Dryden’s Second Hundred Years: a Central New York Town in the 20Th Century: Part Ii: Overseas

By Elizabeth Denver Gutchess

Dryden’s Second Hundred Years (Part II) does two exceptional things. First, its tight focus on local participation in World War II paradoxically chronicles the entire war, a conflict which drew its combatants from small rural townships like Dryden NY, assigned and scattered them throughout the world, and then delivered the survivors back home again, creating in every small American community a microcosm of the entire conflict, an eye-witnessing of the whole story.

Second, that story is told here largely in local participants’ own words, in letters from camps, troopships, carriers, cruisers, foxholes, and hospitals, their voices a quiet backdrop to the horrific war they had been asked to fight. The resulting narrative suggests that those who don’t know history – while not always doomed to repeat it – are very likely doomed to live their lives without perspective, to mistake inconvenience for hardship, and hardship for catastrophe, and to be blind to the miracle of everyday normal life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781663203762

Elizabeth Denver Gutchess

Elizabeth Denver Gutchess (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is a retired instructor of Academic Writing, British Literature, and World Literature at Tompkins Cortland Community College and in SUNY’s online Learning Network; she currently volunteers with local service groups, including the historical society, in Dryden NY.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-0377-9 (sc)

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iUniverse rev. date: 11/17/2020

In memory of my parents,

John and Anna Denver

and

for my friends

Mike Murphy

and

Bob Watros

with more gratitude than words can say.

CONTENTS

Local veterans from Dryden NY appear in the

following chapters, as noted below.

Preface

Earl Butts, Robert Carpenter, Norbert Schickel, Harold Shepherd, Calvin Hunt

Chapter 1:     V-E Day, May 1945

Thomas (Tommy) McGory, Bruce Stevens, John (Johnnie) Hotchkiss, Richard (Dick) Valley, Roy (Bud) Hulslander, Victor Fulkerson, Ed Uplinger, Ray Liddington, Gerald (Bud) Havington, Paul Hitchman, Fred Matison, Earl (Howie) Fitts, George Hutchings

Chapter 2:     The War in the Pacific, 1941 - 1942

James Macy, Robert Hitchman, William Hewitt, Elwyn Youmans, Bernard Johnson, Robert (Bob) Fellows, Robert (Bob) Friedlander, William (Bill) Fellows

Chapter 3:     The War in North Africa, 1942 - 1943

Robert (Bob) Carpenter, Arnold Beyeler, Freeman (Mike) Carpenter, Robert (Bob) Ellis, John (Jack) Kahabka, Victor Moore, Robert (Bob) Parker, Raymond (Ray) Mullen, Robert (Bob) Robinson, Clifford Royce, Earl Butts, Robert (Bob) Trim

Chapter 4:     The War in Sicily, 1943

Clifford Royce, Robert (Bob) Parker, Robert (Bob) Robinson

Chapter 5:     The War in Italy, 1943 - 1945

Richard (Dick) Glazier, Merle Cage, Lawrence (Poncho) Ryder, Jim Hutchings, D.D. Sponaugle, Robert (Bob) Robinson, John (Jack) Kahabka, Mary Jane Little, Arnold Beyeler, Ivan Marion

Chapter 6:     The Air War Over Europe, 1942-1945

James Hutchinson, Donald (Bud) Couch, Stan Wheeler, William McClintock, Raymond (Ray) Glauer, Charles Benjamin, Thomas (Tommy) McGory, Leonard Edsall, Dewey Steele, Ed Dellows, Calvin (Cal) Hunt, Charles (Chuck) Sheldon

Chapter 7:     From the Battle of the Atlantic to D-Day, 1943-1944

Robert (Bob) Carpenter, Robert (Bob) Trim, Victor Moore, Freeman (Mike) Carpenter, Raymond (Ray) Mullen, Earl Butts, Robert (Bob) Ellis, Donald Ensign, Joseph (Bill) Munson, Alton Glazier, Russ Chandler, Ed Briggs, Donald Couch, Glenn Robbins, Ed Dellows, Denby Sponaugle, Thomas (Tommy) McGory

