Christmas under the gun

World War II changed the way Americans celebrate their winter holidays. But those holidays of light also changed the dark experience of war.

by Terry W. Burger

It’s October, and Christmas is coming fast to America.

On one shelf there’s a rubber George W. Bush mask next to a few stacks of plastic vampire teeth and some packages of so-called baldhead wigs. Just across the aisle, a giant, inflatable Rudolph and Santa lawn ornament stands next to a skinny plastic Christmas tree with built-in rainbow-colored lights...

Some social critics believe that the holiday shopping madness that now begins months before Christmas—as well as the emphasis on gifts rather than religious observance—had its origin in World War II. It took a long time for packages to reach servicemen scattered across the globe, the theory goes, and merchants were only too happy to urge people to shop early for the season.

While the war may have brought some changes to the winter holidays, those holidays also brought some changes to the war. Christmas and Hanukkah gave a sense of hope and home to American GIs immersed in the vast horrors of the war.

Jack Gingrich of Easton, Maryland, now 79, was a signalman on the USS Chikaskia, an oil tanker in the Pacific during World War II. He served on the ship from its commissioning in 1942 through the end of the war. Gingrich says the officers on the Chikaskia made sure the holiday season was celebrated right. "We had Christmas dinner, on the deck," he remembers. "We always had religious services. We made a Christmas tree out of stuff the deck crew put together. We made do with what we had. We sang carols. I can’t remember if we had a chaplain, but we had religious services. I remember that."

Charlie McCue, 79, also served on the Chikaskia in the Pacific, as a bosun’s mate. He doesn’t remember any Christmas trees. "We were out in the South Pacific," he says. "Christmas just came and went. Of course we had a good meal. That’s about it. I believe it was turkey. We probably got them the last time we were in port. It was a Christmas meal, but like I say, no Christmas trees, nothing like that. We didn’t have any priest or minister at sea, no special services, but if we were in port, yeah, we’d have services."

Paul Meistrich, now 85, served in the navy, as did his brother Saul. His brother Jerry served in Europe with the army. All three survived the war, but Paul, who lives in the New York City area, is the only one of the three still living. "Saul served on an oil tanker in the Pacific," Meistrich says. "He was one of only two Jews on the ship. They were considered lucky, because they prayed every morning after strapping Tefillin (two small leather cases containing Hebrew scriptures that Jewish men traditionally wear on the forehead and the left arm during morning prayer). One day when the ship was under attack and everything was in chaos, the captain came running up to Saul and yelled, ‘Meistrich, have you put on those Tefillin yet?’"

Meistrich spent the war stateside, mostly on the west coast. The holiday season became important as a chance for Jewish soldiers and sailors to visit home. "For servicemen, it was either a chance to go home or to go out and have a good time," Meistrich says. "If you were near a synagogue..., they gave you the day off for religious observance. If you were on a ship or in the field, they were careful to have Passover and Yom Kippur. You always got time off for those two major holidays. I was fortunate to be 40 miles east of Los Angeles, and many homes were open to us."

Both Christmas and Hanukkah had been relatively minor holidays in American history. David Greenberg wrote for the magazine Slate in December 1998 that the Puritans who settled Massachusetts made it a crime to celebrate Christmas. The punishment for offenders was a fine of five shillings. Even just before World War II, Christmas was an important religious and family event, but was generally held close to the bosom of the family and community. It was not a major commercial opportunity.

The idea of exchanging gifts for the holiday came from a blend of German, Dutch, and English customs. The Christmas tree itself is a pagan custom that originated with the Germans and was Christianized in the early years of the church in Europe. German settlers introduced it to America, where it became popular after the Civil War.

Hanukkah, or the Festival of Lights, is close enough to Christmas on the calendar to get caught up in its social and economic currents. It is a celebration of an event that occurred about 2,100 years ago after a battle between the Jews and Syrian Greeks. The Jews won the battle, but their temple had been reduced to rubble. "As the Jews set about to rebuild and rededicate the holy place, they searched for the specially prepared, pure olive oil they needed to light the flame of the menorah, or candelabrum, which is supposed to burn day and night," wrote Greenberg. "Sadly, they found only enough oil for one day, but, amazingly, the oil lasted eight days, long enough for the Jews to prepare a new supply of oil—the miracle of Hanukah. "

Gift-giving, not originally a part of the Hanukkah celebration, has become a tradition for children, Greenberg wrote, adding that American Jews were not altogether comfortable with their traditional celebration evolving into something "fundamentally Christian. But parents couldn’t very well deprive their kids of gifts or seasonal merriment, and Hanukkah benefited from convenient timing."

Charles H. Glatfelter, professor emeritus of history at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, has written extensively on the history of south-central Pennsylvania and its social and religious customs. He said that during his youth, in the decade of the Great Depression before World War II, Christmas was an important, if intimate, celebration. "I think if you look at Gettysburg newspapers leading up to Christmas, you’ll find churches had special services for the holiday," he explains. "The church where my wife grew up...had services on Christmas morning. The church was usually full on that day. In fact, it was one of the best attended services of the year."

Although the war ended in 1945, the extended shopping season it helped establish did not. In the space of a few years, Christmas, and to an extent Hanukkah, had evolved from homey religious observances to retail extravaganzas with a thin religious veneer. "It is possible that much of what Christmas is today is a byproduct of the unprecedented prosperity that followed World War II," says Glatfelter. "The view of a lot of people toward the end of the war was that we were going to relapse into the Great Depression.

"It was difficult to imagine the prosperity that was coming. Nobody realized the purchasing power that veterans and veterans’ families had, and the GI Bill of Rights provided means to go to college and easy terms for purchasing homes."

Hanukkah had changed, too. "It’s a post-Biblical holiday, and more of a family holiday," Meistrich says. "It was mostly for the children, because you gave out gifts, like Christmas. We used to taunt the Catholic kids by telling them that we got presents for eight days, not just one. Hanukkah is mostly social, unless you’re very committed."

Besides changing the materialistic element of the winter holidays, the war also gave those holidays a new depth of meaning. America had wanted no part in the war that had been spreading across the globe for years. Polls taken in 1940 suggested that 85 percent of Americans wanted to stay out the fighting. The attack on Pearl Harbor changed that.

By the end of the war, more than 400,000 American military men and women were dead, and nearly twice that many had been wounded. Almost every American knew someone who had been killed or wounded. The hardest time was in the early months of the war, before American forces got traction, and when advances were few and losses heavy.

Even so, World War II was a so-called good war, if there is such a thing—a war where the distinction between good and evil was clear. The United States, perhaps for the last time, was acting united. It was an era of sacrifice—for those in the military, certainly, but also for the civilians. America’s dawning post-Depression consumerism, just beginning to flower when the war erupted, had to be put on hold. Rubber was in short supply because of the war effort and because Japan cut off sources of raw rubber from Southeast Asia. The average American could get only enough gas to drive 60 miles a week, and a Victory Speed Limit of 35 mph was introduced to save gas. People were urged to stay home. Autos became scarce, because none were built after early 1942. Everything that could be used to make materiel for the war effort was used, and at a feverish pitch. Even shoes and food and nylon stockings were rationed.

