Death came along Walnut Street on a bicycle when I was a
boy.
Death came along Walnut Street on a bicycle when I was a boy.
In the three years from April of 1942 to May of 1945, the Western Union courier delivered six telegrams in our neighborhood to inform the recipients that a member of the family – father, brother, son – had been killed in action.
The deliverer of the news – usually a youth of high-school age – performed a necessary function, but he was the most feared person of that time. His very presence made people stop what they were doing and watch his progress as he slowly pedaled along the street looking for an address. The feeling must have been similar to those of the wives and children of cavalrymen as the troopers rode slowly into the fort after an arduous campaign against the Apaches.
As he passed homes that had blue stars hanging in the window that denoted a family member in service, its inhabitants would let out their breath but still keenly note his progress. When he stopped and got off his bicycle, at least two or three of the women whose homes he had passed would hurry over to stand by the one whose address he had sought.
Those who received the news reacted in different ways, but the first was always a look of fear at the fresh-faced youth in his Western Union uniform as he alighted and checked the address. I have seen both men and women hold their arms out against him as though to fend off a blow, but he stood there subdued and patient until a trembling hand finally took the message that devastated the family.
The women who hurried over did their best to alleviate the sorrow of other wives or mothers but no amount of hugs or consoling words could change the stricken women’s future.
The first gold star in the neighborhood belonged to the Stuble family. They had proudly put up a blue star on a field of white with a red border in the front window for son Herbert, who had enlisted in the Navy six months before Pearl Harbor. We had an identical one for my brother, Larry, a paratrooper in the Pacific. The Stubles’ new gold star mutely spoke of the sorrow within.
As the courier mounted our front porch on a day in late November of 1944, my mother saw him through the kitchen window and seized the back of a chair for support. When I opened the door, two neighbor women behind him hurried in to stand on either side of her. He proffered the yellow envelope and she slowly took it. “Do you want me to read it for you, Cora?” Mrs. Parker asked. Mom shakily opened it, then threw back her head. “My mother got to California safely!” she laughed hysterically with tears running down her face.
The last casualty telegram arrived in mid-May of 1945, a week after V-E Day. The bicycle stopped at the house across the street and Mrs. Harris opened the door. Her son, Bob, had been in Europe for 18 months and she had prayed in gratitude when the fighting in Europe had ceased. But the messenger boy patiently stood there with the telegram until she took the news that canceled her elation. The paperwork had finally caught up.
My mother and two others led her into her home, but even with the door closed her howl of grief was like a whip striking us across the face. Her cries rang out again and again and the neighbor women remained with her a long time.
Nearly 60 years have passed since that day, but Mrs. Harris’s wail of utter despair and the earlier memory of my mother’s trembling hands are etched as sharply in my mind now as they were then.
