Hoboes, homeless and such during WW2?

It's interesting to hear even how different celebrities incorporated WWII into their postwar lives. Bob Hope spent the last fifty years of his life riding on his wartime reputation, to the point of becoming an official "honorary veteran" -- but bandleader Kay Kyser was even more tireless than Hope was in touring for the USO, and never once tried to trade on that reputation in later life. Baseball player Hank Greenberg served longer in the military during the war than any other Major Leaguer, a total of 47 months in uniform, and you never once heard him complain about the years he lost to military service -- unlike Williams and DiMaggio, who lost far less out of their careers than he did (and, to be honest, had less riding on the outcome of the war than he did.)

My late father-in-law used that expression, "close enough for government work" all the time and he flew on combat missions over Germany at the same time my father-in-law was a prisoner of war on the ground, ironically not far from where I was stationed in Germany about 20 years later. My father never had anything bad to say about Germans. Let me repeat that: he never said anything bad about Germans, even though he had been a prisoner there. Also, oddly enough, my father-in-law who would say "close enough for government work," was an aeronautical engineer who worked for the army. Neither, however, were what I call professional veterans and neither is my son, who saw combat as a tank crewman in Iraq.

As far as former enemies getting along, after a fashion, which has been the case clearly for the last hundred years, they had and have shared experiences that those who never went cannot relate to, as you pointed out. It was true of Civil War veterans, even. Further back than that, I cannot say.

BlueTrain said:

As far as former enemies getting along, after a fashion, which has been the case clearly for the last hundred years, they had and have shared experiences that those who never went cannot relate to, as you pointed out. It was true of Civil War veterans, even. Further back than that, I cannot say.

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One of my favorite Civil War vet stories: a Confederate veteran somehow ended up in Kenosha Wisconsin. He could not, of course, become a member of the local Grand Army of the Republic chapter, but he'd frequently show up for the coffee and cake session afterward, giving his side of the battles where many of the Union veterans present had been. When he passed away the local GAR men saw to it that he was buried with full honors including the standard government issue Confederate grave marker. I have a feeling that this was not a particularly unique situation.

I have two theories, totally unproven and completely un-academic, relating to veterans and their history. One is that the first books or stories published about any given war by veterans are by the generals and admirals, too, I guess. The lower ranks don't get around to getting their stories out, either actually in a book or in other forms, doesn't happen for another twenty years at least, not to imply any sort of exactness but merely "a long time" later. This happens everywhere, not just here.

My other theory is like the first, but regarding monuments. Sometimes there will be monuments built right away but typically a larger monument is built when the veterans are getting along in years and especially when there has to be some form of subscription or other fund-raising to pay for the thing. There are a lot of variations on that, of course. Cemeteries get built, if that's the word, right away, of course, and those are natural places for monuments. Even so, seeing row after row of grave markers is quite a monument in itself. The Soviet Union built a couple really impressive gigantic monuments, one in Berlin, the other in, I think, Stalingrad. I have seen the one in Berlin and on a rainy day, but not the other.

I used to think there was a trend to build new monuments that actually listed every casualty, like the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, but I eventually realized there are little monuments all over like that and they mostly are older than the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial but I have yet to see another that brought forth the tears like that one.

Many towns here have monuments listing every local man who served in the Civil War, and you might also find similar monuments for World War I and World War II. But it became common here by the last third of the 20th Century to replace the more recent monuments with monuments to "Veterans Of All Wars."

During WWII, most towns here had a large wooden billboard type thing outside a community building called the Honor Roll, which would be painted with the name of every man in service. Those who were killed would be marked with a gold star before or after their names. The idea was usually that this temporary arrangement would be replaced by something more permanent later on, but a lot of towns still had the wooden boards in place long after the war. In my home town, the WWII "Honor Roll" board stood outside the Methodist Church, and remained in place unaltered and never repainted for almost thirty years.


By the early 70s it was a rotting ugly mess, and one winter it fell over in a snowstorm and was quietly taken away. A stone marker "in honor of those who served in all wars" went up in its spot shortly after.

The remains of the old Honor Roll board were shoved into a cellar, and stayed there until just a couple years ago. Someone poking around in the junk found what was left of the board, dug it out, cleaned it up as best they could, and donated it to the local Historical Society, which last I heard was going to try to restore it and put it on display somewhere.

Even around here where I live in Northern Virginia, it's not hard for a monument to be forgotten, even when it's in a prominent location. Unfortunately, a prominent location does not mean it will be cared for. Even a stone monument can disappear among the shrubs and bushes.

