Pooja Gupta

Mrs. Newmark - 8th period

The year was around 1939. Hot summer days in the sun were over with. A young player pondered what to do until next season, for that year's baseball season was cut short. It had been trimmed by a tragedy to remember for years to come; World War II. This young pro-ball player was Mr. John Tysko. He and many others had to quit playing for the season when the war broke out in Europe, so, from the fields in Texas, many went back home. For Mr. Tysko, this meant returning to Jefferson County, Ohio. When he got there, he figured that he could go and join the army for a few months and then go back to playing ball. So, John volunteered. The situation was either you go and sign up, or they call you, anyway. Everyone knew if they were of age, it was their duty to go and sign up. Sure enough, a month later him and two other friends that he volunteered with were gone to Fort Benjamin, Indiana. This was the beginning of his tense and deadly journey through war.

At Fort Benjamin, Indiana, John trained for about six weeks. He was then sent to Fort Louis, Washington, where he was in the 7^th infantry. In about a month from then, they sent him out with a cavalry to an anti-tank outfit. The anti-tank outfit was for destroying the other tanks while protecting your own. Their main weapon was the Tank Destroyer M10 Wolverine, or more commonly just an M10. They weigh about 30 tons with 13-33 mm of armor for protection. With the dimensions 6 x 2.5 x 3 meters, these can go about 48 km/h. The tanks were well armed and it was good that they were; in about a year they were sent overseas to fight on the second front.

From Fort Louis, John and his infantry went to Casablanca until all of their equipment was unloaded. Casablanca is in west Morocco and was one of the three major landing sites during this invasion of North Africa. At that time German General Erwin Rommel was coming up through Alcatar Pass to get to the sea where John's outfit went and waited to stop him. Mr. Tysko was in the rifle squad at that time. He had eight men and their job was to help the tanks in any way that they could and to protect them. The army sat in the pass with flares flying everywhere, lighting up the sky and bullets flying past. Finally, they pulled back for the night. The next morning they got back into the pass, stopped Rommel from getting to the sea, and pushed him back to Oran, a city in northwest Algeria, and then farther to Algiers, the capital. Rommel was eventually moved east to Tunisia, where he realized that he had run out of luck in North Africa. He fled to Hitler's headquarters in Ukraine to beg to pull his troops (the Afrika Korps) out, but they were doomed to stay there and fight to an inevitable defeat. At Algiers, Mr. John Tysko had been sent back to Oran to be shipped to England for the next big invasion; the invasion of Normandy.

The day was June 5^th, 1944, and in the dead of the night, the allied troops were getting ready for the Invasion of Normandy also called Operation Overlord. But a terrible storm set in which made landing extremely dangerous, so Eisenhower decided on a 24-hour delay. Everyone was ready to go in and battle, but they just had to wait. The next day, June 6^th, 3,000 landing craft, 2,500 other ships, and 500 naval vessels, including escorts and bombardment ships, left the ports at England for France's coast. The army landed on the coast and climbed up, dragging their feet through the wet sand and water while being shot out from every direction. The landing wasn't as easy as the Allies expected, but it was still successful. The counterattack that Hitler had planned to keep them of the beaches never came together. On June 7^th the Allies were all on the beach in their logdement area and they continued to move slowly inland. It wasn't until the 12^th that the U.S. corps were able to collaborate to capture the town of Carentan though. They worked their way up until finally arriving at the French town of St. Lo. The day was foggy and overcast, but at 3:00 in the morning, Allied forces poured into enemy territory once more. The battle of St. Lo was bloody, and most of the city was destroyed. Thousands of bombs from dive bombers were dropped from planes above to destroy the enemy. Mr. Tysko was in the artillery position in the rear while all the tanks and the two other companies went in. The Allies soon took the city and moved on. As they walked through the city, all the men could see all over the city were holes from bullets and bombs. Everything was in shambles, but the army just moved up into Belgium.

Once into Belgium, Mr. Tysko's company found themselves in the Battle of the Bulge. The Allied army was right on the border of Germany after sweeping through and recapturing France. This was the last major offensive by the German army. Their counterattack was in the Ardennes region in Belgium. Hitler, in bad health, thought he could turn the tide with a good strike and maybe even turn what he thought were weak Allies against each other. He would not accept defeat and thought that he could split the Allied forces to make them weak and put the idea of defeat into their minds. The Allies thought that after one more major advance, they could capture Berlin because the Germans were weak. The German objective was Antwerp, because it was a major port that was heavily used by the Allies. The region was a good cover, and Allied defenses weren't expecting an attack there. In November and early December, the Allies had pieces of information about the German attack, but they failed to get the overall picture. On December 16^th, the Germans attacked the Allies. Two German armies attacked the four defending American divisions and then split to the north and the south. Eisenhower sent in reinforcements, to stop the two flanks, but he wasn't aware of the extent of the attack.

On the 17^th, one of the German armies was met by one of the reinforcement divisions at the key crossroads of Saint Vith, which led to the Meuse River and the roads to Antwerp. For John Tysko, guarding that crossroad was one of the scariest things to do. They were in tank destroyers, which had no top. When the Germans came up, they would throw morters at them. Luckily, although they knew the Allies were there, they didn't know exactly where. But if one would fall into where you were sitting, the whole tank destroyer would blow up, and you had no chance of getting out of there. This placement of American troops slowed the Germans threw them off of their plans.

