Don Stratton: A gold star for Uncle George

During World War II, I was living with my grandparents in southern Ohio. Hanging in the front window of the house, much like many others at the time, was a small rectangular flag with a red border and a white field. This one had four blue stars in the white field, each star representing a son serving in the military. All four of my grandmother’s sons served overseas.

Those small flags were displayed in a significant number of front windows in our area, and a large billboard erected in town bore at least a couple of hundred names of those from the township who were serving. Many area farm boys never finished school, and few graduating students attended college, so deferments from military service were rare. Poor rural areas like Adams County were a living example of the Jean-Paul Sartre quote, “When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.”

My dad, known as Vern, was the oldest of the four, and he served as a signal corpsman in Burma. His brother, Bob, was a paratrooper in the Philippines; Paul was an infantryman in New Guinea; and George spent most of the war as an instructor, stationed in Texas.

Grandma worried about her sons constantly and listened religiously to radio broadcasts about the war, with particular interest in the locations where her sons were serving, She received regular letters from each of them — heavily censored, crude V-Mail photocopies with large areas blacked out because some censors believed that it might contain some sensitive information. The boys were not allowed to tell where they were, but by some means they had developed a code with Grandma, and she knew at least the theater of operations where each son was serving.

My grandmother worried the least about Uncle George, since he was a career soldier serving as an instructor in Texas, and the family felt that the need for him there would keep him from going overseas. But that was not to be.

Late in 1944, Uncle George was deployed to Europe. He and his wife, Faye, whom he had met and married in Texas, drove to the Port of Baltimore where he was to embark, stopping by to visit us on the way. It was the last time we would see him. I was very young, but I remember the visit with my uncle in great detail. I remember him saying that he wouldn’t be gone long, because the war would soon be over.

In December of 1944, I remember my grandmother standing at her usual position in front of the stove, where she spent a lot of her time preparing three full meals every day. She was crying, and when I asked her why, she did not respond. A while later, she told me that she had gotten a letter from Aunt Faye, telling her that Uncle George had been wounded.

A couple of weeks later, I saw Grandma crying in the kitchen again. She had received another letter informing her that George had died of his wounds. Adding to the tragedy, we learned later that the wound was only to his arm, but the cold weather and lack of adequate medical care in the field had aggravated the situation. The son who had caused her the least worry was the only one who became a casualty, just six months before the war ended.

George’s body was returned home, and he was buried at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. To add to the tragedy she had already suffered, my grandmother was unable to attend his service and interment simply because she could not afford to make the trip.

Another flag, with a single gold star, was hung in the front window of our house, and a gold star was added to George’s name on the town’s roll of honor billboard.

RIP: Tech Sgt. George Albert Stratton, 10/12/1915-12/09/1944.

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— Don Stratton, Lima