National Vietnam Veterans Day – March 29, 2021
Someone, I tell you
will remember us.
We are oppressed by
fears of oblivion.
Sappho (6 cent. B.C.)
My German Winter: Notes on Surviving Uncertainty
When our plane touched down at Rhine-Main Air Base near the city of Frankfurt, Germany, the first thing I noticed outside my window seat was a multitude of vertical cranes, moving in every direction, lifting and swinging massive steel beams and lumber. It was November, 1966 and Germany was still rebuilding its heavily bombed cities after WWII. My husband, Army 2nd Lieutenant David R. Crocker, Jr., and I were headed for his first duty station in the mountain village of Wildflecken, “the little wild place.” The next four hours of travel by car would take us through thick pine forests over roads packed with snow to a remote training area within three miles of the 5K zone – the border of what was then East Germany. The cranes had not arrived in Wildflecken, yet. It had been a German Army Post in WWII and a stopping place for trains transporting displaced people from Poland during the war.
This long-ago adventure in Germany came to mind as I did a mental inventory of the uncertain times in my life and how I lived them relative to how I am experiencing the uncertainties of the pandemic today. Back then in 1966, at age nineteen, and newly married, the longest I had ever been away from my family of origin was a week at Camp Aldersgate for Methodist youth in nearby Rhode Island when I was fourteen.
When I departed for Germany, I didn’t realize, or perhaps I couldn’t comprehend, that the extent of my communication with my family would be limited to snail mail and a yearly […]
April 5, 2020: National Gold Star Spouses Day
On Sunday, April 5, 2020 Gold Star Spouses across the United states will be acknowledged but few people know the grassroots origins of the organization that propelled this special day into existence. It was a muggy July evening in 1945 when five young women, whose husbands had died in World War II, traveled to Hyde Park, New York, to meet with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt later wrote in her news column, My Day, “…they came for supper, and then went to Poughkeepsie the Lafayette Post of the American Legion had given them permission to use a room… It was a small meeting, though the casualties among servicemen from Dutchess County were pretty high.”
These five widows had first met together in Marie Jordan’s apartment in New York City to talk about how they might band together to support the needs of all war widows and their children. After Marie’s husband, Edward Jordan, had died in combat in 1944 in Alsdorf, Germany, she scanned newspapers for the death notices of other fallen soldiers and the names of their widows. She called a few who lived close by and invited them to lunch at her apartment where she lived with her small son. Losing a spouse in combat meant also losing medical care, commissary privileges and even a place to live if they lived in military housing. Many widows had married young and had no job training. They had little or no resources from the U.S. government and often relied on the charity of family and friends. Out of desperation, Marie and four other widows formed a support group called the American Widows […]
Christmas in the 1950s: A Celebration of Memory
When I grew up in Old Mystic, Connecticut in the 1950s, my family attended a former meetinghouse in Ledyard founded by the Rogerene Quakers in the 18thcentury. Both of my parents had descended from Rogerene followers and both were born at home in Ledyard in the early 1920s. Over time, religious practices at Quakertown changed from their simpler early belief of a God within each of us to a “church” that was more evangelical and fundamentalist. For a kid, the best part of attending Quakertown Church was that Christmas was a cause for an exuberant celebration.
Sometime in the early twentieth century, the weekly worship service had become mainly music and lots of “praising” with people jumping up spontaneously to shout, “Praise the Lord!” They would mention the sick and needy during the praising and ask for blessings. Some people, overtaken by the Holy Spirit, rolled on the floor in the center aisle while speaking in tongues, a nonsensical language (to a child’s ear) over which the speaker supposedly has no control. For me, it seemed like a curious venting of adult emotion. These were folks who had disavowed dancing, smoking and sinning in general but this rave effect on Sunday morning was allowed. Kids didn’t speak this language but grownups appeared to feel better after the attack of tongues subsided. When they got back to their seats, often with assistance, they would be smiling and perspiring
At Christmastime kids could have fun, too. There were trees laced with paper chains and ropes strung with cranberries and popcorn at the front of the church. Choirs and soloists sang […]
The Vietnam War – Fifty Years Later
May 17, 2019, marks the 50th anniversary of the death Captain David R. Crocker, Jr. in Vietnam. We were married on June 9, 1966, the day after his graduation from West Point.
Each year, remembering his death on this date reverberates through whatever I’m doing. This “anniversary” is the only aspect of the experience of his loss that feels anchored in time. Each year I note the weather, then and now, and who I am, presently. I remember that in 1969 it was finally becoming spring-like and trees were blossoming, although it had been chilly in the northeast like this year. By Memorial Day, when his funeral was held, we were jettisoned into summer with temperatures in the 90s. My great-uncle wore a black suit and passed out from the heat when we gathered in the cemetery. I would have liked to have shared my secret then with Uncle Ephraim that Dave wasn’t really being buried that morning. Perhaps he wouldn’t have collapsed from sadness and the sun. Only our letters and other memorabilia were in the coffin. Dave’s sister and I would take his ashes to the Eiger in Switzerland later that summer. It was my attempt to control uncontrollable events.
I remember the commencement of disbelief and grief back then as I reabsorb the chain of events from long ago; the notification, the decisions, the identification of the body, the acceptance that it had really happened. Each year since, at this time, […]
National Gold Star Spouses Day, April 5, 2019
It was a muggy July evening in 1946 when five women, whose husbands had died in World War II, traveled to Hyde Park, New York, to meet with a soon to be war widow, Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt later wrote in her news column, My Day, “…they came for supper, and then went to Poughkeepsie the Lafayette Post of the American Legion had given them permission to use a room… It was a small meeting, though the casualties among servicemen from Dutchess County were pretty high.”
