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The Lycée During The War Years - Part IIVolunteer Effortsby Gabrielle Griswold '44In those days (long before the post-war U.S. government mobilized economic aid to help reconstruct Europe under the Marshall Plan), private American organizations sprang up to help embattled nations in various ways. One such organization was American Aid to France. Other organizations worked to benefit other stricken countries. 1940 I devoted my entire 1940 Christmas vacation to volunteering daily as a salesgirl in a small, select Bundles for Britain gift shop located at street level in the (now-defunct) New Weston Hotel on Madison Avenue. As the youngest member of the shop's minimal sales staff, I was put at the first counter immediately inside the front door, so that my cheery teenage smile would be the first thing to greet entering customers. (Unconscious of this at the time, I only later realized the strategy behind that position.) This in effect was my first-ever job, unpaid of course but delightfully satisfying to me. I took the work seriously, gave it my all, and felt wonderfully appreciated, owing to the beaming approval of my elders in the shop, the conviction that I was doing something worthwhile in helping to raise money for the British war effort, and the interaction with customers who, marveling at the sight at one so young behind a sales counter, were wonderfully friendly. An author named Polan Banks came in several times and inscribed one of his books to me as "The cutest, sweetest Christmas gal in all Manhattan." (I still have the book.) After that, another close Lycée friend, Eleanor Cramer, and I spent our Saturdays helping out at a British War Relief warehouse, where we sorted and packed clothing to be sent to men, women and children in war torn England. One morning when we arrived at the warehouse, we were taken behind a curtain in a comer that served as an office, where we were whisperingly shown an exhausted British sailor sound asleep on a cot under a grey blanket. We were told he had been rescued in New York harbor, fished out of the water there and brought to our premises to rest before being turned over to the British authorities. The exact details of his harrowing experience were withheld from us "for security reasons." Eleanor and I were both great Anglophiles and admirers of British pluck and grit when Britain alone held Hitler at bay. And we adored Winston Churchill. Like many others concerned for the fate of Europe, we devoutly hoped the day would soon come when the U.S. would enter the war and help to end it more quickly, saving the free world. During the 1940 election year, our allegiance went to President Roosevelt, although we were too young to vote. One of our ways of supporting him was to go into Wendell Willkie campaign offices and collect as many Willkie buttons as they would give us, then march off with those and toss them into trash receptacles! That year was also the second year of the New York World's Fair. In one of the fair's science buildings I had received a large button that read "I have seen the future," and occasionally I would wear it (prophetically, I hoped) directly over an equally large button that read “Roosevelt for President.” 1941 In March of 1941, Eleanor and I between us organized the first-ever Lycée ball, an elegant, romantic, masked and costumed affair, inspired by my appreciation of the beauty of the Lycee's 18th-century ballroom and my desire to have something more colorful and exciting happen there than just weekly dancing lessons. She and I planned and arranged everything ourselves. We charged everyone attending the ball a 25-cent admission fee, the proceeds to be donated to the Allied Relief Fund. (Later, classmate, Claire Nicholas , would write a poem for the Lycée yearbook about our ball.) I have no idea why my parents decided to move us out to Garden City, Long Island, in end-November 1941. Did they, anticipating America's entry into the war, perhaps imagine that we would be safer there? To this day, I don't know. However, nine days after we moved, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941). After that, the U.S. abandoned its neutral status to join the Allies and declare war against the Axis powers. America was in the war at last. Also in December 1941, Winston Churchill visited President Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., where he spent Christmas at the White House. I sent him a Christmas card, naively hoping for a handwritten reply from the great man himself, but had to be content with a message typewritten on White House stationery that read, "Mr. Churchill thanks you warmly for your kind message which he appreciates. He would have liked to answer all such messages personally but owing to their great number has found this impossible. He sends you his best wishes for the New Year." (I still have that letter, too!) 1942-1943 In Garden City, my experience of both school and the war altered radically. Now an older teenager (16 at the time of the move), I entered Garden City High School during the second semester of what would become my Junior year. Even though America was now actively engaged in overseas combat, among my American schoolmates — except for those who had family members or close friends in the military — attitudes continued to reflect less connection to events abroad than I was used to experiencing. Elsewhere, however, evidence of the war was ubiquitous. Movies and books addressed patriotic and wartime themes. Big Bands played nostalgic tunes like "I'll Be Seeing You," "I'll Walk Alone," "I'll Never Smile Again" and "It's Been a Long, Long Time"- tunes that expressed the pangs of parting, of absence, and of yearning for reunion with loved ones. Separations were particularly painful then as there was no limitation on military tours of duty. Unless they were wounded or killed, servicemen and women remained in the war for the duration. Posters appeared everywhere, proclaiming patriotic messages such as "Buy War Bonds," Loose Lips Sink Ships," and "Is This Trip Necessary?" People were urged to restrict travel to make room for servicemen on leave, and, whenever we did travel anywhere, men in uniform proliferated