Despite the hardships, or perhaps because of them, Christmas and the Festival of Lights became stronger. John Otto, 84, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was serving the 82nd Airborne in December 1944, when the Germans launched their last big offensive, later known as the Battle of the Bulge. "We were supposed to be getting ready to jump into Berlin," Otto remembers. "That was the big plan. We weren’t ready for the Battle of the Bulge. I was just out of the hospital, after getting shot up in Holland."

As Christmas loomed, Otto, a company executive officer, says he wanted to get something special together for the guys under his command. "My guys didn’t have enough of anything, shoes, clothes, etc.," he says.

"We had a medical guy," he continues. "Every morning he would run from a house we were in to a small barn, where there was a goat. "He would milk the goat into his helmet and then run back to the house. The Germans would shoot at him, but they never hit him. Our radio man was a baker and knew where to find some flour. Another fellow found some apples. I said I’d get the sugar. At the time, we were getting C rations. So, when the rations were being broken down at company headquarters, I took all the sugar from the rations. The guys squawked, but I blamed it all on battalion headquarters.

"The baker got everything together and made apple pies. When they were ready, we took them out to all the strong points, to the machine gun crews, that sort of thing. It was their Christmas present. It worked real nice. I told them, ‘Here’s the damned sugar you were bitching about!’"

John Fague of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, has his own recollection of Christmas during the Battle of the Bulge. Now 80, Fague served as a staff sergeant in the 11th Armored Division, 21st Armored Infantry Battalion. "My division hadn’t been committed yet," he recalls. "We came up from southern France, and spent the night, Christmas Eve, in some French barracks. We had Christmas services and the next day headed for the front. We had a nice Christmas dinner in the field, though not exactly in combat."

After the war, Glatfelter says, Christmas remained an important time for families to gather together. All those Christmases apart during the war can only have made the holiday more important upon the GIs’ return. "My family had a store," Glatfelter says. "We were open 364 days a year. The only day we were closed was Christmas Day. We always had a meal for all of the family who were available. As far as the significance of Christmas was concerned, it was one of the key days in the year."

In the rural hills of south-central Pennsylvania where he grew up, in fact, Christmas as a season of religious significance—if not as a reason to shop—had been woven fast into the culture since at least a century before World War II. "I grew up in Glen Rock, a town which since 1848, without a break, has had a band of singers go through the streets singing Christmas carols, some of which were brought over from England," says Glatfelter. "The story is that the caroling was started by two men recently moved there from England. I believe the motive behind the creation of the caroling group was homesickness. The practice continued through the war.

"The singers during the war were very much aware that some of their number was in service. I remember...the case of one soldier still in the country [who] called by telephone Christmas Eve and heard some of the carols from wherever he was. It was obviously important to him. Everyone was aware that there was a war going on, but they [the carolers] didn’t stop. They thought they should carry on."

Perhaps the real legacy of the Christmases and Hanukkahs of the World War II years could be the hopeful lesson of those persistent carolers: whatever your worries and plights and heartaches, carry on.

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Terry W. Burger writes for the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This article originally appeared in the December 2005 issue of America in WWII.

Sharks in American waters

It wasn't the US Navy or Coast Guard that controlled America's Atlantic waters in early 1942. It was the U-boats of Nazi Germany.

By Brian John Murphy

It was a bone-chilling January night for the men on the conning tower of U-123. The skipper, Lieutenant Captain Reinhard Hardegen, peered through high-powered Zeiss binoculars at a huge glow on the northwest horizon. Hardegen and his crew on the tower were the only German fighting men to see this sight since hostilities had begun a few weeks back, in December 1941—the lights of New York City. U-123 was the first German submarine—the first of many—to go hunting in American waters in World War II.

For seven months, from mid-January to early August 1942, German U-boats would take control of America’s East Coast waters, sinking freighters and oil and gasoline tankers—anything and everything steaming off the coast. Ship by sinking ship, the Nazis achieved a victory over the United States comparable to and even more devastating than the one the Japanese had enjoyed at Pearl Harbor a few weeks earlier. For months, the US Navy failed to come up with a plan to end the slaughter. Meanwhile, the American people were not being told how close they were to disaster.

When Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States in December 1941, U-boat skippers were more than ready to take the fight to American shores. In their view, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had already declared war on Germany long before; American warships accompanied convoys bound for Britain, and shots had been exchanged between German subs and American ships. The interference of the United States, hiding behind its nominal neutrality, crimped the aggressive style of U-boat skippers and was a thorn in the side of Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander of the U-boat arm of the navy.

Dönitz promptly began planning to take the conflict to the shores of the United States. He worked out a plan that called for scores of submarines to prowl the US coasts and virtually halt shipping there. But Berlin was reluctant to commit so many resources to the effort. Some subs would have to go to Norway to guard against a supposed British invasion. Still others were to be sent to the Mediterranean— which Dönitz regarded as a trap for U-boats—to support Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. In the end there were only nine subs available for operations in American waters and about five battle-ready ones that could set out at once. One of those subs was Hardegen’s U-123.

Given these paltry resources, Dönitz still expected to make quite an impression on the Americans. He labeled his effort Operation Drumbeat—Paukenschlag in German, a word with overtones of thunder and lightning—and assigned to it captains he was sure could stir up American waters.

In U-boat pens all over the coast of western France, German shore personnel and seagoing crews loaded torpedoes and 88mm shells into designated boats. Hardegen’s boat was a long-distance Type IX. Type IX boats would do most of the heavy lifting early in the operation; medium-sized Type VII boats would join in later.

Every inch of space on the cramped U-boats was given over to supplies. One toilet on U-123 was turned into a storage room, leaving only one other for the crew to use. Canned foods were stowed away deep, followed by fresh foods that would be eaten early in the cruise, much of it bearded with mold by the time it was served. The fuel bunkers were filled with diesel fuel, adding to the stench in the boat. Soon there was a medley of noxious odors and deadly fumes—combustion gasses from the diesel engines, body fluids and waste, rotting food, ripe sweat (bathing and shaving were discouraged), and stale air that had not managed to go through the primitive carbon-dioxide scrubbers.

As the men loaded the boats for what obviously would be a long cruise, excitement grew. In time the men were told that Dönitz had ordered that each boat in the force attack shipping in American waters on the same day—January 13, 1942.

