Hoboes, homeless and such during WW2?

[MikeKardec]

Yes and no on European history.

I was kinda thinkin' that the conditions I mentioned began to alter severely between the time market towns started acquiring power that was competitive to the land owning nobility (obviously there were some cities that were seats of power long before others!) and say when England started to enter the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century.

Assets shifted into the more fluid form of cash and suddenly the money could move. I don't think that it even HAD to move, just the fact that it could was scary. There were also, for the first time, people who really only had cash, their assets that tied them to the area were minimal. People who can disconnect from local power are free in a way others are not. If, over 50 years, a merchant settled younger generations of his family in a city 200 miles away, that was pretty rapid movement ... and they were probably out from under the thumb of the local lord.

I suspect there has always been distrust of people who say: "I don't need you." Whether they are vagrants who can scoop up whatever is loose and disappear in a night or a corporation that moves to another state, if they haven't bought into the local tribe they can't be controlled by it. We can all trust the people who own property around us to have certain things in common that the renters don't ... I was just trying to imagine someone's state of mind about mobility in a time when people hadn't even imagined moving since they'd given up hunting and gathering.

 

[BlueTrain]

You're thinking of the late middle ages and the early modern era in 21st century terms. First of all, there wasn't a lot of money floating around but eventually some of it ended up in relatively few hands. They were the early bankers. And money back then meant hard cash, not checking accounts. While strictly speaking the money could move around and it did (when it was loaned out), the families that became the wealthy bankers did not. There was no mobility of labor, either, because there was no point to it. Everything was based on agriculture and anyway, many were "unfree" and could not leave. It is true that things changed, usually for the worse (for the laboring class), at different times in different places and in different ways. Easily the best example of the worst that could happen were the clearances in Britain. But you also have to remember that during the pre-industrial period, you might not even understand the language if you moved 200 miles away. That's still true to some extent. Mostly, though, there would have been little incentive to move and to say people were under the thumb of the lord gives the wrong impression of class relations. Even today, when there can be lots of good reasons to go somewhere else, people still stay put in this country.

 

[BlueTrain]

One solution to the housing shortage in the middle of the last century was multi-generational families living together. That was nothing new, of course, and was something that had always been done to some extent. Part of that reason was so the older people could be taken care of when there were no alternatives. We lived with my grandmother at her house, for example.

But for everything done to relieve the housing shortage, there seems to have been something else done to make it worse. The best example I can think of is urban renewal. Even with the best of intentions, I'm almost certain it created as many problems as it solved. But perhaps the problems it created were not the problems they were trying to solve. There are never any neat and easy solutions to difficult problems and that is exactly why problems exist.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I agree, there was likely a sort of domino effect where men entering military service left open jobs that were taken by the previously chronically unemployed, that is not to say that the chronically unemployed were all that good at their jobs but many didn't need to be. We know that as younger more easily educated women moved into more technical fields the jobs that had been done by kids of both sexes were populated by older people ... I'm guessing that not all of them had been stable members of their communities all that long. This was a good question and I'd follow it up with wondering what their lives were like after the war?

Dad was in the Ardennes in early '45 when the Battle of the Bulge had finally come to a halt. Got a letter from his older 4-F brother, telling Dad that he was making money hand over fist working overtime at a defense plant job and that he hoped that the war would go on forever. You can imagine how that made a dogface soldier who had just witnessed death all around him feel.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It was very common for Nazi radio propaganda broadcasters -- especially Mildred "Axis Sally" Gillars -- to go on at length about how all those 4-Fs back home were making all the money and bedding all the women while all the GI suckers were getting killed in "Roosevelt's Jew war."

A story made the homefront rounds around 1943 in which the wife of the Deferred Civilian was in a crowded elevator with several other women and conversation turned to the war. She expressed views similar to those of your dad's brother, and one of the other ladies slapped her hard across the face. "THAT is for my son at Anzio!" And then she slapped her hard across the other side of her face. "And THAT is for my son at Corregidor!"

 

[LizzieMaine]

But for everything done to relieve the housing shortage, there seems to have been something else done to make it worse. The best example I can think of is urban renewal. Even with the best of intentions, I'm almost certain it created as many problems as it solved. But perhaps the problems it created were not the problems they were trying to solve. There are never any neat and easy solutions to difficult problems and that is exactly why problems exist.

