The War In My Kitchen

VE-Day. Memorial Day. D-Day. The anniversaries of these dates mark a time when people all over the world pause to reflect. Veterans’ stories and vivid images are replayed to help us recall the memories and honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

I welcome the extra attention given to WWII history at this time of the year. And I aim to add to it.  

In my time dedicated to remembrance, I also observe June 5^th, 1942, the date an explosion at the Joliet Arsenal in Ellwood, IL killed 48 war workers and injured another 46. (See a previous post about this accident.)

Elwood is local to me, and other ordinance plant sites are not too great of a distance either. I recently visited the Badger Ordnance Works site and museum (B.O.W.) near Baraboo, WI. The museum is maintained by the Badger History Group and well worth the trip to view their collection of artifacts and meet the curator, Verlyn Mueller, who is happy (and well equipped) to answer all questions.

The B.O.W. plant began construction in early 1942 and operated through the Vietnam War. Production lines included smokeless powder, acid, sulfuric acid, rocket propellant, and Ball Powder. On 10,565 acres the plant produced 1,035,542,500 pounds of propellant used in ammunition through three wars. (Source: Badger History Group, Inc.)

Near the entrance of the museum is a special memorial and a beautifully landscaped reflection area. “The Land Remembers the Footprints of the Past: a tribute to the families who gave up their land and homes for the defense of their country in World War II to the Badger Ordnance Works”.  The war work being done inside the buildings on the property of these arsenals called for the ultimate sacrifice of the land as well. Throughout the United States, much of the property taken and used for these ordinance plants can never be safely returned to its original farmland use.

One of the displays inside at the B.O.W. Museum includes a newspaper clipping reporting about four men killed in an explosion on July 19, 1945 – just weeks before the end of the war. Erwin Pugh, William Denny, Elsworth Goff, and Mark Shearer are buried together in a cemetery just east of where the plant was located. On a rainy Saturday afternoon, my husband and mother, who are always up for one of my WWII history tracking adventures, helped me locate the gravesite of the war workers.

The museums I visit and the stories they tell always have an interesting way of connecting people, places, or things one to another.

The powder that B.O.W. produced was sent to other plants in nearby states for the next phase of ammunition production. Some materials went to The Twin Cities Ordnance Plant in Minnesota, and some went to the Green River Ordinance Plant near Dixon, Illinois.

Before my visit to B.O.W. I was aware of a fatal explosion at Green River Ordinance Plant (GROP) that involved a woman but did not have many details.  Again, the curator of the B.O.W. museum said something he had heard or read about GROP that inspired me to learn more on my own. According to an interview with Molly Gosney, one of the women who worked the line that produced rifle grenades, “…workers were warned that if they discovered a grenade with the clip missing, they were to hold the grenade close to the body and call a supervisor who would take care of it.” (Source: Memories of the Green River Ordnance Plant 1942-1945, Dixon Public Library).  

On February 29, 1944, that is exactly what war worker Edna Christy did. Research has brought me to two possible explanations of what may have caused a grenade explosion, but the ending is the same. Edna Christy, a widow at age 38 died at the local hospital. Eleven others were injured, but not seriously. In fact, according to a Bureau County Tribune newspaper article dated March 3, 1944, four of the injured women returned to their posts in the afternoon “more determined than ever to put the finishing touches on hitting power that will hasten the day of Victory on the Allied battlefronts”.  Witness reports say that quick-thinking and catastrophe training went into effect, one war worker sounding an alarm to evacuate the building quickly and using fire extinguishers on resulting blazes. A loose pin was found near the area where Edna had been working, indicating that she was handling a live grenade. Holding it close to her body ended her life but saved many lives around her.

As I researched further, I learned that Edna Christy was buried two days later in Princeton, IL next to her husband who had died only four years earlier at the young age of 32 when he received a fatal shock from an electrical welding machine which had short-circuited. Perhaps this was another fatal workplace accident?  The Bureau County Tribune reported later that Edna’s son attended her funeral. His name was Bruce and he was 20-years old, serving as a tail and waist gunner aboard Fighting Fortresses in the Pacific. He visited the ordnance plant while in the area for his mother’s funeral.

Thanks to gravefinder.com, I was able to view the gravesites for Edna and Bruce, and happy to know that Bruce made it through the war, but saddened to realize that he died young as well at the age of 33-34 in 1957. He’s not buried next to his mother, but in a cemetery four hours away with a simple headstone that gives no indication of his military service.

I can’t help but wonder about Edna and her time working at GROP. From so many other stories I’ve read or heard, I can imagine her on a bus making the 30-mile route from where she lived in Princeton, IL to the plant in Dixon, IL six days a week, alternating shifts each week working 7:00am-3:00pm or 3:00pm-11:00pm or the much dreaded 11:00pm-7:00am shift.  I wonder if she made friends while working there. So many of the other war worker testimonials describe feelings of pride in their work, especially knowing that the shells they were making were going into the hands of their sons — something that Edna had to know with her son credited for missions at Guadalcanal, Midway, and Wake Island.

For every war worker in all of the ordinance plants – 77 newly built and all 8,000 total plants that had contracts by the end of the war, we owe a huge debt of gratitude. The war workers’ contribution to our freedom was not in the form of bravery on the shores of Normandy, but as incredible courage displayed on the home front knowing that accidents inside the plants were common and could very well be fatal. They knew this and even yet, millions of them went to work every day to do their part, dedicated to the ideals of democracy and what Americans could achieve when working together.