The shocking attacks would target America’s Atlantic seaboard, which was under the care of Admiral Adolphus “Dolly†Andrews, commander of the Eastern Sea Frontier of the United States. Andrews needed destroyers to protect American coastal ship traffic, but they were not forthcoming from Commander in Chief of the US Navy Ernest King, who was sending some to the Pacific and most of the others to convoy duty on transatlantic runs. All Andrews had at his disposal were a few obsolete destroyers, yachts converted to antisubmarine service, and a few coast guard cutters. Neither Andrews nor King were ready to learn the lessons that had been so painfully taught to the Brits in their antisubmarine wars. As U-123 and her sister ships U-130, U-66, U-109, and U-125 approached the American coast undetected, King and Andrews were doing almost nothing to protect shipping along the eastern seaboard.

Hardegen started his drumbeat by sinking the large freighter Cyclops 300 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on January 12, a day earlier than Dönitz had prescribed. The United States did not respond. Moving his boat on the surface, Hardegen continued on his way. The next day, he was surprised to find the Montauk Point Lighthouse, at the tip of Long Island, operating and providing him with a clear navigational fix. Hardegen lacked good charts for these waters, but he was agreeably surprised that cars, houses, streetlights, and advertising signs were lit all along the coast, giving him a good idea where he was at all times. He was about 60 miles off Montauk Point when he noticed an object looming ahead. He recalled that it was lit up from stem to stern, as though there were not a war on.

Hardegen maneuvered his sub for a good shot at the vessel, which he correctly made out to be a tanker. He did not bother diving. As soon as he had a firing solution from the ship’s calculator, he ordered torpedo tubes one and four flooded. Then he cried, “Los! Los!†(Fire! Fire!) Two “eels,†or torpedoes, shot into the water. One ran deep; the other ran true. About 50 seconds later, the crew of U-123 heard a loud explosion. From the conning tower, Hardegen saw a ball of flame rising about 75 feet above the target, followed by a mushroom of black smoke. The U-boat crewmen picked up a distress call on the 40-meter waveband: “Hit by torpedo….40 miles west of Nantucket Lightship…. Norness.â€

Incredibly, the Norness remained afloat despite the fires on board. Hardegen maneuvered his boat to give tube five at the stern a shot. “Los!†The explosion came right under Norness’s bridge, silencing her radio room. Hardegen fired one more shot at the Norness, from tube two at the bow. After a 26-second run, the torpedo detonated and the Norness began to come apart. It sank straight down, the stern wedging into the sea bottom and leaving about 30 feet of the bow exposed above the waves. The Norness’s bow stood as a testament to Hardegen’s daring, operating in enemy seas so shallow, so close to shore.

Hardegen would bring the U-123 into even shallower waters on this cruise. He toyed with the idea of sailing right into New York Harbor, but decided that would be suicidal. His maps were sketchy at best. His position chart for the Ambrose lightship that marked the entrance to the harbor channel, for example, was a tourist map of the New York area. Hardegen still wanted to go in close to shore, however, and he headed for a light he took to be a buoy marker. At the last instant, the officers on the conning tower realized the light was on shore. Just before the 123 grounded on the beach of Long Island, the engines were thrown into full reverse and the boat made a getaway.

Hardegen continued to sink Allied shipping on New York’s doorstep. On January 15, U-123 sent two eels into the Coimbra, a British tanker that broke and then exploded. “The effect was amazing, strong detonation, fire column reaching 200 meters and the whole sky was illuminated…,†Hardegen later wrote. “Quite a bonfire we leave behind for the Yankees as navigational help.†He did not bother submerging his boat after the attack, yet no US response came. No planes ventured out after the sub and no destroyers left for sorties. In fact, nothing stopped Hardegen from making another kill: the freighter San José. This latest victim was sent to the bottom in shallows 1,000 yards away from the coast guard base at Atlantic City, New Jersey, where an unarmed patrol craft that had been sent out to find the U-boat was having its engines repaired.

On January 18, Frigate Captain Richard Zapp and his U-66 got on the scoreboard off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Zapp positioned his boat in what was probably the busiest sea lane on the eastern seaboard and waited for prey. On his first predawn morning on station, opportunity came Zapp’s way in the form of a fully loaded oil tanker, the Allan Jackson, bearing more than 72,000 barrels of crude oil. Zapp stalked the tanker for four hours, then put two torpedoes into her. The tanker broke up and burned. U-66 spent a day submerged and then went hunting that night and found a Canadian passenger liner, the Lady Hawkins. Two torpedoes were enough to send her to the bottom. Of 300 passengers and crew, only 96 survived.

Hardegen and the U-123 were still busy. They were operating off Hatteras on the night of January 19, when they found a target—the City of Atlanta. Two eels sank the freighter, taking more than 40 men down with her. That same predawn morning, Hardegen’s boat spotted three more targets coming up over the northern horizon and sank one of them, the brightly lit freighter Ciltvaira. Against the advice of his officers, Hardegen sped after a second target and began firing on it with his 88mm deck gun. There was an eruption of fire when the gun found its target, the Malay, which ran for Norfolk, Virginia, and made it the next day, though hardly in one piece.

Hardegen and the crew of U-123 had given a virtuosic performance since their arrival in American waters. They had attacked eight ships and had sunk six of them without the Americans firing a single shot in response. On the way home, U-123 sank two more ships using only her deck gun. Hardegen would receive the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross for his feats.

Meanwhile, Zapp was not idle. Still off North Carolina’s Outer Banks, U-66 sank the freighter Olympic with two shots. In a double score on January 23, Zapp torpedoed the tanker Empire Gem, and three minutes later, the freighter Venore, which was laden with iron ore from Chile. Zapp sailed for home, having used up all his torpedoes.

By this time, other U-boats were also causing havoc along Admiral Andrews’s Eastern Sea Frontier. From January 11 to January 31, 1942, the boats of Dönitz’s operation attacked 40 ships and sent almost all of them to the bottom. These were the easiest pickings the U-boats had enjoyed since their first months against the British in 1939, which U-boat men had dubbed the “Happy Time.†Soon, the days of Operation Drumbeat were known as the “Second Happy Time.†Flush with success, Dönitz sent more and more U-boats into the battle.

Andrews appealed in vain to King for the firepower to fight back: destroyers, planes, whatever it took to track down and kill the seeming horde of U-boats that were having their way in American waters. At this point in the battle, however, neither King nor Andrews was ready to accept the conclusion the British had reached early on: the only way to get merchant vessels safely through U-boat–infested waters was by guarded convoy. Instead, scarce assets like destroyers and coast guard cutters were sent out on hunting expeditions in the heavily traveled sea lanes. They weren’t escorting merchantmen, which would attract U-boats, but instead were hunting subs much in the random way a novice sport fisherman hunts fish in the open sea. The results of those first weeks of hunting were hundreds of depth charges expended (including some dropped on the wreck of the Civil War ironclad gunboat USS Monitor), but no Nazi subs sunk. The U-boats held complete sway over the Eastern Sea Frontier.