The big problem with the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954 were that they were drafted and passed by a Congress more interested in greasing the palms of private developers than in solving the problems they had been proposed to solve. (The 1949 bill was sponsored in the Senate by Robert A. Taft, nobody's definition of a socialist.) Cities were given Federal funds to acquire and demolish slum properties -- and those properties were then *given* -- not sold, *given* -- to private developers to redevelop, with the only proviso being that the redevelopment would have to be for "public use." Some developers did use these properties to build low or moderate income housing, but many others used them to build office or retail complexes, and other facilities which were of little substantial use to the people the construction was supposed to help. The destruction of Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles toward the greater glory of Walter F. O'Malley was a prominent example of this.

 

[BlueTrain]

An old photo of lower Manhattan will show what would be called slums as well as a lively, bustling waterfront. I believe there are still docks but the real ocean traffic goes elsewhere now and that's the case in other cities, too, from San Francisco, to Baltimore and Philadelphia. But what I actually had in mind was the construction of the U.N. building, which displaced a lot of people who may or may not have wanted to leave. On the other hand, there were farms on Manhattan Island at one time. The basic problem is that any public eyesore, which includes slums, light industry, junk yards, empty storefronts on main street and so on, is something that most people want to get rid of. If people live there, well, they have to go. So to some extent, that creates a certain kind of homelessness or it pushes the problem over the country line. As has already been mentioned, "gentrification" tends to do the same thing. It may not actually force people to go live under the bridge or in a shack in the woods, but it results in people no longer being able to afford to live where they have been. One could say that people in situations like that are being squeezed between the past, the present and the future. They are people who usually have no financial cushion to fall back upon and are marginal in every sense of the world. In fact, they are largely invisible. No one speaks for them and they have no voice themselves.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Back to the OP: I don't see a lot of men being able to ride the rails in typical hobo mode during the war years, as the rail yards were often heavily patrolled by armed employees looking for saboteurs. I always had the impression that rail crews (aside from the railroad police/ "bulls") traditionally had an attitude of benign indifference toward hobos on the property. During the war I would think that got shoved aside.

 

[MikeKardec]

I always had the impression that rail crews (aside from the railroad police/ "bulls") traditionally had an attitude of benign indifference toward hobos on the property.

Not always, of course. Obviously, "Railroad Detectives" sometimes used their positions to satisfy seriously sadistic tendencies on what was often a completely helpless population, that's part of the lore. But even the humorous or merely competitive behavior of train crews shown in "Holding Her Down," which I posted a link to above, display a firm desire to keep hobos off the trains. Dad told me many stories of being ordered off trains by conductors or brakemen and it was common for hobos to drop off a train (always start running in the direction the train is moving before you hit the ground was the (untested, not recommended) advice I was given) and run or walk (depending on the train schedule or priority) around the yards to board again on the other side.

Dad bailed off of moving trains more than once on trips from Kingman AZ to Los Angeles to avoid the notorious Yermo Red who was a very dangerous Bull in the Yermo Daggett Barstow area.

All in all, the stories I heard growing up were far from the "leisurely" ride in the open door of a boxcar across amber waves of grain that has become the Hobo Trope. Not only were there authorities to avoid, and all that running around the yards to catch your train on the other side, but the suspension of many of the old cars was so rough that you had to ride through the harshest and fastest stretches of track standing and with your knees bent to avoid getting beat to hell by the walls or floor of the car. A lot of time if a 'bo was going to sit down he'd tear a big piece of what they called "thousand mile paper" off the walls or up from the floor. This was two pieces of heavy paper with a layer of tar or something like it (tar impregnated felt?) in between, it was used as temperature and vibration insulation for cargoes. The 'bo would fold it several times and then sit on that ... thus they would avoid a severely bruised butt.

A fast freight with a high priority was a mixed blessing in that the ride was rough and they were hard to catch and to stay on. A "manifest" freight, which I think meant that there was a document (the manifest) that had to be consulted to see what cars were to be picked up and dropped off at different yards, was a slow moving and considerably more sedate affair ... more chances to get caught though, lots of sidings with the crew wandering around inspecting things or just having a smoke.

The scariest place to ride was on "the rods" these were the steel braces that ran the length of the car underneath and acted line a suspension bridge to give the car more load carrying capacity. Guys would through a plank across them and ride on that. It seems crazy with all that vibration, if the plank vibrated off the rods the wheels were Right There. I've never understood this except for people who really knew the track ahead or were out of their minds. The other crazy place was on top of the trucks (wheel assemblies) between the wheels ... filthy and also very dangerous because the car is tipping side to side and turning as the trucks take turns. Because the car is so large these movements are relatively small but at 25 tons unloaded an inch of deflection can be pretty lethal if there is no give to your position.

