Poppa and The Punkin (eBook)

A WWII Romance Told in Letters (1939-1946)

Tim Dunn (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020 | 1. Auflage
206 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-1501-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Meet Don and Jeanne Dunn, 'The Poppa and the Punkin.' Falling in love in Pennsylvania as the Nazis invade Poland in 1939, they marry in July 1940. Their brief honeymoon is overshadowed by Nazi's running roughshod over France, and after Pearl Harbor Don goes to Miami Beach to train as an officer. This memoir catalogs their relationship in the letters they sent to each other across training and deployment. Don and Jeanne's relationship is just one of thousands that navigated this human turmoil through the written word.

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The Poppa and The Punkin: A World War II Romance Told in Letters 1939-1946, is the story of a young couple who send 600-700 letters to each other during the war when they are separated. One of their moms also writes her son and the wife also writes to her baby brother. They share the collective feelings of the family throughout the war whether they are on the Pacific front, the European front or on the Homefront. The couple's son who has discovered this trove of letters has developed an accounting of WWII by weaving these letters, their differing reactions to the major events of WWII and how they cope with their loneliness, sadness, and fears and aspirations for the future after the war. The couple argues, feel hurt, differ over life's future decisions and disagree over such major events as the atomic bomb, the United Nations and even the very nature of war. The husband worries about his health, the opinion of his men and the utter waste of the army's resources and function when the war end. His wife is lonely but is more agitated by the loss of life on both sides, the unemployment that will follow the war and the families of men who will not come back. But what is most true about the letters is in the couple's separation, utter joy and delight upon receiving a letter from the other, that carries them through the weeks of loneliness.

Textauszug

Chapter 2

Courtship and Marriage

(September 1939–July 1940)

When our parents met at the PA Department of Public Instruction in the fall of 1938, they were assigned a major task to work together: the writing of police training manuals to improve the quality of law enforcement in PA.

It was not love at first sight. Later letters suggest that Mom initially put up a cold, professional front between herself and Dad. Eventually, they began to spend time together, walking along the Susquehanna River and going to concerts during the summer of 1939.

Mom realized that Dad worked at a butcher shop on Saturday to pay his rent, but had no money for meals. She and her roommate began to cook dinner for the three of them during that summer, and it became clear that their romance was becoming serious. They made a decision to spend Christmas of 1939 with their own families in Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Their relationship was becoming closer just as the events were overtaking Europe in the fall/winter of 1939. The first letter between them, which is saved, is one from Dad to Mom on Christmas night in 1939. This described a blissful peaceful scene of an American family at Christmas with no fears or anxieties of the hostilities in Europe, which were beginning to creep across the Atlantic. It was a point in time that stood still with an unconscious belief that their love could conquer all.

As the year turned to 1940, our parents continued falling in love and contemplating marriage. As the war worsened in Europe, it was on everyone’s mind. Their parents tried to dissuade them from marrying, given the uncertainty as the Germans plowed through France, Belgium, and the Netherlands and reached the English Channel. By May 1940, the Germans were at the English Channel, and fear was gripping the United States. Dad’s letters from May and early June described this palpable fear overcoming the United States, and my parents questioned whether they should get married.

At this very time, in the letters, there was the first mention that Mom was sick. It turned out that she had chronic anemia; it also impacted her liver. We were never aware of this problem as children, but throughout the first five years of their marriage, there was constant reference to her being “sick.” This raised yet another concern about getting married, as she had to have various injections to improve her blood count.

As June began to turn to July, they make the decision to get married as the details were worked out. Their anxiety about the potential of a coming war only added to the stress.

The conflict of Americans about what to do was palpable in the next two letters as the opposing viewpoints of Lindbergh (the isolationists) and Roosevelt (Britain’s supporters) flooded their lives. Meanwhile, they continued to live apart in Reading and Harrisburg, PA, only getting together on the weekends.

Dad’s pondering of what this meant for his life and the wider world could not stifle his desire and need to be with Mom, as expressed in a letter days later. As he looked toward their lives together, its hope overcame the fear of the coming war.

