Posted by: McQ on Sunday, May 13, 2007 I'm sitting here thinking of my mother who died a few years back. In fact, I've got a photo that sits above my desk of her holding me when I was about a year old. She waited a long time for me to come along (9 years) and, in fact, she and my dad had talked about adoption before I showed up. But being the first, well, that has a specialness about it. My mom was a child of the depression and grew up in Martin's Ferry, Ohio. Depressions and hard times have a tendency to rob childhoods away. Their family didn't have much at all. As she used to tell me, she was painfully shy (a trait her first born had for his early years as well). But she also had a burning desire to do things and see places and have different experiences that drove her past that problem. She and my father met in the '30s, while he was a corporal in the infantry (her brother served with my dad and that's how my folks met). I remember her telling me that they didn't have much money and that a date would consist of a nickel Pepsi they'd share and a walk down the main street of the town window shopping. And that was just fine with her. They were married and WWII came along. My dad went to OCS, was commissioned and was shipped off to the Pacific where he fought on Saipan, Leyte and Okinawa. My mom? Well, she figured she needed to do something more than just "support the war". She figured she needed to somehow contribute more to it. So the young woman who'd really never traveled outside of Ohio and Kentucky joined the Woman's Army Corps. After finishing her basic training, she applied for Officer Candidate's School and was accepted. She was commissioned and then applied to the Signal Corps. The Signal Corps, of course, was a part of the regular Army, not the WACs. So she transfered into what was known as the AUS (Army of the United States) as a Signal Corps officer. As she would later tell me, it was an amazing adventure for her. The young woman from Martin's Ferry, Ohio served in North Africa, Italy and France during WWII. She rose to the rank of Captain, and commanded the only all female signal center (Southern Lines of Communications) in the European theater. She was awarded the Bronze Star, one of 535 women ever to be awarded the BSM in WWII. When she came home after the war, as mentioned, she was a CPT and my dad was a 1LT. We used to kid him about that and one of his favorite lines was "the wrong McQuain got out of the Army. If she'd have stayed in, she'd be a general." The funny thing is we all believe that to be true. Instead she settled down to become the mother of three sons and the wife of a career officer. And like her military service she threw every bit of heart and soul into the task. She was the perfect army wife. When dad talked about the problems of command, she knew exactly what he was talking about having been a company commander herself. And her boys? They were her world. And, she was ours. The three of us couldn't have had a better mother. She dragged us, willingly, all over the world, making everything an adventure and fun. After WWII we lived in Germany where one brother was born. We lived in half of a bombed out hotel. She made it home. We lived on Taiwan in the '50s, right after the Nationalist Chinese had moved to the island. My father was with MAAG (Military Advisory Assistance Group) and an adviser to a Chinese division. We lived in pretty primitive conditions for a while and again, mom just made it an adventure. Somewhere we have a picture of her holding up two loaves of homemade bread. She learned to make bread because there just wasn't any available otherwise. And we boiled all our drinking water as well. But I remember our time there with real fondness because we just had fun as a family. Over the years we boys grew up and moved away, but trips home were always wonderful. The sense of family and the love that entailed was always present and, frankly, I'd go home sometimes just to soak some of that up. She died a few years ago, at age 83. She had suffered from senile dementia for years, ever since earlier suffering congestive heart failure. We buried her in her WWII uniform, which was her request, and laid her to rest in the National Cemetery in Ft. Smith Arkansas, right next to my dad. Every day, as I sit down in front of this computer, I look at two pictures. One of me at about age two, holding on to my dad's finger as we walked down a street in Germany. And one of my mom, at Ft. Knox, KY, holding me on her knee. A son couldn't ask for two better parents. As I sit here looking at that picture of me on my mom's knee, I realize how much I miss her. More than anything though, I realize how lucky I was to have had her for my mom. |
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