The Germans kept up the tempo of the attack, sinking another 32 ships in February. By now the U-boats were not strictly adhering to the doctrine of attacking only at night and lying on the bottom during the day. On February 2, Lieutenant Captain Werner Winter made a daylight attack with his U-103 on the tanker W.L. Steed, 100 miles off Ocean City, Maryland. After hitting and stopping the tanker with a single torpedo, Winter shelled the hapless tanker for 40 minutes with his 88mm deck gun. The U-boat was close to the tanker when it exploded, causing a pulse of heat that made the men on 103 shield their faces from the blast.

Two days later, Winter sank the 3,000-ton banana boat San Gil off Virginia and then doubled back north. His hunting instinct proved sound when he found the tanker India Arrow, loaded with diesel fuel, about 20 miles southeast of Cape May, New Jersey. He stalked the ship until it was perfectly silhouetted by the lights of Atlantic City. Then he put a single eel into her, and she went up in flames. When Winter and his crew turned away, she was sinking as men burned alive on her decks. On the night of February 5, Winter continued his war on the American tanker fleet, attacking China Arrow off Cape Hatteras. Two torpedoes failed to sink the tanker, which was equipped with a state-of-the-art fire suppression system. So, Winter finished off China Arrow with shells from the 88mm deck gun.

The Germans used the month of February to expand their hunting area south of the Carolinas to Georgia and Florida. On February 19, Corvette Captain Ulrich Heyse in U-128 made an attack in broad daylight off Jacksonville, Florida, against the 8,201-ton tanker Pan Massachusetts. Carrying gasoline and fuel oil, the ship burned fiercely after being hit by two torpedoes. For a change, there was a response from shore. A coast guard cutter and two navy planes went out to investigate and assist with rescue, though U-128 escaped without being attacked. On February 22, U-501 attacked the tanker W.D.Anderson just 12 miles from the lighthouse at Jupiter, Florida. Torpedoes detonated an explosion on the ship that was heard all the way down in Miami.

Old hunting grounds continued to yield rich results for the Germans. On February 26, U-578 attacked the tanker R.P. Resor, carrying 78,729 barrels of oil. The ship burned for two days, shedding smoke that was visible to crowds for miles along the New Jersey coast. Only two of the 50 men aboard survived the blazes.

Great Britain was beginning to worry deeply about the United States’ lack of response to the German offensive in its waters. When the British admiralty suggested that the United States adopt a coastal convoy system, King, who detested the British, replied coldly. Nonetheless, he did accept the Brits’ offer of 24 antisubmarine trawlers to operate in US waters.

King also gave Andrews the US destroyers Jacob Jones (DD-130) and Dickerson (DD-157) for hunting subs. The two ships steamed out of New York and past the pyre of the R.P. Resor. The Resor’s tormentor, U-578, commanded by Corvette Captain Ernst-August Rehwinkle, was still in the area and watched the progress of the Jacob Jones with a hunter’s interest. At 5 a.m. on February 28, Rehwinkle put two eels into her. One of them exploded the magazine. As the shattered ship went down, her depth charges detonated, killing crewmen who were struggling in the water. Of 200 men, only 11 survived. U-578 escaped without being attacked.

February ended in flames and catastrophe. March was just as bad, with 48 attacks, almost all of which ended in sinkings. Tankers continued to be the number one target of the U-boats, and shortfalls in oil and oil product deliveries were beginning to seriously worry the oil industry. Oil companies were afraid they would be unable to deliver enough heating and fuel oil for the northeastern states. Complaints were beginning to reach President Franklin Roosevelt, who was perhaps the only man King listened to.

Meanwhile, the lights of the American shore still blazed, silhouetting tankers and freighters for eager U-boat captains. The targets themselves continued to steam with their navigational lights lit. Sometimes entire ships were lit brightly from stem to stern. Small wonder then that the month ended with nasty tanker sinkings courtesy of U-124 and Lieutenant Captain Johann Mohr. Mohr believed all he needed to do was post himself near a navigational buoy and wait for the targets to come to him. He wasn’t far wrong. On March 21, while patrolling near Frying Pan Buoy off North Carolina, U-124 spotted the Esso Nashville. German torpedoes met the tanker. A massive explosion lifted the 13,000-ton ship and its 78,000 barrels of fuel oil off the surface of the ocean and slammed it onto its side. Another tanker, the Atlantic Sun, hove into view, and Mohr tried a long distance torpedo shot that hit but did not sink her; she escaped to Beaufort, North Carolina. On March 23, off Point Lookout, North Carolina, Mohr hit the tanker Naeco and set it ablaze with his last torpedo. A fire broke out that incinerated the tanker’s captain, Emil Englebrecht, and his entire watch. Another explosion turned the Naeco into an inferno. When rescuers arrived the next day, the site of the sinking was a vista of burned, floating corpses.

In the early morning hours of March 26, the slaughter of tankers off the Outer Banks continued when the Dixie Arrow hove into view of Lieutenant Captain Walter Flaschenberg’s U-71, which had stationed itself off the Diamond Shoals Lighted Buoy. It was 9 a.m. when the U-71 attacked. Able Seaman Oscar Chappel was at the Dixie Arrow’s helm. After the torpedo attack ignited a raging fire, most of the crew assembled at the bow of the burning ship. Chappel turned the ship into the wind to blow the flames away from his shipmates—and back toward himself—and locked the wheel in place. He was overtaken by the flames and incinerated. The U-71 hung around to watch the spectacle when the unexpected happened: a destroyer attacked! USS Tarbell (DD-142) pinged the U-71 with its sonar and made a depth-charge run at her. The charges missed, however, and U-71 zigzagged away to the east as fast as her electric motors could drive her.

The intervention of USS Tarbell was an exception to the general poor luck antisubmarine forces had in finding U-boats. Although few of the ships hunting the subs were aggressive, it was really the doctrine that guided their hunting—that individual ships should hunt on their own—that was to blame. The doctrine was firmly embedded, though, and it manifested itself afresh in Andrews’s desperate decision to resurrect a trick from World War I. Three Q ships—merchantmen fitted with concealed armament to snare attacking U-boats—were fitted out. Only one, the Atik, made contact with the enemy. Unfortunately, that enemy was the returning Hardegen and his U-123, which promptly sank the Atik. The other Q ships never sighted any enemy vessels.

By mid-April there were slight indications that the U-boat battle might yet turn in favor of the Americans. USS Roper (DD-147), a destroyer fitted with radar, was out hunting off North Carolina just after midnight on April 14, when her radar found a solid target at a range of 2,700 yards. The skipper, Lieutenant Commander Hamilton Howe, wasn’t sure the target was a sub until it started zigzagging. All doubt was erased when a torpedo just missed the Roper’s bow. Her powerful searchlight found the sub’s conning tower about 300 yards away, as the U-boat was turning hard to starboard. One of the Roper’s .50-caliber machine guns opened up, cutting down the crew of the enemy’s 88mm deck gun. Machine gun rounds continued to sweep the enemy decks as the Roper opened fire with a three-inch gun. The first round hit the conning tower; other three-inch rounds also found the sub, which sank into the water stern first. Roper then depth-charged the wreck for good measure. With the sinking of the U-85, the United States was at last on the scoreboard.