If anybody knows more about all this I'd love to hear it, my knowledge is pretty incomplete and memory imperfect.

 

[Stearmen]

I guess I started wondering about all this because I know that someone the locals considered to be a coward or draft dodger would sometimes get the living [bleep] stomped out of them in a back alley or lot somewhere, during WW2.
I have talked with people who were exempted from service during the war and most have told me they have to explain many times why they weren't in the service (usually to mothers of soldiers, one told me). Even cops would walk up and ask to see their card. Those who worked in heavy industry, I've been told, didn't get hassled as much because I guess that people assumed that you could do more for the war effort with a rivet gun than a machine gun.
I'd have thought that someone who just decided to drop out of society, draft dodger or not, would have met a similar fate as those who people thought were trying to skate out of serving.

I know the beatings got so bad, the AAF had to start issuing uniforms, complete with wings to the male civilian flight instructors!

 

[MikeKardec]

Condor Field! That would ave been a bleak post in the 1940s. A lot of soldiers of various sorts were shifted through those desert training facilities but we rarely think of the instructors who were stuck there.

 

[BlueTrain]

It should be noted here that the highest draft age, as far as I could learn varied depending on the year and probably no one over the age of 40 was ever drafted even though registration was at one time as high as 65. But just like in WWI, there was a surprisingly high number of rejected men. I do not know how the draft requirements worked out locally but not every location would have had equal numbers of deferred men due to essential occupations. None of my uncles, for example, served, presumably because of their occupations but probably also because of their ages. All but one was older than my father. He was 28 when he was drafted. Even successful entertainers like Bob Wills were drafted. Bob Wills was drafted (I think he was drafted) at age 37. So I expect your chances of being drafted varied from place to place but they would have been pretty good everywhere then.

Colonial militias were essentially conscripted organizations. Militia membership was not voluntary but was required.

 

[MikeKardec]

My father was drafted at around 34. He had been rejected or put on some sort of pre-deferment list (I'm not quite sure of the situation without doing some research) just before 12/7 because his teeth weren't "good enough." I think that meant that the Army wasn't willing to foot his dental bills. He kept trying to get into the Navy version of OCS but wasn't allowed no matter how many strings he pulled because he hadn't been to college. By mid 1942 the army was happy to have him and sent him to OCS and Tank Destroyer School. Then they had him teaching winter survival in Michigan. He was supposed to be assigned to a Tank Destroyer platoon but then they decided or realized that he was over 34 and that was too old for him to join a combat unit as an officer.

He was placed in the Transportation Corps where it was okay for him to join an existing unit as a 2d Lt. He worked in Oakland as a cargo control officer, loading ships with army supplies ... a job he was quite qualified for as he'd been a merchant seaman and longshoreman ... and was hoping to get sent off to the South Pacific to do the same thing as a higher level when word came in that "X" many Lts were needed to get on a train RIGHT NOW. He tried to locate his CO to get him out of it (whatever 'it" was) but the guy had gone to Frisco for dinner.

The train slowly circled nearly the entire country, down to San Diego, East to Texas, through the South and up the East Coast. At every stop it picked up officers and enlisted men. It took weeks. Finally they sailed for Liverpool to join with the invasion of Normandy. Ultimately, he said he saw more action as head of a platoon of gas tankers than did men in his old TD unit ... that might be a bit of an exaggeration. He did say that if he was going to die he'd take it outside with someone shooting at him as opposed to the horrible deaths many in armored fighting vehicles faced. I've certainly heard that certain sorts of specialists were placed in combat units even though they were older ... I'm guessing that policy changed many times and that different services had different policies. If you think of all that went on in just four years and the primitive communications and record keeping it's a miracle that anyone kept anything straight and they didn't end up sending half the army to Iceland!

 

[BlueTrain]

My late father-in-law was in college and in ROTC at Virginia Tech when the war started. I think he would have been the class of 1944. But they basically drafted the whole class (the corps of cadets, that is) and sent them through OCS. He was commissioned as an officer in the Army Air Corps. He said he was sent to one school and then another and so on. When he finished one course, they didn't need that specialty any longer, so they sent him to another one. He finally finagled he was to being sent overseas where he did manage to fly some missions. He was stationed at the same little airbase somewhere in England as Jimmy Stewart but not at the same time. Jimmy Stewart was in his mid-30s at the time.

The primitive communications and record keeping was still the same when I was in the army and it wasn't at all primitive. Did you know that the records of the trial of Joan of Arc still exist? And any mention of Joan of Arc makes me think of Joan of Ozark, a movie (a "film") with Judy Canova.