Chapter 8:     The Invasion Beaches, June 1944

Earl Butts, George Ellis, Alton Glazier, Ray Mullen, George Hotchkiss, Willis Slater, Morgan Redmore, Glenn Robbins, Victor Moore, Freeman (Mike) Carpenter, Robert (Bob) Carpenter, Robert (Bob) Trim, Edward (Ed) Briggs

Chapter 9:     Through the Hedgerows, to Cherbourg and Saint-Lô, June-July 1944

Victor Moore, Glenn Robbins, Alton Glazier, Ray Mullen, George Ellis, George Hotchkiss, Norman Butts

Chapter 10:   The Breakout at Saint-Lô, the Mortain Counterattack, and the Falaise Pocket, July-August 1944

Ray Mullen, Joseph (Bill) Munson, Alton Glazier, Donald (Don) Rose, Harold (Sim) Simons, Cecil Him, Leon Humphrey, Milton Couch, Willis Slater, Robert Hoose, Lewis Hyers, George Hotchkiss, George Ellis

Chapter 11:   Retreat to the Siegfried Line

William Dart, John Ockay, Don Rose, Harold (Sim) Simons, Cecil Him, Leon Humphrey, Milton Couch, Robert Hoose, Joseph (Bill) Munson

Chapter 12:   At the Siegfried Line: The Battle of Aachen, September-October, 1944

Robert (Bob) Ellis, Norman Butts, George Ellis, Raymond (Ray) Mullen, Earl Butts, Robert (Bob) Trim, Victor Moore, George Hotchkiss, Willis Slater, Morgan Redmore, Don Rose, Joe (Bill) Munson, Robert (Bob) Bower, Robert Hoose, Leon Humphry, Milton Couch, Cecil Him, Harold (Sim) Simons, Lewis Hyers, John Reed, John Basl, John Ockay, William Dart

Chapter 13:   At the Siegfried Line: The Battles of the Roer Plain and the Hürtgen Forest, September-December 1944

Norman Butts, Raymond (Ray) Mullen, Earl Butts

Chapter 14:   The Third Army in the Battles of Nancy, Arracourt, and Metz, September-November 1944

Earl Butts, George Hotchkiss, Norman Butts, Ray Mullen, Joseph (Bill) Munson, Don Rose, Robert Hoose, Leon Humphry, Milton Couch, Cecil Him, Harold (Sim) Simons, Lewis Hyers, John Ockay, William Dart, John Basl, John Reed, Robert (Bob) Bower, Don Couch (and his father, Joel Couch, veteran of World War I)

Chapter 15:   The Third Army at the Siegfried Line, December 1944

Robert Hoose, Lewis Hyers, Joseph (Bill) Munson, Robert (Bob) Bower, Willis Slater, Leon Humphrey, Harold (Sim) Simons, Milton Couch, Don Rose, Cecil Him, Raymond (Ray) Mullen, Norman Butts, Robert (Bob) Ellis, Earl Butts, George Hotchkiss, George Ellis

Chapter 16:   The Battle of the Bulge, December 1944

George Ellis, Raymond (Ray) Mullen, Joseph (Bill) Munson, Robert Hoose, Thomas Lane, Harrison Duane Givens, Denby Sponaugle, Wilbur Genung, John Reed, John Basl, John Ockay, William Dart

Chapter 17:   The Battle of the Bulge, January 1945

Harrison Dwayne Givens, Thomas Lane, John Reed, Robert Hoose

Chapter 18:   The Last Offensive

Earl Chaffee, Robert Hoose, Thomas Lane, Joseph (Bill) Munson, Homer Collins, Robert Milligan, Don Rose, Milton Couch, Robert (Bob) Bower

Chapter 19:   The China-Burma-India Campaign, 1942-45

Richard (Dick) Carberry, Richard Simons, Gerald (Jerry, Moonie) Moon, Russell Bottoff, Fred Pittsley, Richard Tanner, Charles (Chuck) Mead

Chapter 20:   The Southwest Pacific Campaign, 1942 – 1944

Duane Mead, George Simpson, William Mead, Richard Maclure, Leon Macy, John Newlon, Donald Rockefeller, Robert (Bob) Friedlander, William (Bill) Fellows, Bruce Stevens, Norbert Schickel

Chapter 21:   The Central Pacific Campaign, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, and Truk, Nov 1943 – Feb 1944

