Virgie Bell's View

Editor's Note: We asked Virgie to write a piece about her experiences as a child during World War II.

OK, De'on, here’s the story. It's not an unusual story at all – if you were a Gypsy and a child during World War II.

It was a time when the country was just coming out of a depression that was earth-shattering. The rich ones who couldn't face it dove off the highest buildings, ending the faceless emptiness that had become their future. Aunt Dell and I talked a lot when I lived in Littlefield, Texas. She said Mother would have followed my daddy to the jumping-off place, the end of the world as it were. Us kids were three little stair steps, and we could just about be tucked into anyplace, a couch for a year, a fold-down kitchen bed in a tiny trailer house at a secretive atomic project facility.

We were the babies who were dragged around to various sites as part of the workforce of the slumbering giant that had been awakened by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I think that because my parents' generation survived the Great Depression, anything was doable for them. Survival, developed to an art form, was a way of life.

I was only 10 years old by the time I arrived back in Texas to help my brothers hoe my daddy’s cotton on my granddad’s land. There was never a time my grandparents lived as Gypsies. That trait was reserved for my dad, who was my hero. I’ve heard my mother say that my dad's family never had to face the struggles that other people had to face. It was a choice, therefore, on both of their parts.

Before my tenth birthday, I had spent a summer at Hanford Site, Washington, living on a reservation set aside for work on the Manhattan Project – the atomic bomb. We didn't even know what we were working on.

We had a big shelter that was used for a half-day of school and then as a picture show at night. The facility was surrounded by a high fence, and we were occupied by the United States military. They lived in barracks on the camp and stakes were driven in the ground with ribbon around a perimeter. The color of the ribbon matched the arm band of the military that patrolled that little patch of ground. Think of the guarding of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in D.C., and you’ll have an accurate picture.

Our military was busy trying to save our nation from total destruction. Everyone participated in the war effort in some way. It was expected, and, most of all, it was respected. Mother had a difficult pregnancy with Linda Gay, my little sister who is nine years younger than me, so Mother's health was the only reason we left Hanford, Washington and moved to California. We later found out that the project my dad had worked on collapsed and killed the crew he was working with.

If my mother or daddy knew about the displacement of the Japanese during the war, I never heard anything about it. When we left the Hanford Atomic Site, we moved to the beach and back to the three-room apartment in a small suburb of Los Angeles. Across the street was the little school us three older kids attended. My part of the bed was at the foot of a pull-out couch, as Mickey and Bennie had the head.

Linda was born while we lived here. We three older ones went to the show, a double feature Western was the usual order of the day. Maybe Hollywood was always weird, but Shirley Temple, Roy Rodgers and Gene Autry were the stars of our generation. The glamor part of the movie industry was working at canteens and fundraisers, and many of he Hollywood hunks fought in actual battles, and some of the military hunks became actors. Audie Murphy comes to mind.

What really impressed me was that Uncle Lonnie, serving in a command position in the Philippines, had a part in "An American Gorilla In The Philippines." It might as well have been the lead as far as I was concerned. I was no different than most of the girls my age, and I had tap, ballet, flute and voice lessons before living at the atomic facility and right up until I moved to Texas to become a field hand.

I also learned a lot of art and acting in school plays. I sang in the school choir and played in the intermediate orchestra of Los Angeles. Later in my life I asked Mother where the money came from to pay for those activities, and it was made very clear to me that it was from my dad’s wages and from the family budget. Those two gypsies who were my parents did without in order that I could have those lessons.

There were signs everywhere, on billboards on buildings, depicting some branch of the military as the most glamorous and exciting thing you could ever hope be a part of. There were the handsome soldiers, and as far as I was concerned, the most beautiful girls in the world were in love with them. All my friends had someone in the war and had lost someone in the war or missing in the war.

Every weekend on the movie screen, we saw a running series of the war effort – the battles, the victories and defeats of that week. The movies were all about the war. There may have been protestors somewhere, but they weren’t in my world or in my parents world. They wouldn't have lasted in my world. My parents would not have stood for it nor any of the other parents of my friends.

Uncle Gene died sometime in the midst of all of this, and I do remember the rush trying to get tire and gas rations in order to attend his funeral, but in my world, the rationing of those things wasn’t something I noticed, just as I didn’t pay attention to my mother coloring her own margarine with yellow dye. It just was one of the things that was a part of everyday living.

Oh, I heard about the shortage of silk stockings, and that interested me, but those women were so glamorous to me – the friends, girlfriends, and the wives left behind by our heroes who fought for our country. They had long hair styled into page boys, pompadours and upswept hairdos that were the epitome of beauty as far as I was concerned. They were the sweater girls, slack suit girls and halter girls. The Army, Navy and the Marines were everywhere, for this was a shipping-out point for them, or else they were there on leave.

The songs of the era such as "The Halls of Montezuma, "Coming In On A Wing And A Prayer" were as familiar to me as "Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree." Graffiti that said "Kilroy was here" was everywhere.

Daddy worked on the ships as a welder. Mother cooked wonderful meals in spite of all the shortages. We played cowboys and soldiers, went to movies. Mickey ran a paper route, and when he could talk my cousin, Billie, and me into running it, then we did it. She pedaled the bicycle and I rode on the bar, trying to land the newspaper on the porch.

Most of all I remember being a happy, healthy little girl with a wonderful family and trips to the beach or to Knott’s Berry Farm. I saw the floats for the Rose Bowl Parade, and I know that I was able to enjoy that life only because of the military, just as I know it’s because of them I can enjoy my life now.

I found out that my country cousins rolled bandages and knitted mufflers for the troops, just as I painted posters and collected scrap metal. I learned how to conduct myself during a bombing raid drill with all the other big-city kids. Everyone did whatever he possibly could so that the American lifestyle within the greatest country on earth could survive.

I wish we could all do that today, and I will tell you this much. My little mother, that beauty, would have slapped Cindy Sheehan into next week, and Daddy would have kicked Michael Moore into the next century. That is what my handsome dad would have done because they knew what it was to SUPPORT THE TROOPS.