Wasn't That a Time?
Remembering WWII for the Sake of Now
(photo - cgpt4 - npstookey 2025)
Noel’s Backyard—Dorsey, Maryland (1943)
With a plastic helmet liner strapped under my chin, a World War II Nazi ammunition belt (brought back by my godfather from Anzio) clipped around my waist and a homemade wooden replica of a submachine gun in my hand, I stand in a circle of similarly equipped buddies. There are four of us. We are on the forested side of open wire fencing that is covered in honeysuckle. The “enemy” is beginning to “fire” from their position behind the picket fence on the other side of the newly mown lawn. We fall to our respective tasks.
“P’dow, p’dow … p’wing!” a vocal bullet ricochets nearby.
“Bang. You’re dead, Tipton.”
“Am not!” comes the reply from a crawling figure on the lawn.
“Are so. I’ve got you right in my sights. Bang, bang, gotcha!”
“Uh, uh!” the maddeningly persistent soldier yells back. “I’m in this big gully.”
“No fair!” A cry goes up from our side as we realize they’re trying to use the same imaginary trench we ourselves invented in the last game.
“That gully was further back near the house.”
“It bends this way when it gets up here!” the voice returns.
“No fair!” the howl goes up again.
Finally, both sides tie white cloths to the barrels of their toy weapons, and a representative of each army steps out upon the battlefield while their comrades keep the proceedings covered.
The soldier in question lies patiently in his imaginary ditch as his commanding officer and a member of the enemy forces engage in a debate as to the proper location of this newly invented geography.
“OK, it can bend here,” agrees one, “but it can’t run up to the fence.”
His opposite, recognizing that insistence upon his envisioned layout would remove all sport from the contest, relents and the action is renewed.
“Pow! Pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap!”
Over the sound effects from the machine gun installation, the unmistakable whistle of a pretend mortar is heard.
“Bawoom!” There is a notable pause in the activity.
“That was a mortar shell, Tipton! We gotcha!”
“Did not … ,” comes the valiant, though hesitant, reply.
“What?!” the question asked in outraged unbelievability.
“Are you kidding?! You were in the ditch weren’t ya?”
“Yeah, but I found this cave and I crawled in just…”
“No fair!” The familiar retort takes on a more intense pitch.
I begin to see a pattern here.
“I’m gonna loop around behind them … ,” I whisper to Rob Dorsey, “Keep ‘em busy.”
He looks a little puzzled, but nods; and I’m off through the brambles that grow on the outskirts of my backyard. While under a flag of truce, the discussion about the placement of the cave location rages on. I emerge in about seven minutes’ time directly behind the enemy position. The battle has resumed and no one here has noticed my maneuver. And with one long raking burst of “pap, pap, pap, pap, pap, pap, pap, pap, pap … ,” this particular battle is settled beyond question.
It would be almost forty years later when I realized that it was not in the winning but in the negotiating that I would have learned the finer arts of relationship. Giving…Taking…
Compromising … the recognition of competitive ethics. No wonder Rob Dorsey looked at me strangely. He knew. The idea was to have fun, not to win.
Democracy Preserved
In 1942, living in Dorsey, Maryland, a small town halfway between Baltimore and Washington, DC, Noel had “discovered” World War II through the maps and illustrations on the front pages of the Baltimore Sun. He would trace the advances and retreats of the Allies and the Nazi enemy on the European front. The enormity of the conflict was far larger than he could understand at the time. Though the arrows and black lines indicated movement, he really was not aware of what the action cost in terms of lives—both of the combatants and the native population. Indeed, even as late as 1944, he admits to being a child with great imagination but little sense of war’s inherent devastation.
And though Lassie and Treasure Island were high on his reading list at the time, there were of course the comic book heroes. A new batch of stalwarts like Blackhawk and Captain America (to name just two) had joined Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel—taking time out from their day-to-day victories over crime in the streets to take on Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito—upholding democracy and fighting tyranny. When evil was so prevalent and the need to defend freedom so obvious, who wouldn’t fight to preserve the American Way”? We were all in this together, weren’t we?