Norbert Schickel, Kenneth Washburn, Bruce Stevens, William (Bill) Fellows, Gordon King

Chapter 22:   The Central Pacific Campaign, The Marianas: Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, June - Aug 1944

Donald Miller, William (Bill) Fellows, William (Bill) Apgar, Norbert Schickel, Bruce Stevens, Gordon King, John Abram Adams, Larry Armstrong, Earl Fitts, Fred Matison, Roy (Bud) Hulslander, George Hutchings, Howard Fitts, Gordon Sheldon, Ken Marquis, Rex Bell

Chapter 23:   The Central Pacific Campaign: Peleliu, Sept 1944

Victor Fulkerson, Richard Niemi, Arnold Kannus, Bruce Stevens, Roy (Bud) Hulslander, Donald Miller

Chapter 24:   Taking Back the Philippines

Charles Root, Elwyn Youmans, Bernard Johnson, Donald Miller, (Roy) Bud Hulslander, Richard (Dick) McKeon, Gerald (Bud) Havington, Fred Matison, Larry Armstrong, Earl Fitts, Raymond Ellis, Morris Horton, Philip Glazier, Donald Wood, William (Bill) Mead, Leon Macy, Richard (Dick) Maclure, John (Johnnie) Hotchkiss, Bruce Stevens

Chapter 25:   The Battle for Iwo Jima, February – March 1945

William (Bill) Sutton, Rex Bell, Gordon Sheldon, Harold Shepherd, Don Rockefeller, John (Abe) Adams, Paul Perkins, DeWitt Perkins

Chapter 26:   The Battle for Okinawa, April 1945

Bruce Stevens, John (Johnnie) Hotchkiss, Richard (Dick) Valley, Roy (Bud) Hulslander, Victor Fulkerson, Ed Uplinger, Ray Liddington, Gerald (Bud) Havington, Paul Hitchman, Fred Matison, Earl (Howie) Fitts, George Hutchings

Chapter 27:   The Battle for Okinawa, April – June 1945

Ed Uplinger, Fred Matison, George Hutchings, Earl Fitts, Victor Fulkerson

Chapter 28:   V-J Day, August 1945

Endnotes

PREFACE

This isn’t the book I intended to write. That one would have completed the history begun in Part I of Dryden’s Second Hundred Years. That first volume covered every decade between Dryden NY’s centennial (1897) and its home-front efforts during World War II (1942-45), so a more logical sequel would have looked at the entire remainder of the 20th century.

It would have included, for instance, the war’s end, the postwar baby boom and building boom, bulging classrooms in the old school on James Street, the school’s catastrophic fire in 1954 and new addition a year later. It would have included new ranch-style houses on newer streets (the suburbanization of Dryden village occurring alongside the suburbanization of the nation), and it would have included the newer sleeker cars at Ray Stafford’s Chevrolet (ever-longer-lower Impalas, for instance, spreading their bat-wing tail fins by 1959).

It would have included the arrival of dial phones, UFOs, and in 1959 a thoroughly modern supermarket, the Victory, on East Main Street, its tall pylon sign easily visible from the central intersection (the Four Corners) of Dryden village. And although this new sign would always be dwarfed by the towering spire of the neighboring Methodist Church, its asymmetrical five-sided (cockeyed) shape would always, to this day, be pointing skyward, futuristically, towards space, the New Frontier.

That ideal Part II would also have acknowledged the Victory’s real contributions, its modernity drawing shoppers who otherwise would have motored to even bigger and newer stores in nearby cities, its ample parking drawing people to the village center, its financial success providing local jobs. But a thoughtful Part II would also have noted the way the store’s intrusion into the previously residential neighborhood of East Main Street became a talking point for zoning advocates, who just then had zoning bills before the two local boards (village and town). One of those advocates (a retired evangelical minister) even wrote verses to protest the fire department’s (controlled) burn of a venerable old house to make room for the new store (Rural News 13 May 1959):

THE PRICE OF PROCRASTINATION IN ZONING PLANS

By [Rev.] Robert E. Gibby

Part II would have been chockful of these knots of modernity and nostalgia, their strands of old and new inseparably intertwined. Throughout the fifties, for instance, TV antennae (called aerials) were popping up all over the village while these same hi-tech contraptions were bringing the nostalgic Davy Crockett show into almost every home and putting coonskin caps on the heads of countless schoolkids.