on trains and buses. Food and gasoline rationing went into effect. Certain textiles were also in short supply (women's stocking were almost unobtainable and, when nylons came in, they represented a rare, luxurious novelty). Fashions featured styles cut skimpily to economize on fabric. The draft law had been passed in 1940, and families with members overseas hung small red-bordered white flags in their windows, showing a central blue star for each man or woman in uniform. If a family member was killed in action, the star was gold. My father, previously an advertising executive, went to work for the War Production Board. My mother, a former teacher and editor of nationally published women's magazines, worked in the design department at Grumman Aircraft in Bethpage and served as air-raid warden in our neighborhood. Many of us in those days were "latchkey kids" because of parental involvement in the war effort, fending for ourselves during the few hours after school until our parents returned home from work. In those days, this country was united as it had never been before - and has never been since. Like everyone else, my family bought war bonds and learned how to respond in case of an air raid. My brother and I stripped and saved the foil lining from our parents' cigarette packs and rolled it into hard-packed balls to donate to scrap-metal drives. I clumsily knitted woollen scarves, simple but warm, for servicemen overseas. Many people cultivated "Victory gardens" to eke out the national food supply.. Once when we went for a rare drive farther out on Long Island, we passed a farm that had posted a sign soliciting volunteers to help bring in the harvest. My brother and I begged our mother to let us volunteer. She agreed, and in no time he and I were out in the hot sun picking row after row of string beans and lima beans, for several hours.. Back home at close of day, we felt tired but deliriously happy and proud. Sometime in 1942, a German U-boat landed saboteurs on the coast of Long Island. They were soon caught and imprisoned, but the incident scared many people, bringing the war closer. Now old enough for my first summer job, I worked one summer at Mitchell Field Air Base, located a short distance from our house, as a salesperson in the officers' department at the Post Exchange. Many of us at the PX briefly dated airmen, who would soon ship out for duty overseas and whom we would never see again. They always behaved like perfect gentlemen, and seemed content just to share movies and ice-cream sodas with young girls who probably reminded them of their sisters at home. On one occasion, my family and I also hosted a party for some of them. Meanwhile back in New York (which I missed and where I returned periodically to socialize with former Lycée classmates), my friend Eleanor was going out with Free French naval officers stationed in Manhattan. To this day, I retain some of her letters describing that experience and the attraction she felt to one of them. Her city outings were rather more formal than my suburban ones, and included more sophisticated activities such as tea dances at Delmonico's. She often invited me to come up to town to join her for these occasions, but somehow that plan never materialized. On several other occasions, I did take the train into New York to visit or study with Mme. Mount, my beloved Lycée French and Latin teacher. 1943 and after In June 1943, I graduated from Garden City High School and set off for college. In 1944, FDR entered upon his fourth term as president and lived to witness D-Day in June of that year, but died before VE-Day and VJ-Day, both of which occurred during the summer of 1945. The jubilation at war's end was intense and universal. But, mixed with relief at our victory and the end of the slaughter, there were underlying sorrows. So many had died; so much had been destroyed. My adored French godmother, who had survived the war, left her home at Cannes and came to the United States to recuperate, as her health had suffered. From her we heard tales of the wartime privations she and her friends had endured. When she arrived in New York, I was the first of our family to go to greet her in her room at the Plaza, where I found her resting in bed. I was stunned at how frail and fatigued she seemed, and how powdery and dry her face looked. This must have been sometime in 1946 but, happily, after remaining in the U.S. for several months, she was able to regain her health before returning to France. As things gradually began to resume normalcy in the United States, my attention turned to the devastation in Europe, to which, among other influences, my Lycée years had sensitized me. In summer 1947, I sailed for France, to work at the Paris headquarters of American Aid to France, which operated medico-social centers in seven of France's most shattered cities where our organization distributed food, clothing and medications to needy victims of the war. The AAtF Paris office oversaw these operations, maintained warehouses for the storage of goods collected in and shipped from the United States, and organized certain distributions of its own. When private relief agencies started phasing out a year later as government aid came in, I transferred in the summer of 1948 to the Marshall Plan (officially named the Economic Cooperation Administration), then setting up its international headquarters, also in Paris. When that program came to a successful conclusion after another few years, I went to work in the selfsame building for the United States Mission to N.A.T.O., acting as secretary to two successive American ambassadors to N.A.T.O. Finally, after spending almost the entire decade of my 20s in Paris, I returned to the U.S. to be married and raise a family. It is fair to say, however, that both the war and the Lycée experience left an indelible, lifelong imprint on my mind, and on my subsequent interests and motivations. Forever after, the fate of the world and its democratic freedoms would matter mightily to me. This is a legacy that the war alone, in and of itself, bestowed upon many members of my generation. In my case, the Lycée years compounded and intensified that legacy. |
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