On the Homefront

Chain Gang of Painters

WHILE VISITING their grandparents in Florida, sisters Shirley and Virginia Kompe got work painting power poles for Florida Power and Light, filling in for men who were serving in World War II.

Working for a crew in the Miami-Coral Gables area, the sisters got in on this picture, taken by a Miami Herald photographer. It shows the crew, in all their painted glory, along SW Eighth Street in Miami, checking their safety equipment.

Over that winter of 1944-45, they raised ladders and hoisted the housings for the bases of the poles, careful to watch for scorpions lurking under the housings. They also served as “grunts” for the linemen.

After the war, the Kompe sisters returned to Baldwinsville, New York. Shirley has been married to Kenneth Nordheim for more than 62 years, living southeast of her hometown in Liverpool.

Virginia stayed in town and was married to me for 52 years.

—Irving Candee, Baldwinsville, New York

A&P Women's Infantry

I WAS LIVING with my grandmother when my husband, Bill, came home for a 10-day leave, wearing his brand-new, shiny second-lieutenant bars.

On Monday mornings, Mom and I would go to the A&P with our ration books and hope to find some goodies. Bill volunteered to accompany us.

Everything was going well until a clerk placed a huge box in one aisle, near where Bill was standing, and announced over the microphone, “We have just received a shipment of Scott toilet tissue in aisle four.”

Before Bill knew what was happening, an army of at least 20 women descended on that box, and my poor hubby was pushed, pulled at, mauled and almost throttled so each lady could get her allotment of two rolls of toilet tissue.

The poor guy said the onslaught of those females was worse than his most dreaded days of basic training in the chemical warfare division.

—May Harton, Charlotte, North Carolina

He Looks Familiar

OUR SON was about two months past his second birthday when my husband left for military service during World War II. Our daughter arrived two months later.

As I wrote daily letters to our soldier, I had a picture of him on the dining room table in front of me. It was rare that my son and I didn’t have a talk about the man in the picture and the daddy he remembered.

Few women knew when their servicemen would return. I had been warned that it would likely be May before he’d accumulate enough points, so it was a big surprise, in early February, when I was awakened by heavy footsteps coming upstairs to the bedroom.

It turned out that my husband had volunteered as a cook on a troop ship to get home early. I barely had time to get out of bed before I was in his arms for the hugs and kisses we’d been missing.

Young Rick slowly emerged to watch this unaccustomed sight. Finally, searching his memory, he asked, "Mommy, is that Daddy?"

Then it was his turn to be enfolded in embraces. It truly was the happiest moment of my life!

—Barbara Bell Watkins Glen, New York