Tactical changes were in the works for Andrews’s fleet, which by April was made up of 23 large and 42 small antisubmarine vessels, including the British trawlers. The new system grouped merchant ships into mini-convoys dubbed “bucket brigades.†During the day, the convoys would be escorted on their way, and at night, they would put in at sheltered harbors. Planes, including Civil Air Patrol craft, would fly overhead. The mere sight of an airplane was known to send U-boats diving, so even an air patrol Piper Cub might disrupt an enemy attack.

These measures slowed but did not stop the loss of merchant ships. One tactic merchants had used to avoid attack was to sail 300 miles east of the Outer Banks, but the U-boats found them and continued the slaughter.

At the end of April, King and Andrews agreed that Andrews would take direct control over tanker sailings. All tanker traffic on the coast was ordered into port to await further orders. While Andrews worked on what to do next, the seaborne hauling of oil was halted, which hampered the Allied war effort from the oil-hungry factories of New England all the way to the empty petrol tanks of old England. A solution was needed fast.

Meanwhile, the range of the submarine war was increasing. In May and June, Dönitz expanded operations into the Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico. The mouth of the Mississippi turned out to be a particularly lucrative killing ground for the U-boats.

By mid-May planning was coming together for a true convoy system for the Eastern Sea Frontier. As convoys were implemented, U-boat skippers began to notice that sightings of individual ships occurred much less frequently. When ships were sighted, they were found in clusters with trawlers, cutters, and destroyers scurrying about in escort. Overhead, army and navy patrol planes kept an eye out for subs. The risks of attacking grew as the waters and skies filled with sub-hunters. The rejuvenated American effort began to take a toll on the Germans. The coast guard’s Icarus sank U-352, and army pilot Lieutenant Harry Kane dropped two depth-bombs on the U-701 in a perfect attack that put the sub on the bottom for good.

In May and June 1942, as the convoy system was still being phased in (with increasing enthusiasm from King, a former foe of convoys), there were 87 attacks on Allied shipping. In July and August, with well-escorted convoys moving under air cover and with the coast finally blacked out at nighttime, there were only 26. In June one U-boat was sunk, in July three, and in August one. The battle for the Eastern Sea Frontier was ending. Dönitz brought his remaining forces home in August.

The U-boats had scored the most one-sided and damaging victory against the United States of any foreign naval power. Germany had sunk 233 ships off the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico and killed no fewer than 5,000 seamen and passengers. Every month of Operation Drumbeat, German subs destroyed 3.5 percent of the tanker fleet for a total of 22 percent. The operation caused major disruptions in war-material production and in the shipping of supplies to the war fronts. This was Germany’s first strategic victory of the war that directly impacted on the American homeland. Fortunately, it was also its last.

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Brian John Murphyof Fairfield, Connecticut, writes frequently for America in WWII magazine. This article originally appeared in the October 2006 issue of America in WWII.

http://www.americainwwii.com/stories/sharks.htm

The end

It was the end. It was the beginning. It was hope. At home and around the world, Americans celebrated like never before.

By Eric Ethier

Unbelievably, peace was finally coming to Europe. The world listened with joy at 3:00 p.m. on May 8, 1945, as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill confirmed that the German high command had met with Allied officials the previous morning and signed surrender papers. Churchill's familiar, grandfatherly voice crackled out across radio airwaves, "The German war therefore is at an end."

Celebrations broke out across Europe, but the fall of Axis powers Italy and now Germany meant little in the Far East, where American forces were still grappling with Japan. Japanese General Jiro Minami declared that Japan was fighting for the "defense of the national polity of Imperial Japan and the security of the right for existence of the Asiatics." Japan, he asserted, never had "the slightest intention of relying on the power of Germany in prosecuting this sacred war." Persuading Japan's leaders to give up was not going to be easy.

For nearly three years, while Allied armies dueled with their German counterparts in Europe, America's Pacific forces had been slowly driving Japanese forces out of territories Japan had captured early in the war. It was a brutal task. In the months following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan had rampaged through the Pacific, swallowing up a huge area ranging northward from the Solomon Islands northeast of Australia to the tail of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Before a direct retaliatory strike could be made on Japan, American servicemen would have to fight over every imaginable type of terrain across 2,000 miles of islands.

Two months after the destruction of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's fleet at Midway (between Hawaii and Japan) in June 1942, American naval and marine forces began a two-pronged counterattack against Japan. One prong jutted into the South Pacific, landing US forces on the jungle-covered island of Guadalcanal. After six months of bitter fighting, Guadalcanal fell in February 1943. Allied forces led by General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral William Halsey subsequently continued on through the rest of the Solomons, Papua, and New Guinea, isolating and killing off Japan's major base at Rabaul, New Britain, by the spring of 1944. Meanwhile, the second prong thrust into the Central Pacific, where US naval forces under Admiral Chester Nimitz began the advance with an assault on the Gilbert Islands in November 1943. Next up were the Marshall Islands, which fell in February 1944, and the Marianas, secured by August.

Each island taken tightened up American supply lines and provided ground for new airfields that allowed America's air forces to extend their range. Possession of the Marianas brought new American bombers far enough west to make possible the strategic bombing of Japan--the systematic destruction of the island nation's infrastructure and means of production. Meanwhile, Japan's defensive perimeter in the Pacific continued to collapse. By the spring of 1945, MacArthur had liberated the Philippines, and American marines had endured unbelievable conditions to capture Iwo Jima, a pitiless rock some 750 miles southeast of Japan. Now, as Allied soldiers and sailors and free people every where celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany, American military planners prepared to take Okinawa, the largest of the Ryukyu Islands that lay just 380 miles south west of Japan's home islands.

However defiant Japanese leaders might have remained, their country was being squeezed to death--by US forces in the Pacific, British and Chinese forces to the west, and Soviet forces that seemed likely to descend soon from the north. The Japanese realized that, once Okinawa fell, an American invasion of the home islands would come next. But for Japan, surrender was not an option. Her soldiers had undergone harsh, abusive training to eliminate thought of anything but doing their duty. "Fear not to die for the cause of everlasting justice," they had been told. "Do not stay alive in dishonor. Do not die in a way that will leave a bad name behind you." Japanese soldiers would fight until the end.

This was the mindset of the soldiers American troops would have to meet on Okinawa, a sliver of land 60 miles long and 18 miles across at its widest point. Veteran marines had found the fighting more difficult with each Pacific island they assaulted. Increasingly desperate and fanatical Japanese defenders fought like tigers, especially on Iwo Jima, which tested the stomachs of even battle-hardened leathernecks. Aside from having value as an air base, that island was a worthless, hideous apparition of rock, volcanic sand, and--worst of all--reinforced caves, tunnels, and bomb-proof shelters that shielded its Japanese defenders from everything American ships and planes could fire at them. Bitter marines had to go in and root the Japanese out, paying the price for the captured ground in casualties and terrible memories. Taking the much larger Okinawa, which the Japanese had been fortifying for months, promised to be a worse nightmare. But that island offered the United States two excellent harbors, room for plenty of new airstrips, and an ideal launching point for the invasion of Japan, already scheduled to begin in the fall.

