So the odd stuff continues to surface up at the new residence at Big Pink after the move from The Farm. I was starting to sort that big stack of papers that had accumulated since last year’s taxes and the assorted papers from my folks estate that never had been examined. I was looking for stuff to use on the new one bearing down on us. There were some thin newsprint issues that I had never seen before. Looking at the title made me a little curious, since it was obviously old, looked vaguely Navy, and a cartoon cadet landing butt first in his skivvies on a small aircraft carrier, and a couple sailors hanging from the first and last letters. The term “Gremlin” was another give away, since even in our generation’s late day, “Gremlins” were the creatures that wreaked havoc on previously operational pieces of machinery on moving ships with replacements only a thousand or two miles away.
Dad had some health problems getting admitted for service, but succeeded in enlisting in V-5 by mid-summer of 1944. He was happy to be in uniform and on the pilot track. In the lulls in training, he passed his time sketching his fellow cadets, which were pictures that stayed on the walls in his office all his life. The pictures of President FDR and Union Boss John L. Lewis surprised me, since I had never seen him do anything political. The Gazette had some topical cartoons that were in the “First Seen” category. I was only looking at the pictures casually, until I looked a little closer, and saw his characteristic 1940s-era logo:
I went back to the three issues of the Gazette- not the Utopia Issue, which apparently was a tough navigation problem the cadets were forced to solve. Here are cartoons that appeared:
It was not an easy program. V-5 Cadets were required to carry 17 credit hours and endure rigorous physical training each week. Study was year-round, heavy on math and science, and then on to the 12-week Officer Candidate Course that produced the “90-day Wonders.”
The challenge for the old Navy was to train the flood of new recruits. Dad was shunted from place to place, as were all the young men, awaiting the right place in the training pipeline. Dad went to training at NAS Millington, TN, and Stevens Tech along the way before winding up at flight training at NAS Pensacola where his class was third to the last to gain their Wings of Gold.
Imagine for a moment what the world looked like that early summer. The Germans had recaptured Kharkov on the East Front in March, the same month that U-boats sank twenty-seven merchants carrying war material for Britain and Russia. Montgomery was still flailing against the Afrika Korps in north Africa, and the SS was savagely reducing the Warsaw Ghetto to rubble. Our headlines feature more rockets flying there, but otherwise the same sort of news. I saw three more cartoons Dad did in the yellowing newsprint:
These were a little harder to understand than the first three. They appear to be commentary on the vagaries in the training program and response of the young men in the V-5 program. At upper left, a Nav Cad is pouring intently on a Nav problem. In the middle of that image is a cadet walking briskly in his raincoat through a torrent. Apparently July , 1944 was a wet month in Philly. The eager cadet at the end of that strip is exhorting his classmates to join him in pursuit of something he called “Wimmin!”
At right, another striking cartoon shows a young Lieutenant being counselled by an enlisted man trained as a pilot early in the war due to “Needs of the Navy.” He is calibrating the officer on who is who in the Aviation zoo. At lower left, a cadet named “All Thumbs” is counselled on overperformance in routine aviation maintenance as he disassembles the entire aircraft.
These images were found on Pearl Harbor Day, 2022, the 81st anniversary of the Japanese attack. I miss the hell out of him. Mom had some extensive genealogical files for both sides of the family in the same stack, but I will not inflict them on you this morning. It is enough to see these things in the now yellowed newsprint in which they were part of the war in which a whole lot of young people were completely engaged.
It turned out they were pretty energetic about the whole thing, and they worked in extraordinary ways about remaking the old world that went awry. We Salts are their kids, and we rebelled against them. And here we are, 78 years after Dad took up his ink and pen to support the war. The same cities in Ukraine still under attack.
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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