Veterans Day Tribute to Orville Kessler

Kessler.Orvilleat St. Marks Venice

Orville Kessler at St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice, Italy

My cousin posted this wonderful picture of her dad, Orville Kessler, on Facebook this week. I had never seen it before and knew it was what I wanted to post today.

We don’t have a comprehensive understanding of my great-uncle Orville’s military service (yet!), but have pieced together the following:

Orville Kessler was inducted into the Army 21 May 1942 at Ft. Des Moines, Iowa and discharged 29 December 1945 at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. He served as a cook in the 310th Medical Battalion attached to the 85th Infantry Division.

Orville’s family supplied the following information:

* Orville signed up as a non-combatant because of his deeply held Christian conviction that it would be wrong to kill anyone.
* He talked very little about his experiences in the service.
* The picture of him standing by the fountain in Italy was found folded in a book after his death. None of his family had seen it before.
* Under battles and campaigns his discharge papers list Rome Arno (22 January 1944 – 9 September 1944), Northern Apennines (10 September 1944 – 4 April 1945), and Po Valley (5 April 1945 – 8 May 1945) – all in Italy.
* He was either in The Philippines or at the Suez Canal on his way to the Pacific Theater when the war ended. (More research needed!)

Kessler.Orville.85th_Division_SSI.svg

Shoulder Sleeve Insignia of the 85th Division

The 85th Army Division was known as the “Custer Division” and, although hard to see in the photograph, it looks like Orville has the Custer Division insignia on the sleeve of his shirt.

army_cook_pin_ww2I don’t see a pin on his uniform, but the motto on this WWII Cooks and Bakers pin is certainly true: No Army Marches Far Without The Cook.

As I said, we don’t have a lot of information about his service, but from the little research I did today, I picked up a few clues as to some of what he may have experienced.

Cook.Ft. Meade2234-Plaque_xHe probably attended an Army School for Cooks and Bakers. It would be interesting to know where he received his training. His family says that Orville was very good at baking pies and cookies and an expert at oatmeal. The plaque at right, from the Fort George Meade Museum in Maryland, gives a brief glimpse into the typical curriculum.

I found a short autobiography titled “A Cook’s Experiences in World War II,” written by Joseph A. “Buck” Craton, who was a cook in the U.S. 3rd Army, 65th Infantry Division, 869th Field Artillery Battalion, Headquarters Battery. We may not think of a cook as having much engagement in “warring,” but part of his story, which takes place in Germany, shows that we would be wrong in making that assumption:

This section is about me shooting down a plane. I’ll begin by describing how we operated in a large city. Our battalion consisted of headquarters (which I was in), four batteries of artillery, and one battery of anti-aircraft. Headquarters and anti-aircraft set up in the center of town, then each of the others set up on the corners. Our mess truck was equipped with a revolving 50 cal. machine gun mounted in the roof of the cab. If enemy planes attacked, no one would fire until they were in the circle of fire. One particular day I was alone with the mess truck and was serving coffee to our sergeant major. No one else was around. Suddenly there was a squadron of M.E. 109s overhead. Well, when all our batteries opened up they were so busy trying to get out of the circle of fire, I don’t remember their firing a shot. It was at this point the sergeant major told me to use our gun. I always liked to fire those things, so I jumped in the truck and picked out a target. When you fired a large machine gun you could see the tracers and know exactly how you were doing. No one else was firing at my plane. The sergeant yelled to me, “Lead it a little more.” You could see the tracers going into the tail of the plane. I took his advice and, lo, I got him! Smoke started streaming from the plane, and suddenly I got this feeling in the pit of my stomach. I thought, “God! I have just killed a man!” But suddenly I saw the canopy fly off and I saw a parachute open and I felt good again.

And one more story from a cook serving in the 85th Mountain Infantry Regiment in the Apennines (yes – we think Orville was there) – as told by and about Cpl. John Stone:

Stone was one of about a dozen cooks in the 85th Mountain Infantry Regiment who could set up a hasty field kitchen and, within 30 minutes, serve hundreds of Soldiers in feeding lines.

The cooks ensured Soldiers had their rations for the frontlines as the division forged ahead in the Apennines. Stone said the kitchen crew, which typically set up more than five miles back, dug a hole in the ground for a field oven and then stacked sandbags around it for the stoves.

“The meals were good, hearty, meat-and-potatoes type of meals with any vegetables that were available,” he said.

Stone said U.S. units often fed the Italians fighting on the Allied side. In turn, the partisans shared their spaghetti, pizza and lasagna, and U.S. Soldiers got to enjoy a taste of the surrounding countryside.