As March 1945 ended, a massive American fleet of 40 aircraft carriers (including one British fast carrier group), 18 battleships, 200 destroyers, and hundreds of smaller ships and support craft converged on Okinawa. After marine reconnaissance, elements of the US Army's 77th Division overran a series of small islands off Okinawa's southwest coast, clearing away the few Japanese defenders there, destroying 350 suicide-attack boats, and opening the door for invasion.

In the early hours of Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, the dark skies above Okinawa lit up with the firing of nearly every big gun in the American fleet's massive offshore arsenal. The island had already absorbed a week of bombing and strafing. Now, before hundreds of landing craft and amphibious vehicles headed for shore, the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers of Admiral Raymond Spruance's Fifth Fleet unleashed all of their firepower on the ground above the eight-mile-wide landing zone, trying to ensure a safe landing for the Tenth Army of Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr.

Under Buckner--whose father had surrendered Fort Donelson, Tennessee, to Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant back in 1862--was the III Amphibious Corps (1st, 2nd, and 6th Marine divisions) and the army's XXIV Corps (7th, 27th, 77th, and 96th divisions), a total of 183,000 men. To everyone's amazement, the Tenth Army went ashore virtually unopposed and quickly moved inland. Okinawa was lightly populated in the north, where low-slung mountains dominated the land. Buckner's army would face its challenge in the south, where sloping hills and east-to-west ridges formed natural lines of defense. Eschewing the old Japanese strategy of confronting the enemy on the beach, Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima would ambush the invaders when they entered his lair--a fantastic, endless, interconnected maze of reinforced caves, catacombs, pillboxes, tunnels, redoubts, and other formidable shelters that combined to form a giant, solid sponge from which any of the 100,000 soldiers of his 32nd Army might emerge at any moment. The American navy's terrifying barrage had hardly scratched them. Only careful, cave-by-cave assaults with grenades, machine guns, satchel charges, and--where terrain permitted--flame-throwing tanks would drive out the dug-in Japanese. Knowing he could not win the battle, Ushijima's sole intent was to kill as many Americans as possible, depriving them of troops for the inevitable invasion of his homeland.

Day one of the invasion seemed--and was--too easy. Roughly 50,000 troops went ashore, with the 6th and 1st Marine divisions and the army's 7th and 96th divisions (in order from left to right) heading east to divide the island. The 2nd Marine Division made a diversionary feint 40 miles south of the main landings, which it would repeat the following morning and then go into reserve at Saipan. The 6th Marines turned north and within three weeks swept the upper island clear of the enemy.

Meanwhile, the infantry moved rapidly south towards Ushijima's outer perimeter and ran into a hornet's nest at Kakazu Ridge, a confusing and terrifying series of fortified heights crammed full of deadly surprises. In several days of brutal, nightmarish exchanges with the hidden enemy, the 7th and 96th divisions first took and then lost the heights, suffering about 3,000 casualties. The Americans managed to repulse several Japanese counterattacks April 12-14, killing nearly 1,600. On the 19th, Major General John Hodge sent the reformed XXIV Corps west to try to bypass deadly Kakazu Ridge and continue south. The maneuver failed, but following it up the next day, Hodge's legions gradually pierced the Japanese positions, finally forcing Ushijima to withdraw his dwindling forces to his next defensive ring.

On May 3, Ushijima ordered a second counteroffensive that ended as miserably for him as the first: marines wiped out a small Japanese amphibious force on the west coast, while 7th Division GIs stopped a similar move on the east. Meanwhile, Japanese infantry hurled themselves at the American center, only to be cut down amid a hail of bullets and artillery shells. Now, a reconstituted American force--the 1st and 6th Marine divisions and the army's 77th and 96th (later replaced by the 7th) divisions--aligned west to east, prepared to roll south. Beginning on May 11, Buckner--who inexplicably refused to attempt amphibious flanking maneuvers--drove his army slowly but steadily toward Ushijima's second perimeter, the Shuri Line, yet another east-west series of ridges that the hands of time seemed to have formed specifically for an army on the defensive.

While Ushijima played his deadly game of hide and seek with the wary American ground troops, Japan's air service flailed desperately at the ships around Okinawa. Japanese military planners had all but left the nation's defense in the hands of its Special Attack Corps--kamikazes, suicide boats, and divers trained to attack American ships as human bombs. Rear Admiral Toshiyuki Yokoi had at his disposal whatever planes and pilots could be spared from preparations for the defense of the home islands. Like Ushijima, Yokoi was determined to kill as many Americans and sink as many of their ships as possible, hoping to force more generous surrender terms and to deplete the resources available for the final invasion.

The pride of the Special Attack Corps was the kamikaze, a mechanical version of a natural element that had once saved Japan. "Eight hundred years ago the Mongols attempted to invade Japan with a gigantic armada," one Japanese official explained, "but the flotillas were either destroyed or dispersed at sea by a sudden storm. That storm has been referred to as the Kamikaze or Divine Wind. Hence the name has been given to the Special Attack Corps that hurl their planes against the enemy." More simply, the kamikaze was a flying bomb, a fighter loaded with bombs deliberately flown into enemy ships. It was a desperate, crude, but terrifying weapon. First used during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines in October 1944, kamikazes had startled American seamen, but thus far had done little harm. But the idea for a huge, organized Special Attack Corps took root, and Japanese propagandists went to work. One broadcast stated that kamikaze attacks had "bagged four of the enemy carriers" off Yap Island. Actually, only a small percentage of kamikazes scored hits at all, and most were on smaller picket ships that lacked the guns of the larger vessels. But bloated Japanese reports of kamikaze success drew great numbers of young pilots to the corps, eager for the adoration of their fellow citizens and to be part of the Divine Wind that would sweep away the enemy and save Japan.

On April 6 and 7, more than 300 kamikazes struck the spread-out Allied fleet. The twisting and diving attackers managed to sink four destroyers, one transport, a minesweeper, and two ammunition ships, while damaging several other ships, including two carriers. But most of the attacking force did not return home, including the crew of the massive Battleship Yamato, which American planes sank on April 7. Waves of kamikazes would hurl themselves at the ubiquitous American and British ships 10 times before Okinawa fell in late June, braving virtual sheets of flying 5-inch, 40mm, and 20mm shells to sink 36 ships, damage 368, and terrorize thousands of mentally and physically spent seamen at a cost of 1,900 planes. American officials rejected the outrageous claims of Japan's navy minister, Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, who boasted that "about 50 per cent of the American aircraft carriers and cruisers and 30 per cent of auxiliary carriers and battleships off Okinawa had been sunk or heavily damaged." Still, the kamikazes were putting the US Navy through its most devastating stretch of the war--and possibly of its history.

