Readying for War

by Terri McFadden

Round and round the playroom we marched, a platoon of small children, my sisters and cousins, the creaky oak floor adding rhythm to our song: “You’re in the army now, you’re not behind the plow, you’ll never get rich by digging a ditch, you’re in the army now!”  This is one of my earliest memories; I was just three or four and proud that I had learned the words and tune of this song from the Second World War.

Our bucolic little town couldn’t have been more peaceful, yet we seemed to be surrounded by echoes of past and future wars.  All the fathers we knew had served in World War II and we’d hear occasional stories from them, nothing gruesome, usually funny.  But somehow we knew that they had been involved in something terrible. They marched with our grandfathers, many of whom were veterans of WW I, in parades on Memorial Day and Armistice Day. On a regular basis the radio announcer would tell us the station was testing its emergency warning system and a shrill sound would be heard for a minute, and then the voice would tell us what we should do “…in the event of a real emergency”.  In school we participated in air-raid drills.  The shrieking alarm would go off and we would hustle out of the classroom and hunker down in the hallway on our knees with our arms covering our heads.  Our teachers stressed the importance of walking quickly – NOT RUNNING, so everyone would make it to safety. We were told this was to get us as fast as possible to the windowless hall, out of the way of the flying shards of glass that would follow the bombs dropping on our tiny town.  No explanations were offered as to why the “enemy” might wish to destroy us – I don’t think we knew who the “enemy” was. 

The neighborhood where I lived for my first nine years was built on a series of hills, a former farm.  The old farmhouse and barn were near the bottom and that was where my grandparents lived.  Streets were laid out in rows, one above the other and lined with little post-war houses.  When I was nine my family moved to a new house, about a mile away.  A mile isn’t much, but was huge to me.  In my old neighborhood I was surrounded by kids my own age, and nearly all of them were related to me.  Anytime of the day it was easy to skip outdoors and find someone to play dodge ball or Red Rover to ride bikes or to go sledding in the nearby fields.

Our new house was much larger, with an enormous yard, formerly a field on another old farm and set just above a lovely woodland of 16 acres. That we needed the room there was no doubt.  Our family had grown from five children to seven when my mother gave birth to two daughters just a year apart, making the tally six girls and one boy. It was a lively household. I loved the new house, but at first hated the isolation of the almost empty sub-division that my father was in the process of developing.  There were no children around for me to play with, except my elder sisters or my next younger sister.  Somehow this never seemed to work as I was not especially athletic like the sister three years older and the sister five years younger was too much a baby for me to want to spend much time with her.  I had great admiration for my eldest sister, but at five years older than me, she had no time or interest in entertaining me.  I was thrown on my own a great deal and discovered that I loved the woods, stream and pond below our house, roaming far and wide, imagining the Indians who had lived there, the dinosaurs that had ranged there, spotting the occasional fairy.  My active imagination became my best friend.

Soon after my dad built our house he’d added, as he described it, a present for all of us, something to keep us safe from enemy attack. One night after dinner he led us all out to the side yard, beyond the barn where our two horses, Suzy and Molly stood in their stalls munching hay.  Dad pulled open the double door steel bulkhead that stood alone, apparently unattached to anything, and gestured for us to head down the steep stairs.  At the bottom was a concrete room, lined with bunk beds.  At the far end was a tiny kitchen, with canned goods neatly stacked.  Jugs of water stood ready.  Blankets were folded on each bunk.  A stall at the back hid a toilet.  All the comforts of home!  I don’t know what the rest of the family thought, but I was appalled.  At age ten, the thought of being stuck inside that gray bunker with all my siblings and my parents was almost as terrifying as being blown away by the A-bomb.  I had eventually learned from overheard conversations who the enemy was and what would probably happen to us. 

About that time I started having a recurring dream.  In it I stood looking at our house, or rather where our house used to be.  It was gone, though the huge double-trunked maple and the oak that graced the front yard were always intact.  There were no sounds, no people in the dream. Everything was gone except, oddly, the living room drapes.  Those green and white drapes always survived, lying on the gracefully on the ground – and me.  It was the aloneness that always seemed terrifying to me.  It was, after all, almost unimaginable to be truly alone, what with my large family and school classes which had 35 or more students.  Although it had taken some time to adjust to the move, I’d grown to love the solitude and I always felt a little guilty enjoying it so much.  Perhaps that is why being alone in the dream was so frightening – I feared I would get my wish.

In October of 1962 I was looking forward to my 12^th birthday.  As was my usual habit, when I could manage it, I was watching TV by myself.  My sisters usually watched television with my mother in her bedroom.  My father spent the evenings working or reading in the living room.  My brother was away at college.  So it wasn’t all that difficult to slip into the TV room and watch my favorite shows without having to argue about which of the three stations to turn to.  That night my program was interrupted by some newsman and I was furious. Then he introduced the President of the United States.  At first I didn’t understand what he was talking about, I just kept hoping my show would return.  It didn’t.  Without even meaning to, I started to pay attention to President Kennedy’s words.  It began to seem to me that the bomb shelter in the yard might get used after all.

Terri McFadden has been writing since she was nine years old when she submitted her first story to Jack and Jill Magazine. (She experienced her first rejection at the same time, a sad introduction into the world of writing and publishing!)  In the years since Terri has written a novel, Han, set in 19^th century Korea and many non-fiction pieces written for EBSCO and the Beverly Historical Society where she is employed as the director of research and education.  Currently she is working on a novel based on the life of Juno Larcom, a slave in 18^th century Beverly and a personal memoir.