Pittsburgh Remembers World War II

by Dr. Joseph Rishel

  After ten months, the navy decided to “get rid of us.” Dick was not in the navy long enough to rise above the rank of seaman first class. While he chose to return home to enter college at Penn State, an alternative for extended service was given to the men in his unit. If Dick had joined the “enlistments for a ship called the USS Dixie,” he would have been sent to Bikini Island, where postwar nuclear testing was being conducted. “The fellows who enlisted didn’t know they were going to have aftereffects years later,” Dick muses.

  Dick applied to and was accepted at Penn State. Many of the GI Bill college students were much older than Dick and had more war experience, but on the whole, Dick feels that he and the other veterans took their studies more seriously than the recent high school graduates. Many freshmen were shipped out to the state system of teachers’ colleges, so Dick attended Slippery Rock for one year and then completed his degree as a business major at Penn State Main. Dick feels that the classes were rigorous, but some of the professors, due to a lack of adequate faculty following the war, were required to teach courses that were not in their field.

  Ironically, at the end of college, Dick was again called up for military duty in the Korean War, but he never served. He has been honorably discharged from two wars, while never serving in battle. Rumors also began to emerge that two new world powers following World War II, the United States and the USSR, could make the “Cold War hot,” and Dick thought there just might be a chance for a third call to war.

  Dick still has his navy uniforms, but he laughingly notes it was a wonder he could ever fit into them. He remembers the difficulty of dressing with thirteen buttons on the pants and the lack of a zipper or buttons on the top. The Navy Amphibious Insignia was sewn on the left shoulder and the Navy Honorable Discharge Insignia on the right shoulder. Honorably discharged military were allowed to wear their uniforms for up to thirty days after discharge, so this insignia kept the MPs from thinking they were AWOL. Dick laughingly explains how the military personnel thought the eagle inside a wreath more aptly resembled a ruptured duck, so it became “the ruptured duck insignia,” a term that hardly seems “honorable.”

  Dick Martin has maintained friendships with several of his shipmates through the ensuing years. However, he says the highlight for many men “was their time in the service, and they will talk about that until the day they die.” To Dick, “it was a different era…and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I can’t give the same thing to our grandkids. Maybe our kids got a little bit of it, but not the grandkids. I can’t give it back to them.” Dick attributed the homefront unity, the discipline learned in the navy and working as a unit on the LSM 116 as major contributing factors in his outlook on life. He became a district manager for UGI Propane Company and, after retirement, opened an office supply store with his sons. He has been happily married for fifty-four years to Jeanne Cromie. They have raised three sons and two daughters and actively participate in the care and nurturing of their eight grandchildren. All their children live nearby, and family get-togethers are treasured. Dick always has a history book in hand, and he is a Civil War buff. He has continued working part time after his second retirement and on his eightieth birthday was still a docent at the Frick Art and Historical Center in Pittsburgh. His patriotism and love of his country are as strong and vigorous—however, perhaps not quite as idealistic—as that of the young seventeen-year-old boy yearning to be part of the Second World War.

  WORLD WAR II IN THE “ROCKS”

  Nora Mulholland,

  As told to Marian Mulholland

  The events that occurred in 1939 forever changed the history of the world and of millions of people in dramatic, often violent ways. They also changed the lives of those who never suffered directly from combat. While military powers gathered in preparation for large-scale clashes, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a young woman named Nora King had no idea that she, too, would face the challenges of World War II. The second youngest of nine girls, Nora was still living at the family home in McKees Rocks, just west of Pittsburgh, when the United States entered the war. Having finished high school, she had found a position working as a clerk in the employment office in downtown Pittsburgh.

  At the age of twenty-one, Nora was focusing on beginning her life as an adult and therefore was mostly ignorant of the struggle that loomed in Europe until a lighthearted family excursion was soured by the realities of the global political scene. Nora first heard about the war beginning in Europe while on a family picnic at Kennywood Park one sunny September day in 1939. A park employee announced Germany’s invasion of Poland over the loudspeaker. “There were many German and Polish immigrants at the park, and everyone suddenly got very quiet,” Nora says. While there was no demonstrative reaction, either positive or negative, from the crowd, Nora and her family first sensed trouble was brewing for America, too.

  After hearing of the outbreak of war overseas, a discernible tension began to grow in the United States. Nora found that the families in the ethnically diverse neighborhoods of Pittsburgh followed the news of German advances very carefully. Though their family ties to the old country remained, Nora believed that the trouble in Europe was something that would stay overseas. “Everyone knew the war was in Europe, but we never thought it would come to us.” Yet it did. On Sunday, December 7, 1941, when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, Nora was at church with her family. As the family walked home, this was the only topic of conversation among themselves and all whom they met on the way. They spent the rest of the day glued to the radio, listening to the commentary. When President Roosevelt delivered his famed “Day of Infamy” speech to Congress and the nation, Nora was again at church. This time, it was during her lunch hour, and Nora joined her fellow Catholic co-workers at Mass at St. Mary’s downtown. Again, she learned of world-changing events from those around her on her way back to work, and the office became quiet as employees gathered around the radio as the realization sunk in that war had begun.

