Buster's Book

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Contents

List of Photos and Illustrations........................................................................................ixGenealogy...............................................................................................................xiiForeward................................................................................................................xiiiPreface.................................................................................................................xvINTRODUCTION............................................................................................................1Part I Ralph Chester Junkins, WWI......................................................................................3Part II a Introduction to Buster.......................................................................................28Part II b Buster Talks of His Experiences in WW II.....................................................................32PART II c The Day WW II Ended [May 9, 1945]............................................................................48Part III Buster's Overseas Letters, WW II..............................................................................53Part IV Mama's Letters to Buster (Evelyn Bernice Keyes Junkins)........................................................74Part V Dad's WW II Letters to Buster (Ralph Chester Junkins)...........................................................303Part VI Letters of Young Brother Donnie to Buster (Donald Arthur Junkins)..............................................339Part VII Sister Betty's Letters to Buster (Evelyn Betty Junkins Leck)..................................................351Part VIII a THE WW II Diary of Cousin Robert White.....................................................................442Part VIII b INTERVIEW with S/Sergeant Robert W. White By Kaimei Zheng, Fall, 2004......................................479Part VIII c Cousin S/Sgt Robert White's Letters to Buster..............................................................490Part IX The Surviving World War II Letters of Cousin Russell Keyes.....................................................495Part X Cousin T5 Ralph Hayward' Letters to Aunt Evelyn and Family......................................................501Part XI GRAMMA JUNKINS' Letters to Buster (Lillian May White Junkins)..................................................510Part XII Aunt B's Letters to Buster (Laura Bernice Junkins)............................................................513Part XIII Aunt Marion's Letters to Buster (Marion Lenore Junkins White)................................................523Part XIV Aunt Bertha's Letters to Buster (Bertha Hutchins White).......................................................534Part XV Aunt Esther White's Letters to Buster..........................................................................543Part XVI Aunt Hazel's Letters to Buster (Hazel Leach Keyes, mother of Russell Keyes)...................................545Part XVII Aunt Myrtle's Letters to Buster (Myrtle Trommer Hayward, Sister of Evelyn Keyes Junkins).....................573Part XVIII a The Korean War: Interview with Cousin Col. Charles Hayward................................................578Part XVIII b The Vietnam War: Interview with Cousin Col. Charles Hayward...............................................599Part XIX ROLAND WINSLOW JUNKINS, 1925-2002.............................................................................612WW II Service Record of T-5 Roland W. Junkins...........................................................................616About Liberty magazine..................................................................................................618

Chapter One

[The following WW I letters are from Ralph Chester Junkins to his family living at 118 Ontario Street in Lynn, Massachusetts, eight miles north of Boston on the North Shore. He served in the Yankee Division from July, 1917 to February, 1919 during his enlistment days both in the States and in France as a private in the 26th Division, 101st Field Artillery, Battery D. He was then 23 years old, and had returned from Worcester, MA where he worked, to enlist in Lynn where he grew up. His immediate family consisted of his mother, Lillian May White Junkins, his three sisters: Marion who early married her first cousin, Everett White; Bernice, a piano teacher who never married, and Edith who married young and died in her late thirties. Ralph's father died of pneumonia when Ralph was in the fourth grade, and he left school. He went to work in the General Electric Company in Lynn when he was twelve, earning wages of $3.60 a week, of which he gave $3.00 to his mother. Later in life he became General Foreman of Bldg. 63 where he supervised the building of the turbines for the aircraft carriers Wasp and Hornet (the immediate on-the-job worker winding coils being his first cousin, Ray Keyes, my mother's foster brother). In WW II, Ralph served in the Coast Guard Reserve in Nahant, MA, and wrote letters weekly to his son Roland (Buster), 1943-1946.

My father was a good man. He was quiet, complicated, funny on occasion, devoted to his mother who was widowed when still a young woman, patriotic, restrained but forthright, and modest. At the Fullerton Funeral Home in Saugus Center in 1960, when the working men from Building 63, the Turbine Division of the General Electric Company, filed by his casket to pay their respects, more than one patted his face. When Dad re-told, at my insistent request, the Beany Craig story from his youth on Pine Hill (a true tale about his hairliped friend being continually misunderstood in the local grocery store and his exasperated reply, one that would be considered more than questionable in today's world), he filled the room with laughter. During Sunday night service at the Dorr memorial Methodist Church in Lynnhurst, when he and I stood side by side and sang "This Is My Father's World" during the Hymn Sing portion of the service conducted by either Andy Boynton or Mr. McClernon, I felt something closer than the essence of his voice and his presence. It was truly my own father's world and I felt so lucky to be in it with him.

I remember especially one warm rainy Saturday morning in a late thirties summer over in the cove at Great East Lake in Maine watching him from the other end of the boat pickerel fishing with a long yellow bamboo pole and a dead frog—our dog Pickles alert in the boat, focusing on the disappearing frog in the water swirl, and Dad lifting the foot-long fish into the boat, flopping free of the hook, then Pickles picking up the pickerel in his mouth, dropping it overboard into the dark warm water, and Dad laughing as if the joke were on the world itself. It was truly our world and our family's world, and because my father was an honorable man, the world always seemed an honorable world.

When Dad went off to war in France in 1917, he left behind a girlfriend named Elsie who is referred to in one of my grandmother's letters below. When he returned home at the war's end, he was first told beforehand by his mother that the engagement was "off," and when he went to hear the news himself, he could see before any words were spoken that she was pregnant. The relationship was finished. When I heard the story myself many years later, it was always short and...