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WWII canteen conjures up memories for seniors
Early celebration of Veteran's Day includes music, WWII trivia
Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by DARWIN WEIGEL
Annita Graybeal of Huntingtown poses with a picture of her late husband Oswald Grant Graybeal.
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When the 1940s era music ceased, seniors — many topped in hand-made garrison caps — were given "military orders" Friday in the dining room at the Calvert Pines Senior Center when it was transformed into a World War II canteen as part of an early Veterans Day celebration.
The USO canteens of WWII were designed for servicemen to "take a break from the war and just have fun," said Sally Schofield, program assistant at the senior center, on Friday. Then she told the crowd that the break was over and handed out envelopes with the "orders" to answer 20 trivia questions on WWII.
The multiple choice questions ranged in difficulty from the date of D-Day (June 6, 1944) to who was Adolf Hitler's girlfriend (Eva Braun) and which country lost the most lives during the war (the Soviet Union). Two men got all but one correct, with both of them choosing Nagasaki over Hiroshima as the first city in Japan to be bombed (Hiroshima was first).
After the tiebreaking question of who the big three were in WWII at the Yalta Conference, both men questioned whether it was President Franklin D. Roosevelt or President Harry S. Truman and then learned after debate that Roosevelt met with Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union. However, Roosevelt died two months after the conference, leaving Truman to end out the war as commander in chief for the United States.
Richard Hawkins, who answered Truman and lost the tiebreaking question, knew much WWII history. He clarified that Veteran's Day resulted from Armistice Day, the day to acknowledge the ending of WWI, not WWII. Hawkins served in the Army during the Korean War and when he was stationed in Germany he went to a canteen once for a break.
"I can remember the name of the actress," he said of the Italian woman, Anna Maria Alberghetti, who performed at the canteen.
John Nelson, who served with the Army Air Corps from Jan. 10, 1941, through 1944, said he never saw a USO show when he was stationed in the South Pacific maintaining an airstrip.
"They put me on a little island," he said of the airstrip island 13 miles long and a half-mile wide. However, when he was stationed at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu during the Dec. 7, 1941, attack, he saw the Japanese bombers flying into Wheeler Field where airplane hangars were destroyed, he said.
"They looked at me and waved at me," Nelson said of the Japanese airmen flying overhead that day.
"We were very fortunate, we had some good leaders that knew what they were doing," Nelson said of the WWII era.
Jerry Dehartog, a six-year Navy veteran who served during the Korean War, said, "I was always onboard ship," so he did not go to any canteens. Dehartog enlisted and served on two aircraft carriers from 1948 to 1955, saying he joined the Navy instead of the Army because he knew he wouldn't have to walk much.
Some widows of deceased servicemen attended the affair wearing the hand-made brown paper bag garrison caps. Mary Destafano said she recalled being a child and hearing Roosevelt on the radio inform the public about the Pearl Harbor attack.
"We wouldn't have freedom without the veterans," she said.
Betty Lerose, whose husband George Michael Lerose, served in the Navy for four years during WWII just before they were married, said "everyone was very patriotic then."
Annita Graybeal said her husband, Oswald Grant Graybeal, served in the Army and "went from D-Day to Berlin under General [George] Patton." He landed in Normandy with the Army and also served in the Air Force with 31 years of combined service, she said.
"He opened the hospital at Andrews Air Force Base as the first [assigned] sergeant," under the general, Graybeal said, and showed a small photo album with pictures of her and her husband in 1942 and him in his uniform.
"[Veterans Day] means that I live in the best country in the world," Graybeal said.
What do you think?