It is a little like old-fashioned country cemeteries. If you go far enough back into the hills and I assume, even in the flatlands, there will be little--or not so little--graveyards that are not the properties of corporations that give "perpetual care." Instead, relatives will get together once in a while to keep it in reasonably good shape. That works fine as long as people live around there, especially relatives. In long walks in the woods where I am from, I have come across grave stones that had been there for at least a hundred years (by now, anyway), judging from the trees growing around the stone.

I used to walk by the Honor Roll board there, on my way to and from school each day, and I used to wonder why it was in such shabby condition. I personally knew most of the people listed on it -- they were the generation of people who were running the town at the time, running the stores and businesses, running the schools and such. They were authority figures, with the power to do something if they wanted to, so why did they let the Honor Roll rot to pieces like that?

And I finally came to realize that, basically, it wasn't a big deal to them. They honestly didn't care if they were memorialized or commemorated or saluted or not. When the Honor Roll fell apart they threw it in a cellar and forgot about it, becase it honestly didn't matter to them if their names were on a board or a monument or not. What had happened to them thirty years before was something that had happened to them thirty years before. And they'd moved on.

To be fair to Bob Hope he continued touring and entertaining troops long after the war, long after there was any glory in it and right through the Vietnam era when supporting the troops was more likely to bring boos than cheers. Correct me if I am wrong but I don't believe he celebrated a Christmas at home for more than 30 years because he was always overseas.

BlueTrain said:

I have two theories, totally unproven and completely un-academic, relating to veterans and their history. One is that the first books or stories published about any given war by veterans are by the generals and admirals, too, I guess. The lower ranks don't get around to getting their stories out, either actually in a book or in other forms, doesn't happen for another twenty years at least, not to imply any sort of exactness but merely "a long time" later. This happens everywhere, not just here.

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Not entirely true as to the American Civil War. One of the finest first person accounts was that of a Tennessee private by the name of Sam Watkins (Co. Aytch). Very readable and insightful. And from the Federal standpoint, Ulysses S. Grant's autobiography- (Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant) written while he was dying of throat cancer- is an excellent read as well.

The Southern Historical Society was responsible for reshaping much of the Lost Cause romanticism that later was embraced by renowned author Douglas Southall Freeman, and that organization was under much influence of former Confederate generals Jubal Early and Dabney H. Maury. Their aim was to overcome what they saw as a "Northern bias," but created an Army of Northern Virginia- centric bias of its own. We likely have better access to many more memoirs now than in the Nineteenth Century as memoirs that remained hidden as family heirlooms are being discovered by historians and local historical societies. A friend of mine- his "real" job is that of a Chicago homicide detective- has edited several of these that have been recently published.

My comments and theories were only generalizations. It would have been remarkable for a former private soldier to get something published when he was still young, or for that matter, for anyone who is young to have something published.

Someone wrote a book (which I have not read) about what some of the Civil War leaders did after the war, which is a different take on history. Or their story.

A lot of local history in the form of memoirs and general local history is not widely distributed or printed in large printings, so they're difficult to find or even learn about. This is true of all such works going back as far as the Civil War, too. Of course, the interest in such stuff isn't widespread either. Not too many Civil War buffs (I am not a Civil War buff--but my wife is) in Virginia would be interested in the subject "The Civil War in California," however interesting it might otherwise be. The places to look for such things are in little bookshops and antique stores in small towns. More and more stuff is now available on-line, if you can find it, but good luck.

I once ran across an article in a free local newspaper where I live (The City Paper, in Washington, DC) about some of the official records of the Confederate Army that had been saved by the adjutant general of the Confederate Army, Samuel Cooper, who had also been adjutant general of the U.S. Army when Davis was secretary of war. He was from New York but I guess he liked working for his old boss. When Richmond was about to fall, Cooper loaded a wagon with records from his office and took off, although he was eventually captured. The records were saved, although preserved might not be the right word. As the war went on, decent paper became unavailable and records were kept on low-quality paper. The records were falling apart (when the article was written). My wife's family still has some of those records, too, because Samuel Cooper was my wife's great-great-grandfather. He had married George Mason's granddaughter, too, by the way. Anyway, there was even some mild controversy over whether those records were even worth preserving, meaning those presently in government hands. I imagine they're in some archives warehouse somewhere. I don't believe Cooper wrote his memoirs.

BlueTrain said:

The fact that so-called non-combatant units were highly essential as well as frequently engaged with the enemy was not unappreciated both during the war and afterwards. There was even at least one move about the Red Ball Express. It was very dramatized, of course, but it was more realistic than the stores set during basic training when the USO was the center of attention.

I believe that some construction units formed during the war, both army and navy, had a lot of relatively older men in them and, sure enough, there were movies made about them, too. But I have trouble imagining hobos as younger men, which of course is totally illogical.