The fact that so-called non-combatant units were highly essential as well as frequently engaged with the enemy was not unappreciated both during the war and afterwards. There was even at least one move about the Red Ball Express. It was very dramatized, of course, but it was more realistic than the stores set during basic training when the USO was the center of attention.

I believe that some construction units formed during the war, both army and navy, had a lot of relatively older men in them and, sure enough, there were movies made about them, too. But I have trouble imagining hobos as younger men, which of course is totally illogical.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It should be noted here that the highest draft age, as far as I could learn varied depending on the year and probably no one over the age of 40 was ever drafted even though registration was at one time as high as 65. But just like in WWI, there was a surprisingly high number of rejected men. I do not know how the draft requirements worked out locally but not every location would have had equal numbers of deferred men due to essential occupations. None of my uncles, for example, served, presumably because of their occupations but probably also because of their ages. All but one was older than my father. He was 28 when he was drafted. Even successful entertainers like Bob Wills were drafted. Bob Wills was drafted (I think he was drafted) at age 37. So I expect your chances of being drafted varied from place to place but they would have been pretty good everywhere then.

Colonial militias were essentially conscripted organizations. Militia membership was not voluntary but was required.

The most common reasons for rejection among WW2 draftees were malnutrition, bad teeth, and illiteracy. These were particular problems in the Deep South.

Celebrities were put under a microscope, and a surprising number of them wriggled and wraggled and tried to avoid the draft. Both Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams spent most of 1942 trying to convince Selective Service that they should get exemptions, but both ended up going into the service after the 1942 baseball season ended. Williams held a grudge against the draft system for the rest of his life -- and despite his ultraconservative John Wayne image, even supported the anti-draft movement during the Vietnam War.

Married men, even celebrities, could often wrangle a deferrment, but if their marital status changed, they'd be first in line to be drafted. This happened to comedian Red Skelton, who divorced his wife/manager/head writer in 1943, and was taken in the draft shortly after. His radio sponsor and movie studio tried to keep him out, but Selective Service put him in uniform anyway.

 

[BlueTrain]

John Wayne later regretted not being in the armed forced during WWII but he was in his mid-thirties, married and had four children when the war started. He made a fair number of war movies but never one about hobos or homeless people. The best movie about a hobo I ever saw was "A hobo's Christmas." It gives me mixed feelings. One of the lines in the movie was (from the hobo, who was a grandfather), "I was a hotel man in a motel world."

 

[ChiTownScion]

Celebrities were put under a microscope, and a surprising number of them wriggled and wraggled and tried to avoid the draft. Both Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams spent most of 1942 trying to convince Selective Service that they should get exemptions, but both ended up going into the service after the 1942 baseball season ended. Williams held a grudge against the draft system for the rest of his life -- and despite his ultraconservative John Wayne image, even supported the anti-draft movement during the Vietnam War.

Married men, even celebrities, could often wrangle a deferrment, but if their marital status changed, they'd be first in line to be drafted. This happened to comedian Red Skelton, who divorced his wife/manager/head writer in 1943, and was taken in the draft shortly after. His radio sponsor and movie studio tried to keep him out, but Selective Service put him in uniform anyway.

Skelton actually didn't see the army until after D-Day in June of 1944. Then he spent his army days in either an entertainment unit, or- when the stress of that became too much for him, in a psychiatric hospital. Makes the slapping of a battle worn veteran who had finally reached the point where he could physically and mentally tolerate no more by the great General George S. Patton all the more despicable, if you ask me.

But the thing about Skelton that galls me to no end was his pontificating during the 1960's about the Pledge of Allegiance, patriotism, how he was "victimized" by the "rural purge" by the left wingers at CBS, etc. Flag waving jingoism when one has reached the safe sanctuary of middle or old age, when that individual's youth was marked by doing everything in his power to avoid the dangers of combat, is always red pepper in this mad bull's face. Skelton's hypocrisy is far from the only example of this, of course. I want to avoid accusations of "getting too political" so I'll demur regarding further names... but you brought up Skelton.

Just bear in mind as a matter of perspective that even a guy such as Commie Party head Gus Hall served in the Navy from 1941 until he was honorably discharged in 1946.. and you'll get an inkling of what I think of those who get too much into the jingoist flag waving crap when it's someone else- or someone else's kid- who is actually in harm's way.

 

[BlueTrain]

I could add a few things myself but I already got my fingers slapped once. I've often wondered if the local draft board was where all the decisions got made about who got drafted.

