My grandmothers sent a total of 7 sons off to war. My mother's mother sent 4 and lost her eldest son somewhere in northern Italy. My father's mother sent 3 sons off to war and lost her eldest in the Pacific.
Moss
He was 18 when his father died in 1934, one of 10 children, the oldest son. The family had a small farm, what was left of a land grant given to his mother's family some years before his time. They were poor. From the stories told, their father had not been much of a worker preferring to sit out in the hills at night drinking and listening to his hounds run. And then, he got sick, probably an alcohol related illness. It seems Moss took over as the head of the family when his father died as his mother did not remarry until after the older children had left home and only the 3 youngest were still with her.
His sisters would tell this funny story about him. My mother, the wild child of the family, I think, plays a central role. The farm was on the river and in her pre-teen years, my mother put her name and address in a bottle and tossed it in the river. A man down the river found the bottle and actually came to the farm looking for her, on foot, I guess, because an angry Moss took him to the closest town...on the hood of the car. And Moss had a reputation for driving dangerously fast and even today the roads in those hills are scary.
Moss spent 9 months in jail in Chillicothe, Ohio for making and running moonshine. He had a choice of the jail in the town across the river, Richmond, Ky., or the jail in Chillicothe. He chose Chillicothe because the Richmond jail had a reputation for being dirty. While he was in jail, the next oldest brother kept the business running with the help of one of the youngest sisters. She said she remembered helping him fill the bottles.
On the 90th birthday of one my aunts, a notebook containing the letters that Moss sent home to his mother after he joined the service and the letters that she wrote that were returned to her because he was already dead by the time they arrived was on a table for everyone to read. They were so sad. They wrote each other everyday it seemed. She wrote about all the mundane things happening on the farm, even telling him that she had a bad headache this day or that day. His letters made him seem so lonely. He missed his wife and all his family, home. In one letter he references my father's brother and talks about how lucky that he got stationed with someone from home. But, of course, none of them were lucky. My father's brother and the other man died together.
Albert (aka Dave)
My father always referred to his brother as Dave, never Albert. I don't even know if Dave was a middle name, but that's what my Dad called him. He and my dad were the 2 oldest of 5 children and from what I can determine they were a couple of heathens, running the hills along the Kentucky River causing trouble, destroying watermelon patches, putting human feces in the stove ashes at the school knowing it was the teachers job to clean the ashes and start the fire each day and probably even worse things.
I never really understood this because my grandfather didn't seem the type of person who would tolerate this behavior. But, I think my grandmother was a pushover. She married my grandfather when she was 14 and was always very childlike and my grandfather treated her like a child. I think she came from a very, very poor family and my grandfather's family had land and were hard workers and though they didn't live a luxurious life, they always had plenty to eat even during the Depression. So, maybe the boys were spoiled, but I know my grandfather made them work. My father raised a tobacco crop from the time he was 15 years old. I don't know if that was true of Dave.
Dave was already married when he joined the service. But still wild, I think. My father once said he thought maybe he was drunk when he joined. When he died he had a year and a half old son. His twins were born two and half months after his death, a boy and a girl.
He joined in April 1944, was aboard the USS Reid by August 1944, and died December 11 of that same year when the ship sank after what must have been an awful battle.
I don't have a picture of him, but there is a picture at this website. He is featured in the newsletter 2007, Volume 11, Edition 1, Page 10. The website also has a description of the battle.
http://www.ussreid369.org/...
He had been at the port where my father was stationed, but his ship had pulled out before my father could get to see him. My father thought he could catch him next time, but the USS Reid never made it back. My father read on his ship's bulletin board that his brother's ship had gone down.
I never heard her say, but was told that for many years, maybe till her death, that because there was no body that came home, my grandmother had hope that her son was still alive somewhere on an island in the Pacific.
Moss is buried down on the river at the family cemetery. Dave has a marker at Camp Nelson National Cemetery.