  The day after Pearl Harbor, headlines such as this appeared in every American newspaper. Not wishing to disclose the actual number killed in the attack (2,400), government officials understated the true extent of the nation’s losses. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

  As a young woman, Nora need not fear the draft. But as she was already employed, she did not seek to obtain any of the new positions the war opened up for women. Once war was declared, her “mother [was] never so glad they had nine girls.” Their father was too old to be drafted, so the immediate family did not need to fear receiving death notices by telegram, as so many nearby families did. This did not mean the Kings were spared the sorrow of losing someone important to them in combat or seeing them sent off under the draft. Some male cousins close to the family were drafted. Those relatives who entered military service all stayed in the United States, far from the fighting. One cousin, Joe Jordan, chose to join the navy and was posted in Chicago uneventfully for the duration of the war. Eddie Hess, Nora’s brother-in-law, was less fortunate in his assignment. Drafted and sent to Georgia, the army took advantage of Eddie’s medical training and placed him in charge of returning soldiers suffering from “battle fatigue” or post-traumatic stress disorder. “He was miserable.” Whatever he witnessed, Eddie never spoke of it, but the family did come to realize that his duties took an emotional rather than physical toll on his health.

  Other families Nora knew were not so lucky. “Almost all the young men I went to school with were drafted.” One young man by the name of Gregoritch, a “foreigner” (in Nora’s parlance, a young man born to Polish immigrants) with whom she had attended school, was sent to the Pacific. Nora became his pen pal and wrote to him throughout the war. From their correspondence, Nora came to believe that Gregoritch had some romantic feelings for her, but she did not reciprocate. Though their letters continually crossed the ocean from the time Gregoritch was deployed until he returned home, the relationship dissolved upon his return with no great deal of regret from either party.

 
Nora also had an undisclosed “crush” whose movements she followed with great concern. This young man was another classmate named Tom Lyons who was drafted and sent to England. Before the war, he had often walked her home after school, as he lived only a few doors away. Though she did not communicate with Lyons as she did with Gregoritch, Nora nevertheless followed his deployments secondhand through news from his family. Unlike her Pacific correspondent, Lyons did not make it home alive. A member of the U.S. Army Air Corps, Lyons was killed in 1944 in a firefight over the English Channel just before the invasion of Normandy.

  Although there was a continuous stream of announcements of deaths, injuries and other heartbreaking stories to those at home, for the most part Nora remembers a sense of optimism regarding the war itself. No one imagined that defeat was a possibility. Morale remained high, and those on the homefront engaged in a variety of activities to become part of the “total war” effort. When the Battle of the Bulge occurred in 1944, Nora thought, for the first time, that the United States might actually lose the war. Despite the somewhat grim outlook that seeped into the community as the war raged, life on the homefront continued, but in a more somber fashion. Throughout the war and its attendant emotional and personal stresses, Nora continued to work in the employment office. She took advantage of the spaces left vacant by draftees at local universities to further her education. In 1943, she enrolled for two years of night school at Duquesne University and began to pursue her bachelor’s degree while working to help support her family.

  Though the draft demanded a continuous stream of young men, there was also a demand at home for skilled laborers for the war industries. In the employment office, Nora found her job shifting from white-collar placements to more technically skilled positions such as machinists and welders. Nora’s job also evolved to specialize in recruiting people to build landing ship tanks (LSTs) on Neville Island, such as those used during the D-Day invasion of France. There was no shortage of people volunteering for shipbuilding duties, as this type of work provided an exemption from the draft. Women also found employment in Pittsburgh’s booming defense industries, though typically not in manual labor–intensive positions. Nora’s sister Nellie found a secretarial position at the Neville Island Works that she kept throughout the war.

  Workers bow their heads in prayer during a plant assembly. Such gatherings were common occurrences throughout the war. William J. Gaughan Collection, University of Pittsburgh.

  The serious nature of the work occurring at Neville Island was sometimes buried under its more social aspects. The launches of new LSTs provided an opportunity for those left at home to mingle and celebrate. Nora, Nellie and other unattached young women frequently attended the launches along with the naval officers’ wives and the few single men left at home. All of the sisters who were still unmarried and living at home spent their leisure time bowling. The young women of McKees Rocks and the older men who were turned away from service formed a cross-generational league that helped keep their minds off the struggle in which they did not have a direct role.