Likewise, the music of Little Richard, the Big Bopper, and Elvis never quite dimmed the lure of square-dancing and Singing-Cowboy performances every Saturday night, while ads for colonial furniture were featured in every issue of the local paper – the Tompkins County Rural News. The paper, too, had wide appeal and richly local features – like Ray Rockefeller’s Rock’s Rambles, Paul Kelsey’s Rod and Gun, Mayor Brad Morgan’s State of the Village Report, and later, Robert (Bob) Watros’ Dryden Mayor’s Corner – each column providing local historians a clear window into the past’s true complexity.

That ideal Part II would also have included instances when local events intersected with national and even international ones, folding layers of information inside single stories:

– In 1946, for instance, two years before Congress got around to enacting the Marshall Plan, several women’s groups in Dryden (and thousands like them across the US) boxed up food, woolens, shoes, and boots and mailed them to people dying of cold and hunger in postwar Europe;

– When one of those indigent women wrote back to thank the women (in the Ways and Means Society at the Presbyterian Church), she incidentally described for them some of the earliest bloodshed in a war just starting – the Greek Civil War – the first proxy war in a conflict so new it was still unnamed, but soon to be known as the Cold War;

– A decade later, in 1957, with the Cold War becoming ever deadlier, John and Martha Ferger voiced their protest, in the Tompkins County Rural News, against the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, detonations which were spewing radioactive material into the planet’s air and which world-wide opposition (like the Fergers’) eventually stopped – but in slow steps – starting with the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963;

– In 1954 Carleen Brown Skawski’s local first graders took part in the first nationwide field trials of a polio vaccine created by Dr. Jonas Salk, an achievement not only of Dr. Salk and his research team in Pittsburg but of the hundreds of millions of Americans who had funded his work, first by mailing dimes to the White House in 1938, all of them together financing this miracle for the world’s children.¹

That imagined Part II would have included local achievements as well: new schools; new churches; a college just outside this very small village, its Dryden location bravely and patiently advocated by William (Bill) Bailey and Ron Space; and a local medical center – Dryden Family Medicine founded by doctors John Ferger, Walter Baurle, and Joe Rothenberg – a facility still growing, still excelling in far-sighted patient care for all ages.

A logical Part II would also have included courageous start-ups of countless small businesses – classic mom-and-pop places like Dot and Lloyd’s (a long-running restaurant brilliantly advertised at times with just a single dot at the center of an otherwise blank newspaper ad). It would have included the successful transformation of a time-honored farmers’ group – the Grange – and its modern emergence as Dryden Agway; and it would have included the continual expansion of other businesses, like Dedrick’s more and more bountiful Farm Market, and the family business built by Richard (Dick) Clark. Growing from a grocery on West Main into the irreplaceable supermarket it is today, Clark’s outclassed a number of national chains, trained generations of local teens in their first jobs, and sold not only basic but specialty foods as well, at fair prices, in all weathers, with generous hours and the best customer service anywhere in Central New York.

Ideally, too, this second part of Dryden history would have included the start of several service groups, like Rotary; the local historical society led by Gina Prentiss; and the Dryden Kitchen Cupboard, a lifesaving food bank led by Ione Worth; (and it would have looked over the horizon at the founding of arts groups like the Intergenerational Band and Chorus led by Jody Earle; at ground-breaking advances for the Southworth Library under the leadership of Mary Ellen Rumsey and Diane Pamel; at the founding of the Dryden Community Café by Wendy Martin – helped mightily by Kim Schenck – and the miraculous Beautification Brigade by Mary Kirkwyland).

It would have included a few individual projects as well, like the decade-long restoration of the aging Dwight house on East Main, a huge job undertaken by Martha Wood Gutchess in 1979. Granddaughter of a Gettysburg veteran (a young Union soldier who survived that epic battle only to be later imprisoned in the Confederate POW camp at Andersonville), Martha had a dedication to this quintessentially Civil War-era home, a commitment which drove her to save it from decline – by enlisting the expertise of builders Robert (Bob) Streeter and his son Rick to restore its interior and exterior; to burn several layers of century-old lead paint off its frame; strengthen its foundation; rebuild its shutters; design and construct a new fence, and refinish its original floors and woodwork. She also enlisted the talent and expertise of Jeff Davidson (of Davidson’s Landscaping in Cortland) to save heirloom gardens dating back to the Dwights – peony beds, an arbor of Concord grapes, a line of towering hemlocks visible from miles away – and to establish new landscaping as well.