 

[LizzieMaine]

All told, over 20,000 members of the Communist Party USA served in the armed forces during WW2, despite an effort by some to keep them out, and many of these had *also* volunteered to fight Franco's forces in Spain in the 1930s. That's a record I'll salute any day of the week over that of those who sat behind desks or made training films.

Most entertainment and sports celebrities were given "morale building" duties rather than being put into combat, but some weren't, or refused such duties when they were offered. Bob Feller enlisted right after Pearl Harbor, and demanded combat duty, which he got. Philadelphia Athletics pitching prospect Lou Brissie suffered a devastating leg wound in combat -- and yet returned after the war to pitch successfully in the American League. Baseball executive Bill Veeck lost a leg as a result of combat injuries. Cecil Travis, an all-star shortstop for the Washington Senators, was drafted and suffered severe frostbite during the Battle of the Bulge, and the damage cost him his postwar career. Another former member of the Senators, outfielder Elmer Gedeon, was killed in a bombing raid over Germany. And, of course, even some of those in "morale building" duties gave their all, as the fate of Glenn Miller demonstrates.

Contrast this to Frank Sinatra, who refused to tour with the USO until after V-E Day, and came back home dismissing it as "strictly for hacks. " Marlene Dietrich put him in his place, pointing out "you can hardly expect the European Theatre to be anything like the Paramount."

As for Skelton, his radio sponsors managed to negotiate a deal with the draft board for him to finish out his 1943-44 contract before going into the service. His final broadcast before induction, in fact, occured on the night of June 6, 1944.

If you had influence, or influential backers, such deals could be cut with draft boards, or even all the way up to the top of Selective Service.

The case of radio commentator Paul Harvey is interesting, too -- there is a great deal of murkiness about what exactly happened to him during the war. Stories circulated thruout his career that he had been given a "Section 8" for either stealing a plane and crashing it into a fence, or wounding himself in the foot to avoid combat duty, or both, depending on who was telling the story, but the definitive truth has never been revealed, and Harvey himself was always very evasive when asked about exactly what happened to him in the Air Corps. He had cultivated enough "friends in high places" during his lifetime to make certain documentation go away if he wanted it to do so, so the questions will probably never find a conclusive answer.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Again, not naming names to avoid any accusations of injecting politics, but..

... a definite attitude difference between those Americans who saw real combat during the Second World War and those who served in the armed forces, and even survived combat, later. I grew up amidst so many World War II vets, and it really has led me to the conclusion that they justifiably have earned that "greatest generation" label. Not merely for how they handled themselves during their service, but their attitudes and lives afterward.

There was always a sense that they never wore what they experienced as a chip on their shoulder, or bragged about it: everyone else in the room likely had a story to tell and a war experience as well, so the best thing was to keep your mouth shut, lest someone else embarrass you by telling a story that made yours seem trivial.

And some of those guys I knew who kept quiet had been through the worst of the worst: the Bataan Death March, the Bulge, D-Day, Iwo, the torpedoed USS Indianapolis. If you pressed them, they'd tell you matter of fact how it was a horrible, gruesome experience that they wouldn't wish on anyone. Then they'd try to tell you about some of the funnier experiences: bullying sergeants, pompous lieutenants and even a humorous encounter with the great Patton, were among my favorites among those. The painful stuff was necessary and they'd just as soon forget about it... but the funny experiences kept them going for decades. They were amazing men- and I fight tears even now as I type this when I consider how few of them remain.

And what amazes me still was how my Dad would often work construction with post war German immigrants- some who were on the other side in the same region and time. The fact that they had been former enemies was academic: the fact that they had survived same or similar hardships made them part of a mysterious fraternity that no stateside desk jockey or civilian could ever be a part of. He genuinely enjoyed those encounters.

Contra, my post World War II father in law. Korean War vet, and mustang officer who served his 20 and retired. From what I understand, his actual combat in Korea was even more brutal than anything my Dad survived, and yet it didn't seem to have affected him in the way that was even remotely similar. Not a bad person.. but he clearly reflects a different mind set. "Close enough for government work" is still part of his vocabulary: I never heard a World War II combat vet utter it. Not one of the greatest generation.. and how it shows, even to an outsider. Dad had a work ethic that only ended when he was pushing eighty, collecting two pensions, and died as result of an on the job injury. FIL is a feather merchant type who always has "a deal" for you- and from which you will always exit with the short and brown end of the stick. Perhaps it's purely personal and not generational difference, but I tend to think that the military experiences had some role in molding it.