  The launching of an LST on Neville Island was cause for great celebration, complete with band and chorus. Note the Army-Navy E Award in the top tier of the grandstand, which itself was a permanent fixture at the naval yard. Senator John Heinz History Center.

  The labor shortage created by the draft offered new economic opportunities for her family. As women began to enter the workplace, the King family joined in the female employment surge. Nora’s sister, Florence, got a job at Mellon Bank. She was possibly the first female accountant the bank ever hired. “The war gave the Irish and Italian families a way into the banking business. They [the banks] had to take them because of the labor shortage caused by the draft,” says Nora.

  During the war, the family bought a lot of bonds. In the long run, this turned out to be a good investment. The family used the funds from the bonds to provide medical care for their father after his retirement. Sustaining the family also became more difficult in light of the efforts to support the war. While all the girls worked to pay for their own clothes and nonessential items, rationing caused problems at home. Their mother could not get enough butter for her recipes and would routinely trade sugar credits for butter stamps to get all the items she needed. Despite the inconvenience and the difficulty in obtaining certain food staples, the family never went hungry and even had access to fresh produce. The King family had a victory garden with a neighbor, Joe Graff. He plowed and portioned out a section of a three-acre lot on Pittsburgh’s North Side for the girls to use. There they grew potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce and cabbage. The girls tended the garden in shifts, two or three times per week. Some were more enthusiastic about it than others. Nora says, “Florence couldn’t stand it, but Nellie loved to spend time in the garden.”

  In addition to the “patriotic” produce, the King girls sought to do their duty in more direct ways. Five of the girls volunteered and served as air raid wardens. They were trained in the proper procedures and issued the full air raid equipment, including some helmets Nora loathed. They participated in a few small-scale drills, but as the war never reached American soil, the girls did not have any actual raids to supervise.

  Students from a vocational agriculture course at Westinghouse High School harvest lettuce at their victory garden in Frick Park, June 1943. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

  Although she experienced the news of Pearl Harbor as traumatic and distressing, Nora did not experience strong emotional responses as the war drew to a close in 1945. Even the dropping of the atom bomb was more remote to young Nora than the impact of Pearl Harbor had been. As the war was winding down, the work Nora had taken on while the young men embarked on campaigns around the world became the main focus of her life. After the war, the employment office changed its role to the unemployment office. The focus was no longer on finding people to fill positions but rather on finding positions for returning soldiers. The work also changed in scale and focus. The flood of returning men meant that fewer women sought employment. Work became centered on administrating so-called 52-20s, a benefit plan for returning soldiers. The soldiers received as much as twenty dollars per week for up to a year to ensure they would not find themselves in dire financial straits. The great number of returning soldiers also affected Nora’s education. As the veterans returned, the GI Bill caused a great influx of male students. She decided not to continue her education.

  Although the Times Square photograph of V-J Day celebrations was widely popularized, similar scenes, such as this one in downtown Pittsburgh, occurred in every American city. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

  The only images that remain in her mind of the war’s end were those splashed on the front pages of the newspapers of the celebrations in New York City. Nora enjoyed the resurgence in her social life and took full advantage of the return of young men to go on many dates. Nora also leveraged her position in the employment office to accept various government positions in places such as Washington, D.C., and New York. While employed in New York State in 1949, four years after the war ended, Nora met a young former air force pilot and mechanic named Daniel Mulholland. He proposed on their first date, and while it took her a while to accept his proposal, the two married and settled in Pittsburgh’s East End to raise a family.

  Part II

  Military Narratives

  A B-24 GUNNER’S SURVIVAL IN ENEMY TERRITORY

  Alex Antanovich Jr.,

  As told to David Scott Beveridge

  Alex Antanovich Jr. was fortunate to safely return to his hometown of Cokeburg in Washington County, Pennsylvania, after serving in Europe during World War II. Antanovich parachuted to safety before his B-24 bomber crashed in Germany on a mission to cripple Nazi supply lines.

  Allied air assaults over France and Germany during World War II were seeing their greatest successes in the spring of 1944. The daylight bombing raids were targeting strategic German-held railroads to cut off enemy supply lines, while others were pounding the Fre
nch coast to drive back enemy forces. Nearly one thousand heavy bombers were flying missions that were also aimed at airfields and chemical and fuel stations. The B-24 Liberator, affectionately named LONI and carrying a crew of nine, did not fare so well. It crashed on May 30, 1944, near Rheine, Germany, after three of its four engines failed and the entire crew had bailed from the plane. Eight crew members were captured and held by the Nazis as prisoners of war. Incredibly, U.S. Army Air Force Sergeant Alex Antanovich Jr. evaded capture. Despite landing in enemy territory, he would be led by civilians to members of the resistance movement in Holland, where he was fed, clothed and sheltered for the next ten months. “I was in constant fear,” said Antanovich, recalling his story that had all the makings of a suspenseful war novel.