In fact, the best parts of this imagined Part II would have included glimpses of Dryden’s natural history – the rise and fall of local wildlife populations for instance, tracked in Paul Kelsey’s wonderful columns (Rod and Gun during the fifties and Conservation Comments during the sixties), and sightings of song birds recorded in Miriam Fletcher’s column Bird Talk.

And the town’s natural history would certainly have included major weather events as well – like the consecutive blizzards which hit Dryden hard in February 1958, closing roads, burying houses, stranding people in their homes, requiring airlifts of food and fuel to outlying areas, even forcing farmers to haul their milk to Borden’s (the local milk processing plant) by horse-power rather than Chevy truck. And even at that, Dryden resident Craig Schutt remembers it was quite a job that stormy February for his father and older brothers to get their horses and milk wagon through the snow drifts as they made their slow way from West Lake Road to the Borden plant just off South Street. On some mornings, along the way, they had to jump off their farm wagon several times just to break through drifts, at Chaffee Road even joined at times by Earl Butts and his children, good-naturedly emerging from their house and barn, shovels in hand, to help the horses through.

In the end, in fact, there were so many stories to write that my ideal Part II, like the proverbial big fish, just got away. But instead of giving up entirely, I decided to cut my losses and publish this present slice of research instead; so Earl Butts for instance appears on the following pages, not breaking through snow drifts, with his children, in 1958, but landing on Omaha Beach, with his regiment, on D-Day 1944.

Originally, as a prelude to summarizing the entire second half of the century, I had hoped to acknowledge the World War II service of as many Dryden veterans as I could, and had already started writing those introductory (combat) narratives. So, when my plan to cover the entire half-century imploded, I decided to simply go with these opening stories and call this revised second part of Dryden history – Overseas.

From the start, I was faced with deep reservations but also several great sources.

My reservations included the fact that I’d never be able to include every single one, not even most, of the well over one hundred Town of Dryden World War II veterans listed in the files of the Dryden Town Historical Society, or even the complete record of those veterans whose service I was able to include. Throughout this process, in fact, I hoped that their families would realize that oversights on my part – or outright mistakes in the following chapters – were caused by limits on my time and ability.

These reservations of mine also included a reluctance to focus on horrific combat with nations which have long since become fast friends of the US. This was especially so in regard to Germany, which has become not only an ally but a model – an advocate of fiscal responsibility, real austerity, during periods of reckless spending by other Western democracies; but also a model of courage and heart, absorbing well over a million refugees during a recent period of international fear and exclusion. We are a strong nation, the German chancellor famously said in 2015 (when faced with an overwhelming surge of refugees on her nation’s border), we’ll manage this. And then, in the face of international criticism, they did, in fact, manage this daring rescue of countless people in desperate need.² Moreover, decades earlier, throughout the entire postwar period, Germany continuously demonstrated heroic transparency about its own history. No other nation has ever done more to acknowledge the troubled parts of its past and even memorialize them in monuments and museums – one part of Germany’s inspiring work of reconciliation other nations would do well to emulate.³

Hesitant as I was, however, I was equally motivated by the availability and number of wonderful sources.

My main one was publisher-editor A.K. Fletcher’s Rural News, which faithfully reported the whereabouts of local servicemen and women, printed many of their letters, and listed their APOs (Army Post Office addresses) – many of which included the division, regiment, and even the company in which they were serving.

My other main source was the book, More Than Names in Bronze, accounts of the nine Town of Dryden servicemen who lost their lives in the war. Begun and guided to completion by Bob Watros, this excellent collection was edited by Dave Smith, researched by Leslie Gifford, Marilyn Adriance, and Laurence Beach, and holds invaluable information about local veterans’ civilian lives, combat experience, and the circumstances surrounding their deaths.

I was also blessed with great help from friends.

Patti Kiefer introduced me to Robert Carpenter, helped me interview him, and gave me a copy of a beautifully researched letter she had written to the Dryden Courier describing his service in the Army Corps of Engineers.