The second German army was headed for Bastogne, as well as the other American reinforcement flank. The Americans got to the key junction first, but the Germans quickly surrounded it. They were offered an ultimatum of surrender of death. As a reply to this, the brave general at Bastogne, General McAuliffe said, "Nuts". Four days later, the bad weather that had kept the American air force out of the skies had passed. Patton was able to go in, stop the German advance, and relieve Bastogne. The Battle of the Bulge was over and the Allies continued to move into Germany.

After the Battle of the Bulge, the American army had to cross the Rhine river, but the Germans had wiped out most of the bridges that go across. Luckily, there was one left. As they went across, the Germans were continuously shooting from the right, trying their best to destroy the bridge and the army before the Allies got across. They did get across, but the question arose, "What if they knock the bridge out and push us back, how are we going to get back?" But the troop kept on coming across. Mr. Tysko never thought about getting killed. He was going to do what he had to do. They scattered out against the trees when they all got to the other side. The brush was so heavy that no one could see the enemy through all of it, much less fight. One of John's men told him that there was a tank coming towards them, but he couldn't see it. He wondered how he was going to hit something that he couldn't even see. The Allied troops made it through Germany nevertheless.

Finally, in May 8^th, 1945 Germany surrendered and the troops were ready to go home, but the memories still stayed imprinted in their minds. In June of 1945, John Tysko was back home. One day while walking across a baseball field near train tracks, a train came to a stop making a loud, booming sound. Two seconds later, John was spread out on the ground until he remembered he was home, not in the heat of war anymore.

Home had changed a lot during the war though. While the troops were at war, the atmosphere in America changed drastically. Genevieve Tysko, not yet married to Mr.Tysko, was a working American woman during World War II. She worked in Western Union, a telegraph company in New York City. It was easy for a women to find work and everyone worked at that time, it was a way to keep busy and keep your mind of things. That was her life; get up in the morning, work all day, and go home to bed. The war changed work.

Different people were doing the work. Many people from smaller towns, like Genevieve, went into bigger towns to work. Women were doing more heavy work. When men were available to work, no company would so much as consider taking in a women to do work with heavy machinery, but with most of the able-bodied men at war, women had to do the job. Even the government was turning to women when they couldn't get enough men. Posters that said, "every little bit counts" and "work-don't wait-for victory" called out to the women. They signed up to work everything from secretaries at army bases to welders at a shipyard. Women employment rate jumped from 13% to 55% of all jobs when World War Two started. For once, lots of women were making money to support themselves.

Though they had money, they couldn't buy everything that they wanted to all the time. Many things were rationed. That is how an ordinary person could support the war effort. The army needed the supplies more than they did, so the people limited what they used so the soldiers could have it. Everyone had a coupon book, and there were coupons or stamps for everything. You needed a certain amount for anything that you bought. Clothes and food were two of the most important things that were rationed. Meat was rationed, because the soldiers needed it. There was lots of fish. Fish was the base of most of the meals in the cafeteria that Genevieve ate in at work. It was something you had to get used to whether you liked it or not, because that's just what you got. Shoes were rationed because of the rubber. At one point and time they came out with plastic shoes to compensate this, but that didn't work out too well. Nylon was something that was hard to get a hold of as well because went to the parachutes. Women's stockings were made from nylon at the time and every woman wore them. Every once and a while a shipment would come in and there would be a long line to get some. Sometimes there would be a line and even though the girls wouldn't know what it was for they'd get in line. If it was stockings, they'd stay in line. After a while, if you were late because of staying in line, all you had to say was stockings and your employer would understand. Some girls even resorted to painting their legs to make it look like they were wearing stockings. They would carefully draw the seam with an eyebrow pencil to give it a realistic look. In the building that Genevieve was working in, there was no air conditioning unit, so in the summer, when it got hot, the paint would streak and get all over the hem of the dress and the chair. The ladies did what they had to do, America was in a war.

Every one in the U.S. knew that we were in war, but it was like a black cloud of misery that hung over the country. The fact was a fog that was always there. Nobody talked about it. There was slogan throughout the war, "Loose lips sink ships". Everyone was afraid that the next man or woman was a spy. They were warned to be careful who they talked to, who they saw, or who saw them. There wasn't ever an Asian around to be seen; every one was too paranoid. Genevieve knew that they attacked us and had to be put down just as well as everyone else. Nothing was said about it. When the men went to war, nobody talked about it or cried about it. When the government released the names of people that were killed, whether they were a brother, a good friend, or a husband, if they were killed, people tried to forget and go on, if they weren't, they thanked god that they were alive; not a word was said about it. People did hear about what was going on overseas on the radio though. Genevieve's mother is originally from Poland, and when they announced the invasion of Poland, it was like "a sword through her heart", but she didn't talk about it to anyone. She never knew who anyone was while the war was going on.

In both Europe and Africa's war zones and America the war was a terrible thing. World War Two impacted every life in America from 1939 to 1945 in many different ways. Some people try to forget and some to remember and carry on their stories so everyone will get the message and moral; so we can learn from it and never let it happen again. I think that war was a dreadful thing to go through, to be in the face of death so many times, but I'm glad that people like Mr. and Mrs.Tysko can share their stories. Mr. John Tysko's war stories and Mrs. Genevieve Tysko's home life stories are a small but equally important part of remembering what happened during this tense and dangerous period of time; World War II.