steveb leatherworks: the blather

I dug up this tidbit to share with all of youse in keeping with the Armed Forces Support theme i’ve been beating into submission, in my own weak way.

my Mom hung around alot of soliders during WWII, partly because she was USO, stationed in Europe and partly because she liked hanging with guys. She was pretty fearless and grew up toughened by life on the road as a vaudevillian entertainer, where her back was always watched like a hawk by my grandfather Max….there wanst alot she hadnt been exposed to – both good and bad.

She liked to listen to,  and could tell story’s, she’d had the occasional drink and she smoked. She was also blonde and cute – and so, no wonder why guys flocked to her like flies – she was one of the few women that was cool and that didn’t run at the sight of a “girl-starved” solider – quite the opposite actually…she loved the attention.

My grandfather was Dutch, so of course they connected with as many Dutch soldier and sailors as they came across to get  news of this and that from the “old country”. I believe these pictures were taken just as these  Dutch sailors were being shipped out. There is a clipping that fell apart when I opened this page, that has from what i can tell, a headline and news about the sinking of their ship in the Atlantic.

I can’t imagine how my Mom felt when she had to put that clipping in with these pictures… pictures that show so much life and youth – I wonder how it felt to know you might be the only person who had that person alive in memory and in an image – when all others are dead, gone and long buried.

Talk about baggage……