In the Pacific, Art was given African American troops to direct in the work of constructing air bases. Although a few African American units performed heroic service on the battlefield, most were relegated to jobs of manual labor. There had been some previous incidents resulting in bodily harm to white officers, but Art was unaware of this when he assumed his command. He showed up at the mess hall on the first morning and choked on the coffee. One of the other officers asked him, “Is something wrong?” to which he replied, “There certainly is! This coffee is undrinkable.” The officer explained that the men were from the South and were used to sweetening the coffee with molasses. They had been asked not to do it, but to no avail. He asked Art if he would like to take on the duties of mess officer along with his assignment. Art agreed and had the molasses out of the coffee by the end of the week. He was very proud of his men. Although sometimes fights broke out among them, he seldom had to interfere. He felt that if you explained the work clearly to them and gave the orders in a dignified way, they always rose to the occasion. They worked hard and were willing to put in long days when the situation demanded. When Art left this assignment, the men personally thanked him for treating them with respect.
Art and Helen both enjoyed good rapport with the officers and enlisted personnel. Neither one of them smoked, so they could afford to be generous with cigarettes that came their way. They each received an officer’s liquor ration, but since they both drank in moderation, they always had extra bottles to give or trade for favors. They felt that many of the officers drank too much, especially out of loneliness, sometimes leading to fatal mistakes. The only time Art got drunk was at a party he hosted to celebrate his promotion to captain.
In her wartime journal, Helen often recorded that she felt lonely and missed home. She also missed Art and wondered where he was and what their future would be like together. When they had a chance or were particularly lonely, they wrote to each other. In the first six months of the war, Art wrote Helen over fifty times. The contents of their letters were very strange. They could not write anything that would divulge their location, assignment or future deployments. They also didn’t want to worry the other about safety concerns. So Helen’s letters referred to entertainments on shipboard and Art’s told of little projects like scrounging up scraps of wood to build a tent floor and a circular table around the center post. They both wrote extensively about their plans for a future together, picturing the family they intended to have and even suggesting names for children not yet conceived. Times of crisis and danger were entirely left out. If Art found it hard writing letters that wouldn’t be marked up by the censors, it was even worse when he had the censorship duty for the men on one of the islands. He was embarrassed to be reading their personal correspondence and having to obliterate passages. There is little privacy in war.
Carrying out a correspondence between two active officers in the military was like shooting randomly and hoping to hit the target by accident. Both were being deployed to different assignments in their specific theaters, so the mail had a hard time catching up. On one day, Helen received twenty-two letters from Art, forwarded from previous posts. But there were many times when these cherished letters were all they had to carry them through.
Many of Helen’s fellow nurses were single and on the prowl. They were often disappointed to be meeting married men while the single men were clustered around Helen. “Nothing so attracts young men than knowing that you are already taken and they are off the hook.” She does remember one young man who was really smitten with her and tried to talk her out of her engagement to Art. He even asked to see her boyfriend’s picture. When Helen produced it, he turned away dejectedly. She explains, “He knew that as a young man with no great prospects he could never compete with this older, mature, confident officer.” She, herself, rose to the rank of first lieutenant.
Art and Helen were matched in their ability to see things practically and do what was necessary when conditions demanded. During the hard times of the Depression, both families had taken on whatever jobs had to be done because they could not afford to pay for repairs. They brought that same self-reliant, can-do attitude to their military lives. Art proved to be an adept problem solver. He was told at one of his postings that the outdoor shower was terribly cold. They were wondering if he could come up with some kind of heating unit for the large water storage tank. He looked the situation over carefully and told them to place corrugated metal sheeting over the water tank so that the heat of the tropical sun would warm the water. It worked perfectly.
Art was very observant as well. As he was walking one evening, he noticed a house on a hill with a flickering light. He originally thought that the light bulb was not screwed in completely so that it was only making intermittent contact, but when it was still flickering the next evening, he reported it to the command with his appraisal of the situation. Sure enough, the owner of the house was a Japanese sympathizer who was sending coded signals to a submarine offshore. The man was quickly apprehended.
Helen was noted for her surgical set-ups, where everything necessary for the procedure would be available on the tray for the surgeon. In one particular case, however, the doctor needed an unexpected instrument. Helen informed a nearby corpsman of what was needed and instructed him to get it from the autoclave, the sterilization unit. He came back shortly afterward to tell her that the autoclave had not cooled enough to be opened and he was unable to obtain the necessary piece. She informed him that “this cannot wait,” hurried out of the operating room, took hold of the handle, yanked it open and returned with the instrument. The corpsman was stunned that this relatively small woman had forced the autoclave open when he, a fairly sizable man, was unable to budge it, but he attributed the feat to her high level of adrenaline.
