Letter from Home

To all servicemen, or even just one,

I recently found a poetry book from my grandfather. I realized that my mother had given it to me after he died some years ago from hodgekins disease. I had the privilege of being able to live with him on occasion in Omaha Nebraska. He and his wife had a strawberry patch in the back yard. And once in a rare while he would tell my brother and I a story about WWII. He didn't often tell us stories about the war. I think they brought bad memories for him.

I do a lot of writing and with having found the poetry book, for me it was an amazing find for me. It seemed my grandfather was reaching out to me from the years and showing a different side of himself. Telling me where I got my ability. Sort of like the fact I seemed to get my drawing ability from my grandmother on my father's side. It's interesting how heredity seems to play an important role in one's life.

Anyway, the reason I thought I'd write this letter is to share a couple of poems from my grandfather's WWII poetry book with you. Both a kind of tribute to you.

Brother’s Complaint
By: Jack Howard Hatfield; Composite Squadron, 68th Division, USS Fanshaw Bay

Sis is going with a Sailor,
And at first it didn’t faze us.
But now the families talk in full
Of Sailor’s salty phrases.

We all found it rather hard
To follow all his speech,
For they talk different aboard ship
Than we do on the beach.

For when the time to eat comes
He swings out “chow” for food,
And always stows it down the hatch
Which grandma says is rude.

When talking during dinner
He acts like other boys.
Except he calls the lettuce “grass”
And celery’s just plain “noise.”

His salty speech is slangy
And hard to understand
He calls canned mil “iron cow”
And mother use to scorn.

His many names for coffee
Are really quite a joke.
He speaks of it perhaps
As “mud”, then “Joe” or “jamone.”

The spinach now is “popey,”
And grandma always squirms
To hear him eat spaghetti
With this, “Throw me the worms.”

All chicken he brands as “seagull”,
The catsup is “red lead,”
The waffles are “collision mats,”
While “punk” is mother’s bread.

Fried fish is “Pedro Pork chops.”
“Sea dust”, the name for salt,
When called pepper, “fly specks,”
Mother nearly called a halt.

He sat beside my father
And needed elbow room.
He looked ad Dad and said,
“Say mate reg in your starboard boom.”

We finally caught on though
And now we say
“Six bells” for three o’clock
And “two bells” in nine.

When mom goes to the city
Or runs down to the store
She doesn’t merely leave the house,
We say she’s, “gone ashore.”

Sister calls the floor a “deck”
To hear her talk its sport,
To her the roof’s the “overhead”
The window is the “port.”

And if a thing gets fouled up
Or some new trouble comes,
And dad complains, why ma say;
“Now pa, don’t beat your gums.”

Dad never ties his tie now,
Instead he “bends it on,”
And grandma says, the kids “shove off”
Whenever they are gone.

Ma says dads’ suit is “ship shape”
If it is fitting him.
But if it’s out of press, she says,
“That rash up ain’t so trim.”

When father goes to work now,
He says he’s “turning too,”
And ma “swabs down”
And never scrubs the way she used to do.

The whole place is salty now,
But then it saves a lot of trouble,
When ma says, come here “chop, chop”
I go there on the double.

If Sailor would “weigh anchor”
And do the things I think,
Hid point his bow and trim his jib
And jump right in the drink.

I’m through “batting the breeze,”
And “singing blues” I’m sure
So for tonight, I’ll just “turn in”
“Cease firing and secure.”


True Blue
By: Jack Howard Hatfield; Composite Squadron, 68th Division, USS Fanshaw Bay

We has gone to the colors
And I don’t know what to say
The kid we loved and cuddled
Stepped out for the Flag today

We thought him a boy, a baby
With never a care at all
But his country called him man size,
The bid has heard the call.

He paused to watch the recruiting
When fired by fife and drum.
He turned his head to “Old Glory.”
And thought that it whispered, “Come.”

The kid has gone to the colors
It seems but a little while
Since he sailed in a school boy Navy
In a time manly style.

But now he’s a man, as Sailor,
And we lend him a listening ear,
For his heart in a heart is loyal
And untouched by cause of fear.

His father, when he heard it, shuddered,
His mother, God bless her, cried
But blessed with a mother’s nature
She wept with a mother’s pride.

But he whose old shoulders straightened,
Was granddad, for memory ran,
Back to the day, when he to, a boy,
Was changed by the Flag to a man.

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I hope you all have enjoyed these two poems. I myself have spent time in the Air Force and Air Force Reserves and grew up as a Navy Brat.

I wish you all well and home soon.

Lisa Gordier