Mary Streeter introduced me to Harold Shepherd and facilitated a long conversation we had about tankers in World War II and Harold’s service aboard the USS Neches.

Trina Schickel lent me a copy of Norbert Schickel’s collected letters, an extraordinary record of some of his missions as a dive-bomber flying off the carrier USS Essex in the Pacific war.

Trudy Cedar inspired my work continually, not least by sharing information about her father’s combat experiences in the jungles of New Guinea but mostly by being an awesome and true friend.

My family, too, motivated me always. My daughter-in-law Jessica Dorsey Gutchess often shared stories about her grandfather Francis Kilian, who served on one of the Navy’s intrepid minesweepers – their wooden hulls designed to protect them as they cleared paths through underwater minefields well before assault forces could be launched towards any of the invasion beaches. My sister Nancy Denver and I, along with our cousins Tom Kenny, Jim Kenny, Bob McMahon, and Janie Mahon, gladly pooled our separate memories to create clearer pictures for each other of our family’s service during the war.

Among the countless ways Carleen Skawski helped me move this project forward, she asked Sandy Hunt, widow of B-17 navigator Calvin Hunt, to mail me a detailed record of his flights over Europe and other important information about Cal’s service.

Bob Watros, more than anyone I know, had such interest in this material that he became my ideal reader – that imaginary but indispensable person willing to read whatever you can get down on the page. In actuality, he listened to spoken versions of many (if not most) of the stories in the following chapters; he paid attention to details and asked key questions; he made sure I had access to Victor Fulkerson’s memoir about fighting on Peleliu and Okinawa (outstanding source material donated recently to the historical society by Pvt. Fulkerson’s daughter, Sandra Prugh); and Bob’s postwar memories of many of the veterans themselves gave me a link that kept me grounded and pushed me to the finish line.

Only my friend Mike Murphy had the patience to listen to that many stories and the curiosity to ask that many questions; (in fact Mike and Bob hardly have to read the book itself because they’ve already listened to so much of it).

The Dryden veterans themselves were constant sources of inspiration to write this account – not only their service but their remarkable letters, some of them thank you notes sent to A.K. Fletcher for the copies of the Rural News he was sending them wherever they were stationed in this far-flung war. Historians often note that, for the most part, American GIs – civilians at heart – were able to fight this horrific war without abandoning the civilian values which they had brought with them into the service.⁴ To go one step farther, however, and say that they were able to fight this war without forgetting their manners begins to sound like a joke, or the stuff of Captain America comics, were it not that the thank you notes they dashed off between battles were published by A.K. Fletcher right out on the front pages of his Rural News.

The veterans in my own family too were just as responsible for giving me energy to research this much data about the war. I grew up lucky enough to know my veteran uncles well – James Denver, who served in the US Army with the Chinese Combat Command on mainland China; Donald Mahon, who served in the Pacific aboard a minesweeper (Mine Squadron Four) and also aboard the tanker USS Neshanic; William Mahon, who served as a physical therapist in the naval hospital at Pearl Harbor; and Thomas Kenny, who served in the 4th Marine Division on Saipan, Tinian, and Iwo Jima. My uncles were hardworking, fun, and infinitely kind, each in his own unique way. They were irreplaceable. Families whose loved ones came back from the war understand all too well how profound the losses were, to families who weren’t as lucky.

My immediate family continually energized me to finish these chapters; my sons Matt and Daniel and my grandson Ben often taking time out of busy days to ask me how it was going and wish me luck; all my grandkids – Ben, Ian, Euan, Anna, and Avery – always and contagiously willing to learn new things; my granddaughter Anna routinely reminding me that as soon as I finished the book I’d have time to get myself a dog; and her mother, my daughter-in-law Lona Isenberg Gutchess, always inspiring me with the way – several years ago – she channeled the stress of a bad experience into acing a triathlon. Maybe we all have a few triathlons to run, swim, and bike in our lifetimes; this book was one of mine.

