FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: THE WAR YEARS AGAIN

Jean Bell Mosley's new autobiography, "For Most of the Century," is only available in serialized form in the Southeast Missourian. Return each week for her continuing story.

1940-1950

By 1940 the Depression was receding, but something worse was asserting itself into our lives. Hitler.

We had been vaguely aware of far-off things going on. As I was graduating from high school, Japan seized Manchuria. While I was teaching school at Graniteville, Mussolini, dictator of Italy, invaded Ethiopia and Japan invaded China, but as an old song goes, these were faraway places with strange sounding names. However, when the fighting came to Britain, France, Belgium, and other places where we had fought before, it was different.

Then came Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor Day, when the Japanese made a sneak attack on our Pacific naval fleet stationed there and practically destroyed it. Next day, we sat close to our radio and heard President Franklin Delano Roosevelt speak in somber tones, "Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

Things looked bleak.

The German army was invading all neighboring nations and annexing them as German territory. The general cry in Europe was, "Stop Hitler!"

On the home front, the Equitable Life Insurance Company, probably because of the Depression plus the war, determined that no married women would be employed by them, just as I was getting well adjusted to my work.

Ethel Long, an unmarried secretary, was working for the Arnold Roth Insurance Company and getting slighty less salary than I. Together, with our bosses, we struck a deal to exchange jobs since Arnold Roth, being an independent insurance agent, had no such rules about married women.

Arnold Roth and Benson Hardesty, a lawyer, had their offices on the second floor of the First National Bank Building in the 200 block of North Main Street. A room separated the offices and this room was for the secretaries -- Roth's and Hardesty"s.

My work load was increased. Mr. Roth represented about a dozen insurance companies and I had to keep separate books for each company as well as take dictation for ten to twelve letters a day, make appointments, deliver policies, etc.

Arnold Roth was a very civic-minded person, a war hero of WWI and involved in Veterans affairs, such affairs adding to my dictation and typing work.

Fortunately, when he dictated, I had a good ear for the message he was aiming at and a good memory so that if my Gregg shorthand fell behind, I could mentally fill in the gaps, and I don't think my inexact translation was ever noticed. Maybe it was thought to be better since, before long, Mr. Roth would hand me letters from his companies or clients and say, "Answer these."

A few minimal raises in both my husband's and my salaries enabled us to "eat up" our FHA loan more quickly. It was our aim to have it paid before we started a family.

Always, though, there was that thorn of Hitler in our sides, and the war that was now raging in Europe. Some days I walked from my office to Woolworth's, a block and a half away, south on Main Street, for lunch. I would hear snippets of radio news and sidewalk conversation along the way such as, "Well, what country has Hitler invaded today?" Or, "Isn't anyone going to stop him?" "He says the Germans are a superior race and they're out to rule the world."

Although the street talk, the newspaper articles and radio announcers and commentators bombarded us with war news, I didn't yet realize that it was going to be us, the United States, who would pay a dear price for stopping Hitler and to unleash on the world the first atom bomb.

Many young, single, and childless married men began volunteering for the Army, Navy and Air Force. Edward thought he would fit into the Air Force better than anywhere else, so he enrolled in the flying school at the local Cape Girardeau airport.

He learned the mechanics of flying but never did overcome his sickness that occurred every time his plane flew high, purposely stalled and spiraled downward to be pulled out and upward at what seemed to me the last few seconds before hitting the ground. The maneuver was a requirement. Therefore he did not pass.

Edward then tried to volunteer for the Navy but failed a physical test on some seemingly small defect, a pronounced overbite and some enlarged leg veins. So we awaited the draft.

Selective Service headquarters, that body established in September, 1948, for drafting young men into the military for service, was set up at the H&H Building. Edward received orders to report Jan. 13, 1943 at Legion Hall, Jackson, Mo., to be inducted into the Army and transferred to St. Louis for physical examination.

It has been twenty-five years since the time Daddy had gone to Elvins to "be shot," as I childishly thought, for WWI.

It was a hair-trigger tense time. We had made arrangements to rent our house, furnished, to a married couple. I was going to take my desk and move back to stay with my mother and father-in-law while Edward would be away.

Edward telephoned me as soon as he could to say that, once again, he had not passed the physical test. Minor things. I think if the war had gone on much longer he would have been taken.

As it was, we "dug in" and continued the war years with all the rations of gasoline, tires, sugar, soap, shoes, etc.

We bought Savings Stamps, saved metal and did all the things we could on the home front. We thought that maybe we had "dodged a bullet" as far as starting a family, so, with my biological clock ticking on and on, we did so right away, enduring the scornful looks of some acquaintances who thought it was a war evasive act, not knowing the true situation.

Arnold Roth, my boss, re-entered the army as a captain and was promptly sent overseas. His son, John, was already overseas in the army and was killed in the Battle of the Bulge.

I had made an agreement with Mr. Roth that I would run the insurance agency for a percentage of the profits. This lifted my salary immensely and, on a late winter day of 1944, I went downstairs at the First National Bank, the building in which I worked, and with a check for $135 and $10.95 in cash, paid off the principal of the loan without any further interest, a feature of war time FHA loans.

I was pregnant but I told Mrs. Roth, who came to the office once in a while, that I would stay on until we could break in another secretary. This took a long time, and I worked practically up to the very week of the baby's arrival.

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.