On the Island, American columns slowed by torrential rain and mud continued to deal with pockets of hell. In the west, the marines had to pass Sugar Hill, a low height protected on each flank by higher hills filled with Japanese firing positions. A week of fighting brought the 6th Marines through a crack west of the hill, while the 1st Marines battled through a series of equally hideous ridges and defiles to surmount Shuri Heights. To the east, the 77th and 96th army divisions struggled past a series of bristling hills called Flattop, Dick, and Conical. Finally, on May 23, as marines flooded into the city of Naha and GIs tramped into Yonabaru, Ushijima retreated again. Marines planted their 1st Division flag atop Shuri castle. The campaign was all but over. As American troops enveloped the bottom of the island in June, they discovered cave after cave of bloated corpses, unattended wounded soldiers, and sickly Japanese and native Okinawans. Many had committed suicide, as Ushijima and his second-in-command did on June 21. Their nightmare over, members of the Tenth Army breathed easier--but not much easier. Just around the corner was the invasion of mainland Japan, in which many of them expected to die.

The Battle of Okinawa cost the US Army 4,675 men (including Buckner, who was killed on June 18); the marines 2,398; and the navy 4,907. Thousands more were wounded. Nearly all of Japan's 32nd Army was dead. But now the wound-up American war machine was parked just outside Japan, ready to crush it once and for all. By mid-1944, American factories had begun churning out massive B-29 Superfortresses, airborne marvels capable of delivering 4,000 tons of bombs each from bases in the Marianas and Iwo Jima. From Okinawa, the B-29s would be able to deliver five times that amount, a terrifying rate that air force planners hoped might knock Japan out of the war without a ground invasion.

Planning for such a ground invasion was nonetheless well under way. Code-named Downfall, the two-part assault would dwarf even the massive Okinawa effort, the sheer size of which had eclipsed the 1944 invasion of France. The first step, called Operation Olympic, was set for November 1 and would be taken on Japan's southernmost island, Kyushu. If necessary, the second step, Operation Coronet, would land on Japan's main island of Honshu in the spring of 1946. Rear Admiral DeWitt C. Ramsey promised the assault on Japan would "be made by the most overwhelming forces ever concentrated in military history." One estimate put the total invasion force at an astounding seven million men. But even such a gargantuan force as that would suffer going against a nation of potential suicide attackers. Japan's hard-line leaders planned to employ all able-bodied Japanese, male and female, in defensive combat. Further, they mandated that every man and woman must be ready to give his or her life in suicide attacks. Already, millions of civilians--including young schoolchildren--were learning to kill with homemade spears, knives, and household tools, as well as with handguns and grenades. American casualty estimates for the attack ran as high as one million, a frightful amount that prompted a search for a better solution.

One possibility was the atomic bomb, which had been in secret development at US sites for several years. Final testing and planning for delivery of this secret weapon that reportedly would wipe out an entire city were almost complete. For the time being, however, American planners stepped up air attacks on the island nation, still hoping to coax Emperor Hirohito to surrender.

During the summer of 1945, dozens of Japanese cities crumbled. Unchallenged by Japanese fighters, which were being hoarded for the expected invasion, American carrier-based P-51 Mustangs bombed and strafed grounded planes, trains, and any buildings still standing in Japan, while the big B-29s mined Japanese waters and dropped thousands of tons of incendiary bombs, fragmentary bombs, and the new napalm bombs on a dwindling number of island targets. The size of the attacking B-29 formations increased, eventually reaching a staggering 700 planes or more on some raids. Pilots were told to leave four selected cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, intact, although no one explained why. The island nation was quickly disintegrating into ash and dust. "Japan will eventually be a nation without cities--a nomadic people," warned Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle.

On July 26, an American-drafted letter representing the United States, Great Britain, and China, called on Japan to surrender. Known as the Potsdam Declaration, the document implied that Japan might retain its emperor, but insisted upon the unconditional capitulation of its armed forces at the risk of "complete and utter destruction." Officially, Japan ignored the letter. On August 1, while American air force planners waited for perfect weather conditions for the bomb (which had recently been successfully tested in New Mexico), 784 B-29s ranged over Japan, dropping incendiaries on the lightly constructed homes that filled the nation's suburbs. Still, Japan remained silent. By then, after having considered all alternatives, President Harry Truman had authorized use of the atomic bomb.

The skies over Japan were quiet on the beautiful morning of August 6, 1945. Only the rumbling of two lumbering B-29s cruising 31,600 feet over the city of Hiroshima disturbed the morning air until 8:15 a.m., when one of the planes, the Enola Gay, opened her bomb bay doors. The big bomber released one massive bomb--nicknamed Little Boy--and headed south at high speed. Moments later, a huge cloud shot 10,000 feet into the sky, and invisible waves of vibrations gave the escaping B-29 crew members the shaking of their lives. Previously spared the heavy bombing dealt to most other Japanese cities, Hiroshima had, in seconds, suffered more than 100,000 casualties, including 78,000 dead.

Despite the unearthly horror the bomb had brought to earth, Japan's leaders still did not give in. So, three days later, a second B-29, named Bock's Car, unloaded a second bomb, over Nagasaki, killing 45,000 instantly and wounding and terrifying thousands of others. But as Truman anxiously awaited a Japanese surrender, rumors of plots against Hirohito swirled around Tokyo. Even as Soviet armies steamrolled Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea, the hard-liners of Japan's war cabinet still refused to give in, preferring to fight the Americans in one last decisive battle on their homeland. Finally, however, the emperor overruled them.

At noon on August 15, millions of Japanese stood by their radios, listening in reverence as a recorded message from Hirohito was broadcast across the nation. Stunned by the mere sound of his voice, millions wept as he spoke of defeat, the enemy's "new and most cruel bomb," and the necessity for the Japanese people to preserve peace for future generations by "enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable." Some soldiers vowed to fight on or kill themselves; some fainted; others simply could not believe their efforts had gone for naught. Most citizens felt at once stunned, angry, worried, and relieved.

Back in America, it was 7:00 p.m. on August 14 when Truman stepped before eager reporters in his White House office and announced the surrender. In New York City's Times Square, half a million people who had gathered in eager anticipation of such an announcement went into a tizzy when the board on the New York Times Tower flashed the news: "Official--Truman announces Japanese surrender." Within three hours, another one and a half million frenzied New Yorkers had joined their fellow citizens in Times Square. Clubs, bars, and restaurants filled to overflowing with excited patrons who drank, sang, and toasted the fall of Japan. Almost lost in the din were those reflecting somberly on lost brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, and sons and daughters.

