Boots On The Ground

Some cliche catch phrases are alright. Others, find me a bit uncomfortable because to me, they go against the grain of how I learned respect. Surprisingly, while I got a lot of learning from mom and dad, it was my maternal grandmother that kept me in check when mom and dad were working or being social at church functions etc. My maternal grandfather early on had worked in the oil fields. Later, he became a U.S. Marshall, but his greatest love was being a businessman. He had operated boarding houses and restaurants that served hourly workers to big industrial operations like the cabinet plant that made cabinets for the Singer Sewing Machine Company. He provided them with a room where the workers could sleep and also be feed three home - cooked meals for a weekly sum. His rooms were always filled. My grandmother was a good cook. He also carried basic grocery items that workers could buy for their days off or holidays. The passenger trains stopped just across from the boarding house and restaurant. My two older aunts worked there in their high school days.My mom being the youngest was only 4 and she was without doubt my grandfather's baby and favorite.

During the depression, they didn't have much, but they did have food. At 17, when the war broke out, my mom moved to Detroit to live with her older sister and to baby sit while my aunt worked. It wasn't long until my mom because one of the original Rosie the Riveters at the Willow Run Airport where a Ford factory began producing B-17 bombers. She riveted a set of bolts into the wing of the B-24 Liberator aircraft.

I remember going to Detroit in the early 1950s to visit my aunt and she took mom and dad and I and one of her younger sisters out to Willow Run to see the old hanger. For a 5-year old, it made a very big impression on me. To this day being an aviation geek is just something I still get goose-bumps from.

In 1998 my mom was visiting a very dear friend who lived just outside Columbus,Ohio. My son was living in Columbus, working and going to school at Ohio State University. There was  a B-24 Liberator on display at the Madison Country Airport near Rickenbacker Field. Mom was just like a child. She couldn't wait until she could go see that plane. After 50-years, she spotted the two bolts she riveted at Willow Run all those years ago. She bought a T-shirt and put it on right on the spot. She was happy or had fulfilled an item on her Bucket List if she had one. I think she did have one. She wanted to visit Vermont but would not fly and would not take long-over-the-road trips. I once ask here how did she think that she would get there. Her replay, through the eyes of Life and Look  Magazine photographers.

So when I hear the phrase: Boots on the Ground, it has a much more crystallized meaning to me that sending troops in to fight a country's civil war.

C-1928. Mom sits on the counter.The two older girls are mom's sisters. Her brother is not photographed. The man behind the counter is my grandfather W.S.

Traditional Boots of Military Issue in past Wars.
These may have been in the Pacific Theater


12/16/18 edited to clarify some meanings.