June 1944

L.J. Hurst

1944

     My grandfather joined the Army on June 21, 1944. He served in the 134th Infantry, Company G in General George S. Patton's Third Army in France and Belgium. He was warded the Purple Heart for wounds he received during the Battle of the Bulge inside Germany in the early morning hours of January 1, 1945.  He also received the American Service Medal and European African Middle Eastern Service Medal with two Bronze Service Stars.  

    He didn't make a habit of discussing what happened to him during the war, but one summer afternoon when I was ten years old we talked about it. The conversation started because I heard my mother say something about the scar on his face. Honestly, I had never noticed that he had a scar, or at least never recognized that the star shaped mark on his cheek was a scar.  The two of us were rocking in the glider on the front porch when I asked him about how he'd gotten it. He told me that he was in the Army during WWII and he'd been sent on a ship overseas to fight in France.  He said that it was very cold over there which meant he and his buddies spent most of their time trying to stay warm.  The night he was wounded he was in a foxhole in the woods. He told me that he had just fallen asleep when there was an explosion and a piece of shrapnel hit him in the face. He spent almost three days lying in the foxhole before anyone came to help him.  He said that if it hadn't been so cold outside he would have bled to death and if his friend hadn't been in the foxhole with him he would have frozen to death. His friend died before they were rescued.  Even at ten I understood that him telling me this story was a big deal. 

    As for leaving to enlist in the Army on June 21st - that was my grandparents' wedding anniversary and rather than tell my grandmother that he'd enlisted, he let her believe that he'd finally been drafted. He once told my mother that part of the reason he enlisted is that he was working in Knoxville delivering ice and someone called him a draft dodger and asked him why he wasn't serving his country. He spent the summer and fall of 1944 training at Fort McClellan and Fort Meade.  On November 25th, he boarded a transport ship and sailed for Europe.  He wrote in a letter that he didn't know where he was going but it must be someplace cold because they'd given everybody heavy underwear and a heavy coat.  He arrived in Marseille on December 8th and by December 25th he was in the town of Metz. Sometime after he was wounded, he wrote in the pocket diary that on December 28th he was sent to the front lines "where they beat off three counter attacks and took a small town and then dug in on a hill overlooking that town".  At some point on the night of December 31st/January 1st he was hit and then he spent three days trapped behind enemy lines.  The injuries to his face and jaw were severe and he rarely talked about what happened to during the war.  Other than that one afternoon on the front porch I don't ever remember hearing him talk about being in the military. He did write it down though and my hope is that all these years later he wouldn't mind that I'm doing the same thing. 

Oh Canada

My Dad and Me

Somewhere in Canada

Summer 1993

   In the summer of 1993 my parents and I traveled to Canada to attend a family reunion for my dad's side of the family.  My dad's mother, Mary Walsh Maguire, was born in Canada and immigrated to New York, where, among other things, she became a nurse and got married and had six children.  As for my Canadian ancestors, my gggg-grandparents, Donald Bah McDougald and Catherine McKinnon McDougald immigrated to Canada from Scotland and acquired a homestead on Lot Number 5 in the 4th Concession of the township of Kenyon in 1790-ish.  In 1993, my dad's Canadian family were celebrating 200 years at 5/4 Kenyon so we loaded up the car and drove from Tennessee to Alexandria, Ontario to be there.  I'll admit that at the time I was a just a little bit reluctant to take a several weeks long car trip with my parents to Canada, but am so happy now that I "agreed" to go. As it turned out, this was the last trip my parents and I took as a family of three (Joel and I started dating that fall) and the weeks we spent in Canada were the last we had before my mother was diagnosed with MS (her doctor waited until we got back to give her the diagnosis because he said he didn't want to ruin our trip).    And I did have fun, in spite of my twenty-two year old self.

My Mother and Me

Shortly before she told me I needed an attitude adjustement.

That's my cousin, Edward, there on the left.

One and One Makes Two

Wendy Jean and Julie

East Tennessee State University, 1987

     My cousin Wendy headed off to college at East Tennessee State University in the fall of 1987.  When she left, it was the first time I really thought about the fact that when we all grew up we might not always live only five minutes from each other.  It made me sad.  Wendy lives in California now with her beautiful family.  Her sweet daughters graduated from preschool last week and are headed to kindergarten in the fall.  Wendy is also graduating this spring, with a Master's Degree.  I am very proud of her, mainly because I thought graduate school was difficult enough when I was there and I only had myself to worry about - she went through graduate school while raising a family.  Way to go Wendy Jean!  Your Tennessee family is so very proud of you.  What a wonderful accomplishment!

Magic

    In the early summer of 1980 my grandfather bought this beautiful little horse from the stables where I was taking riding lessons. I have no idea what her name was before she was mine, but I named her Magic.  I spent several summers riding her around the fields at my grandparents place, usually bareback, because when you put a saddle on her she had this quirky habit of going one time around the pasture and then stopping (probably a consequence of all that time teaching kids to ride at the stables).  To get her to go again you had to hop off and hop back on.  I was convinced for a long time that she was the result of the wish I made when I blew out the candles on my ninth birthday cake.  That year I closed my eyes and wished wished wished for a horse that was all black except for a white star on her head - a few weeks later there she was being unloaded at my grandparents house.  If you look closely at the photo below you can see her white star peeking out from under her mane. It wasn't my grandfather's way to be overly indulgent with gifts and material things, a fact that has made this memory from my childhood grow sweeter and sweeter over the years.