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These days we can barely get by with computers. When you thing of what was accomplished with a dozen secretaries and a card file in the 1940s it boggles the mind ... but I suspect since there was such a uniform investment from the entire citizenry that a top down managerial system like we tend to have today wasn't employed, different departments may have been run more or less autonomously, and therefore more efficiently.

Dad was in the 3622 QMTC which ran the Red Ball Express throughout 1944 and into '45. Kind of counter intuitively, the Express was a continually modified one way route rather than a unit or anything of the sort. Specifically, it was kept clear of non essential traffic to increase speed and to maintain road conditions ... conditions that their heavy trucks were constantly worsening. Many of the GIs were younger but a lot of the officers were like my father, old for their rank. Regardless, they got shot at quite a bit. There is a famous moment where they had to drive through a burning town with their double 2000 gallon tank rigs hauling avgas (tanks ran on it too) and make a terribly tight turn at an intersection in the city center. The local French (who I suspect had just been bombed by American planes, thus the burning town) were amazing, dragging blankets and mattresses out of their homes to soak down and cover the tank trucks.

My grandmother, after living on the road (a la the Joads) all through the 1920s and after some pestering by my father wrote an article on The Children of the Road ... child migrants and hobos. I'll have to dig it out of wherever I have it hidden someday. The feeling I get from my father is that most of the guys he ran into hoboing were in their teens and twenties. Mid thirties was an "old man." A couple of things to remember, however. 1) people, especially living out doors with little medical/dental care, just looked older then, 2) his part of the hobo era was mostly before the "famous" crash of 1929. Victims of the previous downturn, his family had figured out how to stabilize their situation by 1931, so he missed part of the era when even greater numbers of people (of all ages) were forced into that life. The hopping freights and hitchhiking lifestyle was not for the out of shape or those who'd been injured, however. That was a lifestyle of the fit and agile.

In my travels through the British Isles I've always been touched by the war monuments and market crosses that stand at the center of every little town, listing the dead of WWI and WWII. In a little town of a few thousand souls, the list of 1939-45 will have several dozen names, a heavy enough toll for a little town, you would think. But the list of 1914-1918 will have hundreds of names. There were towns that lost every male between the ages of 18 and 40. The old song "Petals Fell from a Rose of York" was about the Somme Offensive of July 1, 1916, when some 40,000 British soldiers were shot down in a single day. Most of the dead were killed in the first 15 minutes. British regiments were recruited by county and a number of Yorkshire regiments were in the first assault. It was probably the stupidest war in all of human history, though there haven't been many smart ones.

I knew I had this somewhere. Depression era, probably real 'bos, but something about it makes me believe it is staged.

You see the same kinds of monuments listing individual names in little German villages, too. The collective memory of a people seems to remember everything and not always forgiving. There is a (typically) Greek temple-style building in my hometown called the "Memorial Building." In the 1950s it housed the city library, armed forces recruiting offices and some other offices that I don't recall. Upstairs it had a hall suitable for dances but was also used when the polio vaccine came out in the 1950s. Our collective memory doesn't remember the polio epidemic in the 1950s as well as other things. These days, however, it really is a memorial building, serving as a museum.

MikeKardec said:

I knew I had this somewhere. Depression era, probably real 'bos, but something about it makes me believe it is staged.

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There are a lot of "staged" hobo photos from around 1933-34, more than a few of them cooked up by a committee headed by Irving Thalberg to oppose Upton Sinclair's campaign for Governor of California. The idea was to stage scenes of "hobos" flooding into the state to support Sinclair's "End Poverty In California" program, and many of these fake pictures were run in the Chandler and Hearst papers in order to show the Respectable People what a Sinclair victory would mean.

The L.A. Times ran one such picture across their front page at the height of the campaign showing a seething mob of hoboes in a freightyard -- only to have sharp-eyed readers note the teenage movie actor Frankie Darro at the front of the mob. That's what happens when you pass off a still from "Wild Boys of the Road" as a news photo. Oopsie!

LizzieMaine said:

There are a lot of "staged" hobo photos from around 1933-34, more than a few of them cooked up by a committee headed by Irving Thalberg to oppose Upton Sinclair's campaign for Governor of California. The idea was to stage scenes of "hobos" flooding into the state to support Sinclair's "End Poverty In California" program, and many of these fake pictures were run in the Chandler and Hearst papers in order to show the Respectable People what a Sinclair victory would mean.

The L.A. Times ran one such picture across their front page at the height of the campaign showing a seething mob of hoboes in a freightyard -- only to have sharp-eyed readers note the teenage movie actor Frankie Darro at the front of the mob. That's what happens when you pass off a still from "Wild Boys of the Road" as a news photo. Oopsie!

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Hysterical!