In Washington, DC, 10,000 delirious city residents gathered across from the White House in Lafayette Park, where they celebrated wildly. Music blared, people sang, and soldiers, sailors, and civilians meandered happily across the park in a long conga line. At 8:00 p.m., the president answered cries of "We want Truman!" by walking out onto the White House's north lawn. He took in the scene with a smile, then spoke:

Ladies and gentlemen: This is a great day. This is the day we have all been looking for since December 7, 1941. This is the day when fascism and police government ceases in the world.

This is the day for democracies. This is the day when we can start on our real task of implementation of free government in the world where we are faced with the greatest task we've ever been faced with.

The emergency is as great as it was on December 7, 1941. It is going to take the help of all of us to do it. I know we are going to do it.

Half a hemisphere away, thousands of inspired Argentines took to the streets of Buenos Aires, celebrating the Allied triumph over fascism and calling for democracy and freedom in their own country. Government-backed Nationalists answered their calls with clubs, guns, and brass knuckles.

Most people around the world were too relieved to protest or even discuss politics. Dancing and singing broke out in cities and towns from England and France to New Zealand and Australia. Parades rolled through the streets of Havana, Ottawa, even remote Tegucigalpa in Honduras. The long horror was over. It was time to celebrate. American soldiers scattered across the globe let loose. "No sleep tonight," one American soldier exclaimed. Scores of his fellow GIs stationed in England went wild in London's West End, tramping gleefully through streets with the Stars and Stripes and bellowing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and other tunes at the top of their lungs. In Moscow, where General Dwight D. Eisenhower was quietly celebrating with Soviet officials, an army band played and American whiskey flowed.

Japan's surrender was made official on September 2, 1945, in a solemn ceremony aboard the Battleship Missouri. General Douglas MacArthur spoke and called for a new era of peace in the Pacific. He then saluted the millions of Americans who had fought to win the peace, praised American families that had persevered and worried for years while their loved ones fought overseas. He told them finally what they had longed to hear about their girls and boys: "They are homeward bound--Take care of them."

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Eric Ethier has worked as a research associate at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut and as an editor for American History and Civil War Times magazines. This article was originally published in the August 2005 issue of America in WWII.

http://www.americainwwii.com/stories/end.htm

Always trying to bring you interesting articles on ALL fronts of the war.

Victory’s spread

by Carl Zebrowski

Those who were children in the 1940s remember the triumph of margarine. It was often their job, after all, to turn the white, lard-like stuff into something resembling edible. "You got a little capsule that you broke that had yellow color in it, and you mixed it in to make it look like you had yellow spread," recalled Barbara Pontecorvo, a wartime resident of New Jersey whose words appear on the website of the Wayland (Massachusetts) High School History Project. Many war-era youngsters had never heard of margarine, a.k.a. oleo, before the war, and they grew up believing it was invented in response to wartime shortages and rationing of butter. In fact, the bogus butter had been around for three-quarters of a century.

The French are to thank, or, depending on your perspective, to blame. Louis Napoleon III, emperor of the country known the world over for its rich, buttery dishes, offered a prize to the inventor of a cheap edible fat that could supply the military and the lower classes. Hippolyte Mége-Mouries responded in 1869 with a concoction of animal fats and a few other ingredients that he dubbed "margarine," from the Greek margarites, or "pearl," which his product supposedly resembled in an early stage of its manufacturing process. It was also known as oleomargarine—oleo for short, from the Latin oleum, "oil."

By the early 20th century, most margarine was made from vegetable oils, without any animal fats, which made it easier to spread and cheaper to produce. The process of hydrogenation—introducing hydrogen into heated oil—turned the liquid oils into a solid.

Margarine caught on right away in Europe and was brought to the United States in the early 1870s. As production increased over the years, prices dropped and margarine looked to become a popular, low-cost alternative to butter. This possibility caught the attention of the American dairy industry, which did what any industry would do in the same situation: it lobbied politicians to protect its economic turf. The industry launched a propaganda campaign that ran strong for decades, paying off in the form of federal and state laws that did everything from banning the sale of margarine to requiring it to be dyed black.

Courts shot down the most egregious of those laws, but the ones that survived for the long haul—taxes and coloring bans—did a lot of damage. The ostensible reason behind outlawing artificial yellow color in margarine was that it was designed to fool consumers into believing they were buying and using genuine butter. There was a kernel of truth to this exaggeration: some unscrupulous bulk dealers of margarine did try pass off yellow margarine as butter. But the real reason behind the dairy industry's push for coloring bans was that a butter substitute that looked like lard was not going to win over potential buyers who wanted something appetizing to spread on their bread. By 1895, 19 states had adopted laws forbidding the sale of yellow margarine; by 1932, that number had risen to 27. Soon, margarine sales in America had fallen to half their peak.

In a clever work-around of the anti-coloring laws, margarine makers began packaging artificial yellow coloring in capsules or wafers with their white product. These do-it-yourself kits for consumers were a success. Now that margarine could promise a fairly appetizing appearance, all that was necessary for sales to take off was for WWII rationing to take its prime competitor all but out of the picture. Positive health-related findings announced at the National Nutrition Conference in 1941 didn't hurt, either. Soon much of America was using margarine in lieu of butter at least some of the time.

Not everyone applauded this culinary development. Margarine's most vocal detractors may have been the children who had to mix in the coloring. "I used to hate the icky margarine squeezing out between my fingers," recalled Betsy Voorhees of Herkimer, New York, writing on Rootsweb.com. "When the war ended it was like a miracle not to have to mix margarine, and to a kid that was something to rave about." Plenty of people objected to the flavor of margarine, too. "It was sort of a dirty word in our house," wrote Helen Wheatley of Norway, New York, also on Rootsweb.com. "We were fortunate, for most of the time we could buy butter from a lady who had a jersey cow and made her own."

By the time the war ended, margarine was well established in the American market. Federal and state bans, taxes, and licenses began to fall by the wayside. By 1955, only two states still had laws forbidding the sale of yellow margarine. The last coloring ban stood all the way to 1967. The lone holdout? Wisconsin. Any state known as America's Dairyland might have been expected to fight so doggedly over the stuff that buttered its bread.

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Carl Zebrowski, a former daily newspaper editor and managing editor of Civil War Times and Columbiad magazines, and the author of the book Walking to Cold Mountain: A Journey through Civil War America, is the managing editor and website editor of America in WWII. This article originally appeared in the magazine's June 2005 issue.

http://www.americainwwii.com/stories/victorysspread.htm

Yes, this is not our normal avenue, but let me 'splain how we got from point A to point B.

This Old House you are probably asking! What does this Old House have to do with WWII? Well here we go...

There was a one page article:

Around the House - Get Cranked For This - A California collector put his wrenches on display

This gentleman, Carl "Bud" Bolt has a wrench museum, and it also stated he was a former World War II mechanic.

So tonight I sat down, went to his website and emailed him. I hope he will write back. Here's the website:

http://boltsantiquetools.com/index.htm

Here's the article:

http://www.6thcorpscombatengineers.com/For...udsTools001.pdf