In fact, more than 175 men from Dutchess County alone were killed or missing in action by 1945.
These five young widows had first met together in Marie Jordan’s apartment in New York City in 1945 to talk about how they might band together to support the needs of all war widows and their children. Losing a spouse in combat meant also losing income, medical care, commissary privileges and even a place to live if they lived in military housing. Most had married young and had no job training. They had little or no resources from the U.S. government and often relied on the charity of family and friends. Out of desperation they formed a support group called the American Widows of WWII.
Their appeal to Mrs. Roosevelt was auspicious. When FDR died in 1946, she counted herself among them and became one of the original signers of the group’s charter. The name was changed to Gold Star Wives of America in 1948 (GSW) and the mission expanded to seek benefits for both the spouses and children of persons who died in combat and/or as a result of service-connected illness.
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Why We Need War Stories
The first time I met the survivors of Alpha Company of the 2/22 Infantry in 2006, I was scared. It had been almost four decades since my husband, Capt. David R. Crocker, Jr., died in Vietnam in a booby-trapped bunker. I had never heard a first person account of precisely what happened, and I still wasn’t sure I was ready to hear the stories. What was I afraid of? Perhaps simply the peeling back of the protective layer of years since I was informed of the tragedy on that warm spring day in May, 1969. Back then, I had avoided the nightly newscasts by Walter Cronkite. I couldn’t bear to see bloodied young men carried out of battle. Before the worst happened, superstition about what might protect my beloved governed every move I made. Charmed thinking was my armor.
War stories are hard for both the teller and the listener. For some people “the beginning “ – that first telling – might not happen for years after the event. Veterans and other survivors of war may hold back their untold stories for decades. Despite their courage on the battlefield, describing that experience requires a reach back down into gut-wrenching details that they had tried hard to forget, back to a place where they may have felt guilty to be a survivor.
But, remembering has its power, too. Meeting the men from Dave’s company and hearing their stories of life with him in Vietnam was my first big step towards a kind of healing, and an understanding of what had actually happened in […]
Gold Star Wives of America: Resilient Survivors
(This article originally appeared here in April, 2015, commemorating Gold Star Wives Day and the 70th anniversary of the founding of Gold Star Wives of America, an organization devoted to educating and protecting those whose spouse died in combat or from combat-related causes.)
It was a muggy July evening in 1946 when five women, whose husbands had died in World War II, traveled to Hyde Park, New York, to meet with a soon to be war widow, Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt later wrote in her news column, My Day, “…they came for supper, and then went to Poughkeepsie the Lafayette Post of the American Legion had given them permission to use a room… It was a small meeting, though the casualties among servicemen from Dutchess County were pretty high.”
In fact, more than 175 men from Dutchess County alone were killed or MIA by 1945.
These five young widows had first met together in Marie Jordan’s apartment in New York City in 1945 to talk about how they might band together to support the needs of all war widows and their children. Losing a spouse in combat meant also losing medical care, commissary privileges and even their home if they lived in military housing. Most had married young and had no job training. They had little or no resources from the U.S. government and often relied on the charity of family and friends. Out of desperation they formed a support group called the American Widows of WWII.
Their appeal to Mrs. Roosevelt was auspicious. When FDR died in 1946, she counted herself among them […]
Veteran’s Day 1968
Veteran’s Day, 1968. An excerpt from Those Who Remain: Remembrance and Reunion after War.
He spoke of his time in Vietnam as unavoidable, a river to cross, an obstacle to remove. Once the orders are issued, he said he would face court martial if he didn’t go.
“There’s no other choice,” he said. “I have to go even if Dad says the war is a mess right now.” What his father had said was that there was a disconnect between what was happening on the ground, in the jungles, and what politicians and the Pentagon perceived the war to be and expected it to be, a reality which would not be unraveled from the fundamental untruths and hyperbole of the war until years later. But, I understood nothing about what he was about to step into.
“We’ll survive – I’ll be home by Christmas next year,” he said. “Then I have only one year before I can get out of the army completely.”
I promised to write every day and prayed for the rash to go away.
“Letters – that’s all we’ll have over there,” he said. “Where I’ll be, there won’t be any other communication except mail.”
The anticipation of verbal silence, physical distance, had its own power. It began slowly with long silences and idle activities, constant unspoken preparation. We could drive for an hour together without a word between us. We unpacked and repacked, organized cleaned, straightened, made lists. On our last night together on November 10, 1968 we barely spoke. We expressed our love for each other only with our bodies. The poison ivy scourge had […]
How to Earn a Gold Star: GSW of America
It was a muggy July evening in 1946 when five women, whose husbands had died in World War II, traveled to Hyde Park, New York, to meet with a soon to be war widow, Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt later wrote in her news column, My Day, “…they came for supper, and then went to Poughkeepsie the Lafayette Post of the American Legion had given them permission to use a room… It was a small meeting, though the casualties among servicemen from Dutchess County were pretty high.”
In fact, more than 175 men from Dutchess County alone were killed or MIA by 1945.
These five young widows had first met together in Marie Jordan’s apartment in New York City in 1945 to talk about how they might band together to support the needs of all war widows and their children. Losing a spouse in combat meant also losing medical care, commissary privileges and even their home if they lived in military housing. Most had married young and had no job training. They had little or no resources from the U.S. government and often relied on the charity of family and friends. Out of desperation they formed a support group called the American Widows of WWII.
Their appeal to Mrs. Roosevelt was auspicious. When FDR died in 1946, she counted herself among them and became one of the original signers of the group’s charter. The name was changed to Gold Star Wives of America in 1948 and the mission expanded to seek benefits for both the spouses and children of persons who died in war and as […]