CHAPTER 1

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V-E Day, May 1945

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There was a time between two very different wars, almost an entire year – between the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War – when the world seemed relatively at peace, when soldiers were returning to cities, farms, towns, and villages everywhere across the US, when Americans, even with growing pride in their country’s new designation as a super power, were gladly re-focusing on purely local things – returning to a wholehearted ‘localism’ that, ironically, had contributed so much to winning the war.¹

But now the ‘local’ had been changed forever. World War II had pulled young people and boys from everywhere across America, including rural townships like Dryden NY, scattered them around the globe to fight horrific battles, and then brought them home, ultimately creating out of every small American town a microcosm of the entire conflict, an eye-witnessing of the whole story.

Even when Nazi Germany surrendered, for instance, on May 7, 1945, that capitulation had already been witnessed – on a much smaller scale of course – by a Dryden serviceman, B-17 flight engineer Thomas (Tommy) McGory. Days before the official (May 7) surrender, airman McGory, along with a thousand other POWs imprisoned in a huge German barn, had witnessed an attempt – by one of their guards – to surrender individually. The guard had tried to hand over his revolver to the prisoners – dispelling a rumor among them that their German captors were planning to execute them rather than set them free.²

A few days later, long before dawn on Monday, May 7, 1945, in the French schoolhouse which had served as Allied headquarters, the chief of staff of the German High Command signed a surrender document ordering his forces to stop fighting by midnight the following day. Of course, by this point in the war, fighting in Europe continued only in isolated pockets, and mostly on the eastern front. Not only had German armies been driven out of France, they had also been driven from Belgium, most of the Netherlands, most of Italy, northwest Germany itself, and vast reaches of the Soviet Union.

This official surrender was accepted by the Allies secretly – with the intention of giving their nations’ leaders – Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin – time to coordinate simultaneous announcements, scheduled for the next day. But by that very afternoon, German officials started broadcasting the news in Germany, and the American AP bureau chief, thinking that his own countrymen too deserved this one extra day of happiness in their lives, broke his silence.³

So, given the time difference between Europe and the US, it was still Monday morning in America when people started hearing the news, over CBS and WOR radio stations, and, since more Americans had radios in those days than had indoor plumbing, most people in the US knew that day, May 7, that the war in Europe was over.

Still, on the following morning, the heads of state made their ceremonial announcements, and millions of Americans adjusted the knobs on their trusty Philcos, Zeniths, and RCAs to hear Harry Truman announce the surrender from the Radio Room at the White House, This is a solemn but a glorious hour. General Eisenhower informs me that … [t]he flags of freedom fly over all Europe.⁴ Simultaneously, Winston Churchill announced the news in London, where the streets were thronged with revelers – including the two young princesses Elizabeth and Margaret – allowed to celebrate alongside fellow Brits with whom they had survived the nightmare bombing of southern England.

Every major American city too was celebrating. Not far from the village of Dryden NY, in the small city of Ithaca, people in the downtown were bar-hopping, singing, hugging strangers, throwing confetti.⁵

In Dryden, at noon, store owners were closing their doors for the rest of the day (as were merchants all over the country). But there was none of the partying that was going on in Ithaca—and none of the horn-blowing, parading, and bell-ringing that had gone on at the end of the First World War. Instead – with the stores closed – the very center of the village went quiet.

The very center of the village was usually a fairly busy intersection, a crossroads of Main Streets USA – where West Main became East Main, South Main became North. Originally a barely discernible crossing of two footpaths in the green dark of the original woods (where an Iroquois path crossed a settlers’ trail), that shadowy forest junction had long since become a sunlit village center everyone now called the Four Corners. It was an intersection anchored by stores that carried the essential things of American life – groceries (in the Grand Union) on the southwest corner; hardware and building supplies (in Bartholomew’s) on the southeast corner; gasoline (at Tripp’s Service Station) on the northwest corner; and, on the northeast, a pair of churches, now planning a joint evening service of thanksgiving and prayer to mark the end of the war in Europe.

According to Dryden’s local paper, the Tompkins County Rural News, the surrender announcement was greeted in a thankful and reverent manner (RN 9 May 1945), and this quiet response was hardly surprising. Every month of this new year of combat (1945) had brought news of yet another local serviceman killed in action. And not only was the wider war not yet over, but far across the Pacific – on the war’s other front – Japanese and American troops were just then locked in their deadliest battle yet, fighting for control of the island of Okinawa. As everyone knew, American forces were finally approaching the home islands of Japan, the Japanese