Three weeks later, on July 12, 1940, Mom and Dad were married at the parsonage of the First Methodist Church in East McKeesport, PA—her hometown. Although our father’s family in New London wanted to come to the wedding, they did not have the funds to travel by train or the money to buy gasoline for such a long auto trip. So, it was a simple affair with only our mother’s immediate family attending, with a small reception for a few family friends. The groom arrived the night before the wedding, and the couple left the morning after. It is clear that both families had some resistance to the marriage, mostly related to the impending war.

Throughout their courtship, their jobs at the Department of Public Instruction at the State Capitol in Harrisburg, PA, and the Economy League in Reading kept them separated through the week, with quick moments of living together on the weekends.

Their wedding day did not end that separation. Given the end of the Depression and their poor-paying public service jobs, they could not find a place to live together until October 1, 1940, not the way they had imagined when starting their married life together.

Letters: December 1939–September 1940

World War II Begins:1

September 1, 1939: Germany and Russia attacked Poland. England and France declared war on Germany.

After the collapse of Poland, Denmark, and Norway, the war moved into the eight-month period of the “phony war,” where German and Russian troops are gathering strength but take no offensive action.

Christmas 1939 falls right in the middle of the phony war.

December 25, 1939, 8:15 pm

172 Willets Ave.

New London, CT

Jeanne, my Darling,

Christmas night - Beautiful, clear, crisp, cold - brilliant moonlight - and I am missing you like the Dickens! We “had the tree” at eleven this morning - then the folks came for dinner. We were ten - very gay and a delicious dinner it was - roast turkey and all the fix-ins. Fanny, the colored girl who has been in faithful service two days a week for thirty years, came to cook the buzzard and did herself proud. None can cook a turkey like Fanny.

Byron and Arlene and Jack came; Mom and Dad and we three boys Herb, Ned and me, and of course, Dad’s sister Aunty La and Grandpa Lonnie made the ten. . . .

After dinner, we got Lonnie started on some of his yarns. They are swell. I do hope you get to see and hear him soon. He is an old gaffer, now, and sentimental as old ones are. When he told the story of the submarine, Deutschland, that sank one of his tugs with all on board in 1916, his voice broke and quavered and tears streamed down his cheeks. The tears came again, when he told of going out to rescue the City of Columbus, in a bitter winter’s gale off Vineyard Haven back in 1881. The passengers had had to climb up in the rigging in their night clothes to escape drowning and they had frozen and gone to their doom leaving the frozen dresses, rigidly arrested up in the rigging like ghosts! And now, 58 years afterward, the memories visibly moved the old man.

More of his yarns were funny. Like the time he took his exam for his master divers’ license—he had one as an engineer and thus was only the second person in the US to have both an engineer’s and master divers’ license. He was proud as a peacock until he found that the first person honored was a woman who ran a barge on the Erie Canal!

So, the day has gone. Some of us went down to see Cousin Alma at the hospital. She had a splendid day, lovely food, and much rest. She and the new baby are right well. She apparently had a rather unpleasant siege, 14 hours on the delivery table! But all is well now, and she was gay and happy and quite strong tonight.

Now I am sitting quietly with Mom and Dad listening to the Firestone concert on the radio and writing to my love. Later, Ned, Jack, Eddie, and I are going to get together for a gab.

And so, another Christmas passes into oblivion. The old folks get older, the young ones old, and new ones come. I hope this Christmas shall be the last one we are not together. And so, my Duchess, as this Christmas night that finds us 500 miles apart, draws to a close, I salute you across the tides and wave a quiet tender kiss to the westward knowing it will find you tomorrow.

Good night now, my sweetest sweet. All my love, Donald.

At the beginning of May 1940, the Germans are on the move with the Blitzkrieg, France, and the low countries of Belgium and the Netherlands are overrun

William Alonzo Fones, Dad’s grandfather

Race Rock Light – built by WAF

May 20, 1940

Pennsylvania Economy League

Reading, PA

My beloved Darling,

A busy day, poring over expenditure figures of the County. Then went to the movies to see “Waterloo Bridge”—so very sad and moving. Fills me with so much more love for you—even more than before.

I have never really begun to make love to you—I mean in the day-to-day sense—not our special meaning for the words. I mean the lovemaking that’s done in the noon-day sun, on the street. How grand that I shall be seeing you again in less than 24 hours!

I am so full-up to here—of the War. I try to stifle it, put it...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.8.2020
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-1501-4 / 1098315014
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-1501-6 / 9781098315016