Art had his share of dangers and hardships. He and his men suffered through tropical storms so strong that they sent the corrugated metal roofs of the hangars and storage buildings flying, encountered occasional Japanese snipers holed up on the islands and struggled with construction problems, material shortages, mosquitoes, swollen rivers and a host of diseases. Everyone slept under netting and took the government-issued quinine regularly to fight malaria. Although logistics did an incredible job supplying troops all over the world, there were occasional supply shortages. After a particularly long stint with no fresh fruits or vegetables, Art, who could never tolerate raw onion, remembered eating an onion like an apple when supplies finally arrived and enjoying every bite.
Hospital ships and camps were responsible for the care of injured prisoners of war. They were kept in separate, guarded wards but given the same treatment, the same access to medical supplies and the same food as the American soldiers. While stationed on shore at a camp in North Africa, Helen discovered that her Italian prisoners who were bedfast were not receiving their meals. She saw to it that everyone who could not make it to the mess hall would be served by the corpsmen. Later, when she was overseeing German troops, she went around with an interpreter, asking the men, “Have you eaten?” They all shook their heads in the affirmative. One of the wounded officers came to her to ask about the questioning. When she said that previous bedfast patients had not been fed, the officer responded, “They were Italian. We are Rommel’s men. We take care of our own. None of us who can walk will eat a bite until our fellow soldiers in bed are fed.” She had great respect for the Germans and their esprit de corps. General Rommel, the Desert Fox, was known not only for his daring strategies but also for his elite fighting troops.
Each ward was responsible for preparing its own food. When a shipment of prime beef arrived, Helen gave instructions for steaks to be fried up for all the patients, including the POWs. As the beautiful steaks were placed in front of the German prisoners, they became suspicious, thinking this had to be a last meal before execution. Helen explained, “We have received a huge shipment of meat. We are in a desert land with limited refrigeration. We have two choices: serve it now or throw it away. You certainl
y don’t think we should waste it, do you?” Since they had lived on canned rations prior to capture, they happily accepted the steaks.
Each of the Allied nations had to house its own prisoners of war. This raised much difficulty as the war started to turn against the Axis powers. The enemy wanted to make sure that they surrendered to the Americans, when hope of victory was lost. The Americans explained to them that they would be shipped to the United States and possibly farmed out as laborers to ranches and farms in Texas and the Midwest if they volunteered. That suited the young captives very well as they had heard about the Wild West and the cowboy way of life. Many greatly enjoyed their time in the United States, grew very close to the families for which they worked and often were hosted by those families when they applied for American citizenship after the war. Those who were captured by the Russians fared badly. Helen says that there was some scandal about Americans backing off at the end of a campaign and allowing the Russians to take prisoners.
On the homefront, meat was among the scarcest of rationed commodities. This March 28, 1943 issue of the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph identifies the shopper as “one of the lucky ones.” Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
As the war drew to a close, Helen and Art were anxious to be reunited. Germany surrendered, and Helen was sent home to await the refitting of her ship for the Pacific Theater. Art, who was due leave, learned that she would be home and pulled every favor he could to puddle jump his way across the Pacific, sometimes sitting for hours on a cargo box because there were no available seats on the planes. They were reunited in Pittsburgh and married within two weeks, on June 16, 1945. Helen had a summer uniform, but Art found the day very hot in his wool uniform bought for the European campaign and barely worn. Her mother gathered roses from her gardens to take to the florist since there were no flower shipments for the entire war. They had an extended leave together, during which time Japan surrendered. Helen learned that the war was over, that she was pregnant and that a relative had died in a traffic accident all on the same day. With her pregnancy confirmed, she was discharged in October 1945 and was finally able to join Art in Florida. He was placed on terminal leave in October and couldn’t wait to take his bride back to Pittsburgh as soon as she was discharged. He was officially discharged in March 1946.
First Lieutenant Helen McGrogan and Captain James A. Krebs were married in uniform on June 16, 1945, only a month after Germany’s surrender. Helen McGrogan Krebs.
Art made quite a name for himself as a problem solver in civil engineering. He worked for Dravo Corporation and later for Peter F. Loftus Corporation, often on loan to other companies that needed help with structural problems. Helen kept her nursing credentials valid but settled into raising five children and using her expertise to assist family members as a private duty nurse during hospital stays and to help in neighborhood emergencies. Unlike many veterans who suppressed their war memories, as noncombatants, Helen and Art had more good memories than bad ones and spoke of the war frequently. They carefully packed away their army paraphernalia, and they decorated their house with souvenirs they had collected from all over the world. They both kept contact with several war friends. One of Helen’s friends, Edna Buzzard McElheny, known as Buzzy, moved into the same developing neighborhood in Upper St. Clair, continuing a friendship that lasted the rest of her life. Another good friend, Margaret Jane Moore, married Art’s brother and became a sister-in-law. Because she had cared for so many pilots during the war, Helen did not take her first plane flight until 1970, claiming that she knew these pilots when they were young daredevils and that “those who survived the war are now flying commercial planes.” They engaged in many activities with their children, but both had spent too much time in tents during the war to find family camping enticing. Art and Helen wore army fatigues for heavy jobs in the building and maintenance of their house and yard. Their youngest son, when first hearing the expression “Your mother wears combat boots!” when he was in grade school, responded, “How did you know? She only wears them in the garden.” For both Art and Helen, the war was an enriching and maturing experience that gave them pride in the service they were able to render to their country. It also tempered them for the challenges they faced in their life together.
