 70, older than Grandpa Christ was when he perked my curiosity back in the early 1940s with his talk about the “Old Country”.
My first trip to the “Old Country” happened back in 1983. I had the time and money so all I lacked were the contacts.
A second cousin of mine named Dee Braverman had contacted me in her search for Grimsrud family information while researching the family tree. I was surprised how very little I actually knew about the family history. However, in corresponding with Dee, she put me in contact with the Grimsruds in the “Old Country”.
Next I sent off a letter to Kari Hoven, who I had met when she visited in America and spent one year in 1948 with Grimsrud relatives in the Superior, Wisconsin area.
Kari turned out to be the very best person to correspond with because of her incredible aptitude to recall names, people, places and dates, plus she has an incredibly exuberant enthusiasm. (I was amazed at the family resemblance that Kari had to my father…they could have been twins.)
It turned out that Kari remembered me, my parents and every detail of her visit to America, (the “New Country”), in vivid details. She still had a photo of my little brother and me from her 1948 visit.
My wife Jane and I spent six weeks in Norway in 1983 and got to hear countless stories told by my relatives who Kari made sure we had the opportunity to meet. We were with different group’s morning, noon and night, every day and the quantity of coffee and open-faced Norwegian sandwiches we consumed was unfathomable. We took notes, kept a logbook and took photos of nearly everyone we met and their homes.
The ocean and the distance that separated the “Old Country” and the New Country in those days after Grandpa Christ left were more than enormous. Consider this, I was the very first of all of my grandfather’s direct descendants to make a trip back to the “Old Country”. Grandpa Christ left in 1896 and it wasn’t until 1983 that I set foot upon the rock bound coast of Norway, the “Old Country”.

This photo was taken seven years before Henry Ford produced his first automobile in 1903. It was a transitionary time between horse and the industrial age of steam power.
The above photo was taken in 1896 in Superior, Wisconsin, at a studio on Conner’s Point then known as West Superior. Left is Christ “C.C.” Grimsrud b.1879, my grandfather.  Next is Louis the (adopted stepson of Martin Grimsrud b.1862) and Hans Grimsrud b.1877 and the older brother of C.C. Grimsrud. Christ, Hans and Martin were all brothers born in Norway who immigrated to America before 1895.
The era was referred to as “the golden age of bicycles”. My grandfather Christ, on the left, had a Victor bicycle, the first with pneumatic tires that were glued onto lightweight wooden rims. Hundreds of firms were competing in this intense market of high demand where the typical bicycle was selling for $100.00.
The bicycle in the center is equipped with a carbide lamp, the same type used by miners.
Inspirations and motivations that drove my Norwegian ancestors to take that leap into the strange new world leaving behind family, friends, home and inheritance were many and individual.
In the history of humankind this immigration was an unprecedented phenomena and nothing quite like it had ever happened before. Previously the human condition was a victim of their geography. But now the option of escape flung open a new door of opportunity.  
Dazzling stories of limitless fertile lands across the sea in far off America, free for the taking, lit up the imaginations of the young Scandinavians who had never even remotely dared to dream such a dream before. Their Viking spirit had come alive.
These were the first days of the industrial revolution when the might of steam power opened new horizons and lifted the burden from men’s shoulders and sped them across oceans and continents. The world would never be the same again.
The American frontier of those years was anything but a utopian environment. A violent civil war exploded in 1861 and the next year the American government offered every immigrant 160 acres of surveyed land while the native Indians were massacring the new settlers in Minnesota and the Dakota Territory. These were not good times for America and in 1879, the year my grandfather was born in Norway, a great economic depression struck America.
As an added incentive to immigrate, Sweden began in 1860 to enact policies toward Norway restricting their sovereignty that caused enough political strife to ultimately dissolve their union and in 1905 Norway was declared an independent kingdom.  
In spite of the many horrible hardships these new immigrants would face in their new country, they kept coming in larger and larger numbers year after year. At the same time the Dakota Territory embarked on a land boom that would last from 1879 until 1920. The convergence of these extraordinary circumstances captivated an entire generation caught in the crosshairs of time.
Here I can speak for my family because they were part of this monumental and irreversible happening that sent a nation’s eager and daring young people to a far off land saying a permanent goodbye to family, friends and home.  
The stories were many and the reasons for leaving were underscored with powerful motivating forces that in the end would result in a torrent of immigration that would ultimately find more Norwegians in Minnesota than in Norway.
Some of the stories ended in brilliant successes built on hard work and determination others fizzled away on bad land farms but the good stories and the bad all held fascinating human interest of a time in human history like none other and my family was a part of it all.
Here is an observation and quote from George Grimsrud of Janesville, Wisconsin. “Norwegians are tough, they live a long time, and there isn't much land [in Norway].”
In addition to the fact that there isn’t much land in Norway that is productive enough to support a family, the reality is that in a family of thirteen children like my grandfather’s, only one would inherit the farm. The rest would have to do the best they were able and the incentive to depart became a very powerful and motivating force.
Martin Grimsrud, born December 2, 1862 on the Grimsrud farm at Skoger, Norway, was the second child and first son of thirteen so he was, according to the custom of the time, the one to inherit the farm.
We can only guess now what inspired and drove Martin to leave the certainty and security of his home to make a totally new beginning in a strange and far off land that held out only one promise, and that was opportunity. Well, he wasn’t the only one to leave but he gave up more than most. Martin was driven beyond the distant horizon by the spark of his Viking ancestry.
To those that picked up the challenge and executed their dreams their fate was all but sealed. Like leaping from a tall building, at the moment it might have seemed like the right thing to do but once air-borne, no matter how strong the pangs of remorse might have been, the outcome was hopelessly irreversible.  
So it would be with these Viking spirited immigrants chasing their dreams across the oceans to America’s wild and unsettled frontiers.
Martin was not the first Grimsrud of our family to immigrate to America.  An uncle of Martin, Anders Grimsrud, born in 1839 and the fourth child of Peder Christophersen (Grimsrud) and his mother Anne Beathe Andersdatter Skot of Dalen immigrated to America in 1869 along with his wife Karen Antonette Christonsdatter Grytebakke.
Evidently Anders had a powerful influence on his nephew Martin who then came to Atwater, Minnesota, in America and then became established and went on to assist many of his 12 brothers and sisters to immigrate to America. Martin first settled in Minnesota in Dane County and next in Pope County. He later moved on to Superior, Wisconsin where he married Randi Hoff.

 Above, the first grocery store in Superior, Wisconsin, located on Conner’s Point and built by Martin Grimsrud, my grandfather’s oldest brother. The store was featured on page 29 in the publication Eye of the Northwest by Frank A. Flower, printed in 1889.  
My grandfather, Christ C.C. Grimsrud the tenth child of those thirteen, owes his opportunities in America to his older brother Martin who not only helped him to immigrate but taught him the meat market business and even helped him to go into his own private business.
Martin Grimsrud was one of the success stories. He had a dynamic life, was a successful businessman, became active in the local government and had a good family.

©2010 John M. Grimsrud


To read more about the golden age of bicycles, I recommend The Lost Cyclist by David V. Herlihy.