When the sirens went off at 11:30 at night, my mother grabbed my sister and I and dumped us into the bathtub on the second floor. " The Nazi bombers are coming, " she said quietly, as quietly as she might have announced the horse drawn milk truck was coming up the street. ("don't upset the kids")
Tearing around the top floor of our three story southwest Philadelphia rowhouse in 1945, she ripped the curtains shut, rooms darkened as she flew through them, passed by our bathroom door like a maddened witch two, three times, then in with us, lit candle in hand.
With the bathroom door shut, my kid sister asked in her adorable baby babble, "Mommy, why you scared?" So, mom said, kinda, I just want to protect you from the German bombers.
"Germans gabobers" Pat answered. "Oh, never mind, honey. We lived like that during the war. No, the Germans never got like that, but the fear was there. All over.
Vacations to the nearby sea-shore included fathers that helped man the Coast Guard watch-towers. At night, the eastern sky out at sea were lit with naval gunfire, and the morning, the tides would wash in the blood and refuse from the previous night's fighting. That onto American shores.
My father was a Coast Guard Port Guide and carried a gun. My best friend's father worked at a naval shipyard building fighting ships that my father helped secure from spies. Everyone I knew during the war was a part time air raid warden - everyone.
Nazis infiltrated America, not everyone supported the war. Charles Lindbergh was against it and fought like hell to keep us out. He alienated President Roosevelt in the process. The enemy infiltrated the transportation unions in Philadelphia and caused a strike crippling the city. The General in charge took over the system by force and fired most of the systems bosses and got the transportation system back functioning again.
Almost everyone I knew during the war, had encounters with air raid wardens, military troops coming or going in the war efforts.
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