Small wonder then that the anti-war movement, no matter how well-intentioned, was greeted with suspicion and ridicule. After all, wasn’t it just that kind of compromise and weakness that had allowed Hitler to rise? Positions were explained with a sort of intellectual righteousness. “Of course,” we thought, “war is bad … but conflict is a part of life, and we just have to hope that a greater good will ultimately prevail—even if sometimes we find ourselves choosing the lesser of two evils.”
Sitting with his father on the edge of his bed, Noel recalls listening to the explosion of the first A-bomb in July of 1945. He was eight years old with no appreciation of what the test meant other than the likelihood of a victory in Japan, and that the end of the Second World War was probable. Just a month later, when nuclear bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was no doubt. Although many innocent civilian lives were taken in the final days, the war did end. And, as Americans, we seemed assured that not only had we prevailed, but democracy and freedom had been preserved.
Democracy challenged
D-Day is traditionally honored as a remembrance of the Allied invasion of Normandy and the beginning of Allied operations that led to the liberation of Western Europe, the defeat of the Nazi regime in Germany, and ultimately the end of World War II. Few of the survivors of that day are still alive to tell the stories of the sacrifices that were made.
One wonders how they must feel when they see some Americans challenge the value of democracy—and even celebrate the kind of fascism and authoritarianism that these veterans fought to defeat? On this June 6, some of us remembered . . . and sadly, some of us have continued to forget.
In the late 40’s, Lee Hayes of the Weavers wrote a song titled “Wasn’t That A Time?” recorded by the trio in the mid-sixties and containing a final verse that spoke to the constancy required to maintain freedom and democracy.
“And now again the madmen come
And should our vic'try fail?
There is no vic'try in a land
Where free men go to jail
Isn't this a time! Isn't this a time!
A time to try the soul of man
Isn't this a terrible time?”
And as so often happens with folk music, over seventy years after its composition, the warning contained in the lyrics found relevance once again. In 2016, with the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America and the subsequent rise of the MAGA movement, concerns about the definitions of “freedom”embedded in our Constitution and its Amendments began to surface. Now, some eight years later, many Americans are deeply worried about the future of democracy and civil rights as the Trump administration attempts to implement Project 2025. Inherent in folk music is not only the naming of the problem, but a call to action. What must we do to resist?
Connections
Read about D-Day in the last half of Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter for June 5.
Vibrations
PP&M Newport Folk Festival performance of “Wasn’t That a Time?”
Resonance
What are you doing to resist the threats to democracy in these times? What would you like to do?
A number of years ago we watched a Pete Seeger concert on PBS. In his introduction to the Union Maid, Pete said something that has stuck with me (although I may be paraphrasing it a bit...):
"There will be good times, there will be bad times, there will be times that ty our souls. But don't let anyone ever tell you there is no hope!"
My father saw action twice in the Battle of the Bulge. The first time, the trucks dropped the guys off and told them to advance along the hedgerow to the forest. They didn't know the Germans had the hedgerow in their artillery sights. Dad was hiding behind a wooden wheelbarrow. A shell hit, but it was a dud and just threw up some dirt. Dad figured that everyone else must have advanced, so he moved up two places. Then a live shell hit the wheelbarrow.
Dad was the runner for the captain. They called him Rabbit. The captain, Dad,and a few other guys were in the top floor of a farmhouse in Belgium. Night was coming, and the captain said, "Guys, we're going to run down the steps." There was a German tank just around the bend, but they didn't realize there was also a German sharpshooter. The captain made it. Dad was shot in the leg. The third guy was killed.
After the war ended and Dad came home, his mother asked him when he had been in the greatest danger. She had waked up in the middle of the night and said to Grandpa, "We need to pray for John." They got out of bed, prayed for an hour, felt a sense of peace, and went back to bed. That was the time Dad's life was hanging in the balance.
Dad became a pastor and a teacher. I stand on big shoulders.