Part One: World War 2
Written by Angeline Mares Stone for the Credit River Reunion, January 17th, 1999
I was not quite ten years old when our family moved from Credit River to Lakeville, but those first years were filled with rich experiences. those ten years included a world war in which two brothers, Miles and Ewald became soldiers, and another brother, Clem, helped my parents Frank and Emma Mares run the 196 acre farm.
I was the sixth child in a family of seven children. From my vantage point, I watched the constantly busy lives of people older than I. The events in the wider world were contrasted by the pastoral setting of the white frame farmhouse set on a hill, surrounded on one side by a grove of Chinese elms, and on the other side by farm buildings. The daily lives of grown ups were immersed in caring for livestock, growing crops, and maintaining the farm and household. Amidst the tasks of daily living, they had to absorb the realities of a war far away on two fronts, Europe and Japan.
1943 US Army jacket from WW2. From the SCHS Collections.
And yet so close, for there were letters from Ewald and Myles which arrived with regularity, describing parts of that far away world. The letters supplemented the radio broadcasts, and I do remember the muffled voice of the overseas correspondents, especially the name David Shoenbrun. The necessity of rationing to conserve materials for the war effort also brought the war into the daily lives; it required real ingenuity and resourcefulness to maintain a farm and household under those conditions, Through determination, a certain daily rhythm was established.
The hailstorm of July, 1944 abruptly disturbed that rhythm. I was four and I remember that the windows in our kitchen were shattered, broken glass lying all over the floor. My mother picked me up as she went to light a fire in the stove. I can remember her hands trembling as she did so , and I remember piles of hail outside our back door. In the aftermath, I realized that my little black pet hen had become a victim of the storm. A machine shed was destroyed, crops were destroyed and once again the grownups were required to reestablish their lives.
Somehow they did. In Europe, the Normandy Invasion had take place the month before, and now letters from Ewald were written from France.After her long days of work, my mother would take time to sit at the kitchen table and write letters to her sons. I remember her letting me draw an outline of my hand and color it to send off with her letter. I was four and could not write then but I wanted to say something I guess.
The announcement that the war was over in Europe was good news in our home. But my mother worried aloud when the mailbox at the end of our long driveway failed to yield a letter from Ewald. Her worst fears were realized on May 16, 1945. I hardly remember anything about that day except for its very ending. My brother, Clem, tells me that it was a sunny spring day, that he had just finished planting corn and had put the work horses into the barn for the night. It should have been a good day.
I Remember a man coming to our front porch door one never used by friends and relatives. I stood off to the right of the porch and watched as my mother began to tremble and my father fell to the ground and rolled in agony. Ewald had been killed in Germany on May 3rd, five days before Germany surrendered, My Aunt Ann walked me and my younger sister Nancy away from the house and I remember her trying to explain to that not-quite-three-year-old what death meant.
This intense memory was the opening of my awakened childhood. I knew that a brother was killed in the war, a brother of whom I had only one memory- that of him standing in the doorway, seeming to fill it with his large frame. I witnessed the sadness of my mother and the anger of my father and felt both myself.
Yet there was also joy at times. The war was over in August of that year. My older brother Myles came home and I remember a party given to celebrate his return. A large container of ice cream, housed in canvas to keep it cold, was placed near a door in the large kitchen. The party spilled over into the dining room as more people arrived and the atmosphere of celebration signaled permission to be happy once again.