WORLD WAR II IN PITTSBURGH, CITY AND COUNTY
Ed and Rose Campbell,
As told to Justin Hoffman
Edward Campbell grew up in Oakdale, a coal mining community ten miles west of downtown Pittsburgh. It was primarily rural, and there were none of the developments that would come into existence in the postwar years. He and his future wife, Rose, shared many similar experiences in World War II America. They vividly remember their reactions to hearing the news of what happened on Sunday, December 7, 1941. Ed recalls how his family had just gotten back from church. They heard on the radio that the American base in Hawaii had been attacked by the Japanese. More details of the attack emerged as the family gathered around the radio later that night. At the time, he was thirteen years old and in the eighth grade. In school the following day, his teacher turned on the radio so the class could listen to President Roosevelt ask Congress for a declaration of war on Japan and describe the “Day of Infamy.” In the coming days following the declaration, Ed began to see the movement of troops toward Pittsburgh. His school was at the intersection of Routes 22 and 30, and he witnessed the mass convoys of troops on the way east. “Back then, Route 30 was the main passage through Pittsburgh if you were coming from the west and heading east.” He remembers that these troops were coming from posts in the Midwest to guard the East Coast from attacks by the Germans. All roads were closed to civilian traffic as the convoys passed. The teacher had no hope of getting the children away from the window to teach class. He remembers it vividly because it “was quite an experience for a kid who was thirteen years old.”
The day after Pearl Harbor, applicants jammed the navy recruiting office. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said that in Pittsburgh, applications to the navy exceeded those to the army or marines. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
Ed remembers young men lining up at recruiting stations all over Pittsburgh. “All of the eighteen-year-old boys the next day went to the Carnegie recruiting station to join.” Ed says the town of Carnegie had the closest recruiting station. “Some kids ‘forged’ their [parent’s] name, like Audie Murphy did, so they could join when they were sixteen. You had to have your parent’s signature to join when you were seventeen. There were a lot of parents who had no problem doing that. However, if you didn’t join up, most just waited to turn eighteen to be drafted. Everybody backed the government and came together, and no one questioned anything.” He pointed out that he had a friend, Conrad Zizinski, who joined the paratroopers and jumped into Normandy. That friend made a couple more jumps and then joined a glider regiment that later flew wooden gliders into combat. “That guy was my hero,” he says proudly.
Although H.J. Heinz Company continued to produce traditional food product lines, it entered new fields during the war. Its Pittsburgh North Side Works also made glider wings with a span in excess of one hundred feet. Senator John Heinz History Center.
The male civilian population was greatly decreased by the draft. They were taking a lot of people. Even Ed’s eighth-grade math teacher, Howard Robinson was drafted into the navy. He decided to stay in the military after the war. Ed remembers that there were no male teachers left in the school. It was just women who ran the school and taught. His father was also eligible for the draft at the time of the war. “My father was a coal miner,” Ed says. “He was thirty-five and a half years old and he received one six-month deferment, which took him past the draft limit of thirty-six.” He notes that his father had four children and his occupation was needed because coal was so vital during the war.
Ed talks about going to the movies and watching the newsreels before the film. He liked western movies, “but everybody looked forward to the newsreels about the war.” According to Ed Campbell, the audience actually cheered du
ring the newsreel footage. “People were always hanging around until the next show to watch the action again. Everybody was always trying to spot somebody they knew in the newsreels,” he recalls. “Sometimes a local boy would actually be spotted in the film and you would see it the next day in the paper.”
One unifying phenomenon was the selfless service given by virtually all who lived through this time. Everything from rationing food to collecting scrap metal was expected of everybody. Every man, woman and child knew they had an obligation and asked no questions in helping out a cause they knew to be greater than themselves. “Defense work started up right away and everybody saved everything that they could,” Ed remembers. “Everybody took scraps to school and carried it on the school bus, and a truck would come and pick it up. Everybody had to take what they had to school. It wasn’t an option to go empty-handed. They took anything, metal, paper, rubber, anything that could be reused.”
Young people showed their commitment by buying war bonds. Purchasing these war bonds was a popular thing to do for people at that time, especially children, who would buy stamps that were worth a dime or a quarter and save them. “When you saved $18.75, your war bond would be worth $25.00 after the war,” Ed says. Every week they would sell war bonds at his school, and every child had money in hand because it was not an option not to buy the war bonds. “Back in those days nobody had savings accounts, everybody just bought war bonds,” he recounts.
Pittsburgh Remembers World War II Page 10