Today, easily available and cheap, sugar, along with corn syrup, is the number one food additive in the United States. Made from sugar cane or sugar beets, it takes a number of forms: white or refined sugar; brown sugar, which is incompletely refined and retains some molasses that gives it color; confectioners’ sugar; and molasses itself, produced during refining. For white sugar, the refining process involves half a dozen steps, starting with the crushing of the cane. The resulting liquid is filtered to remove impurities and the color of the molasses that coated the sucrose crystals of the raw sugar; then the liquid is evaporated and dries into granulated white sugar. If you are avoiding “processed foods”, you must avoid any type of sugar. It doesn’t exist without processing.

 

Now and Then

Sugar provides quick energy, but its nutritional value is essentially nil. Yet, modern-day Americans consume, on average, about 150 pounds of it a year per person in food or drinks, the equivalent of about 32 teaspoons per day. 100 years ago, Americans consumed 4 pounds per person annually.

A visual: Consider today’s Sam’s Club option of a 25-pound bag of sugar, “convenient size”, and “great for baking and everyday use”. In 2017 consumption terms, we will buy six of these bags and store them in our big pantry. In 1917, my great-grandmother would stretch one of these Sam’s Club bags of sugar over five years!

 

Ohhh Yeeeaaahhh

The WWII ration rules allow my household one cup of sugar per person (including children), per week. At first it doesn’t sound too bad. The 25-pound of Sam’s Club sugar should get me and my hubby through six months of sugar rationing. But, to put it in terms of Kool-Aid making, one cup of sugar in the Kool-Aid mix would mean I am out for that week after one pitcher!  Sigh.

 

For my household, two cups of sugar per week means I don’t bake like I used to. If there’s sugar in the cupboard at the end of the month, I make a pie or a cake. But then we’re wiped out until the new month rolls around.

So What’s a Girl to do?

Under the tight constraints of the rations and workload, more and more home makers were turning to store-bought pastries and desserts. After all, commercial bakeries were not mandated to the same constraints of sugar rationing. At a time when “comfort food” and mom’s apple pie would arguably steady nerves and war emotions, commercialism was stepping in. Many established home makers of the time were well-aware of the intrusion from outside-the-home providers for their family. They didn’t like it. I can’t say I blame them. It was a literal bittersweet goodbye to a long-honored tradition of showing love through homemade food.

Recently I was lucky enough to visit a traveling museum exhibit at the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) AirVenture Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin featuring WWII Nose Art from bombers and fighter craft of the war.

 

Nose art is a decorative painting on the fuselage of an aircraft, most popular during WIII. The display was salvaged from demolition and is now safely in the hands of the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) headquarters in Dallas who have secured designation of the artifacts by the National Trust for Historical Preservation as an official project of Save America’s Treasures.

 

There were practical reasons for nose art. It was important in identifying friendly units. Secondary, the art became a way to express individuality often constrained by the uniformity of the military. And bomber crews, which suffered high casualty rates, often developed strong bonds with the planes they were flying, affectionately decorated them with nose art and believed that the nose art was bringing luck to the planes. And as some of the stories told, frequently the art was a depiction of a sweetheart back home or of a pinup celebrity, or inspired by a popular song of the time. It evoked memories of home and peacetime life.

 

Nose art was not officially approved by the military. Regulations were not heavily enforced, especially on the Air Force side, but it has been shown that the farther the planes and crew were from headquarters or from the public eye, the racier the art tended to be. For instance, nudity was more common in nose art on aircraft in the Pacific than on aircraft in Europe. (Cohan, Phil. “Risque Business.” Air and Space, 5 (Apr.-May 1990), p.65)

 

Story boards at each display help the viewer put the art, plane and crew in historical context. Big band music played over the speakers helps to bring the mind along with the eyes to the glory days of the planes.

 

And kudos to the EAA AirMuseum for including in their display a section of artifacts and memorial to those on the Homefront. The tie-in between the art and the lives affected back home brought completion to the display. Beautifully done, we even get to know a little more about some of the riveters that made the planes.For more information about the museum and display, please click here.

 Through my work of discovering companies and food products that were available during WWII, I keep coming across Borden’s ads starring Elsie the sweet Jersey cow and Elmer her grumpy bull husband.

There is definitely something different about advertising from the WWII era. The word “propaganda” is thrown around a lot when it comes to the government ads asking for commitment and loyalty to the war effort. To the fact that the government was even taking out ads to sell war bonds and inform through pictures the need to not gossip, not participate in the black market for food – it seems a little bizarre today.

I’m not sure which came first, the company advertising or the government advertising, but they certainly influenced each other. Words were important to make the case of purchasing anything. There was great detail and careful attention given to words and complete sentences. For instance: “In spite of the heavy demands on American’s supply of meat because of the war, our share at home will be enough – if we use it wisely, learn to extend it with other foods – and make the most of every bit available.” This is a real advertising sentence used by General Mills. Today, it would read something like, “Meat. It’s what’s for dinner.”

Back to Borden’s. Somewhere along the way, even prior to the 1940’s, companies discovered the profitable sway of a mascot. General Mills had Betty Crocker. Aunt Jemima is  still the only name in pancakes and syrup. And Borden’s had Elsie. We moved to real-life celebrity mascots (by my calculation) at the time television sets took away our imaginative vision of characters. My dad has a story about my Great Uncle Willie ending his weekly obsession with The Lone Ranger when it went from radio to television. He saw the Hollywood version and it was a tragic let down of how he imagined his favorite star to appear.

People took time to read and write because that was the main form of communication over distance and it was the best way to gain important information. Elsie was a personified Jersey cow. Drawn out comic strip advertisements brought readers into her world and proof of the smoothest, most vitamin-rich, best-tasting version of milk.

So even when we see the advertisement above of a cow and her bull husband at a human New Year’s Eve party, wearing party hats, we believe she knows what’s right. If the talking cow said her Eagle Brand milk was the best – it must have been true.