Stone, who got to stay in the mountain village homes of a few of the families, said the partisans were simple people, just like him, wanting to protect their families, their land and their way of life.

After major battles at Riva Ridge, Mount Belvedere and Mount Gorgolesco, Soldiers returned to base camp for food and much-needed rest.

“It was good to cook the Soldiers what they liked,” Stone said. “War’s a tough row to hoe. People who love each other and take care of each other help make it a great outfit.”

The division broke out of the mountains in April 1945. On the way to Po Valley and Lake Garda, Stone and his comrades marched through many booby-trapped areas. Bombs detonated in trees, under the snow and behind rocks.

The 85th Infantry Division saw a lot of combat, and as a part of the Medical Battalion, I am sure there were many sights and sounds that Uncle Orville may have been loathe to remember. I hope this post provides some insight as to what Orville’s military service may have been like and I look forward to our family doing additional research.

A photo gallery related to medical units in WWII.

Our Family Stories: JFK – Memories from the Webber Branch

I asked all of the branches of my family to send me their memories of President Kennedy and of his death. I shared my memories in a previous post. Here are the memories I received from the Webber (my paternal grandmother) side of the family – in the order in which I received them. (I have added photos and video clips.)

Bea Webber Haskins: 
university-of-marylandI was in a large lecture hall, one of those tiered rooms, at the University of Maryland, College Park. I don’t remember what class. All of a sudden, there was a gasp from someone way up high in the back. The professor stopped and asked very sarcastically if he was interrupting someone. A girl’s voice said, very haltingly and seriously, “Oh, my God. The President. The President. He’s been shot.” In the stunned silence that followed, the professor said something like, “How do you know?” or “What are you talking about,” something like that. She held up a transistor radio and said she was sorry, but she had been listening to it during the lecture and this news Zenith_8-transistor_radio.agrwas just announced. The professor, to his credit, realized the student was not fooling around and asked her to bring her radio to the front, where he turned it up as loud as he could so we could all hear it. I don’t know if he dismissed us or if an announcement came over the P.A. system, or what, but eventually we left. Classes were cancelled and it was almost time for the Thanksgiving break. My then boyfriend, later husband, picked me up. He was not a Kennedy fan, but he was as saddened by the assassination as I was.

Photo credit: By ArnoldReinhold (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Tom Kessler:

Tom's parents - Woodrow Wilson Webber and Orville Kessler

Tom’s parents – Woodrow Wilson Webber and Orville Kessler

The election of 1960 when JFK was elected was the first one I remember.  I would have been 6 at that time, and Dad took me with him when he went to vote after work.  I have dim memories of a long voting line and feeling very excited about getting to go along. I was 9 years old and in the 4th grade in November 1963 and can remember learning about President Kennedy being killed from my teacher in school that day after lunch.  I don’t remember much about the discussion except for one boy saying that when he first heard about it he thought it was a bad joke.

riderless horse JFKcapitolNov25'63I had forgotten that the assassination was on a Friday, but that would explain why I have a sense of time sort of standing still and not going back to school until after the funeral which was on the following Monday when school was cancelled.  By that time we had a TV in the house, and I watched all the funeral coverage – including of course the iconic images of the funeral procession with the riderless horse, the flag draped casket and the Kennedy family with JFK, Jr. saluting the casket.

Wilda Morris:

Wilda's "Vava" - Myron D. Webber and Dorinda Webber (my ggrandparents)

Wilda’s “Vava” – Myron D. Webber and Dorinda Webber (my ggrandparents)

I graduated from high school in 1957 and went to American University in Washington DC to study political science. I grew up under the influence of Vava (Grandfather Webber), so of course I joined the Young Democrats (Vava named his youngest daughter Woodrow Wilson Webber; that is pretty strong evidence of his political proclivities).

In the fall of 1960, the Young Democrats succeeded in arranging for John F. Kennedy to speak briefly on campus on October 7, the same day as his second televised debate with Richard Nixon.  I was, of course, in the crowd of excited students listening to and cheering Kennedy. I was also among a small group of American U students who headed up Nebraska Avenue to WRC-TV, the NBC station where the Kennedy-Nixon debate took place. We stood along the

WRC-TV © by James G. Howes, 1962

WRC-TV © by James G. Howes, 1962

street by the driveway into the station and eagerly awaited the arrival of both candidates. Security wasn’t nearly as strict in those days as it is now. I could have reached out and touched Kennedy’s and Nixon’s cars when they arrived (though of course I didn’t). After the candidates went into the station, we returned to campus and watched the debate on the TV in the lounge of a dorm (In those days students did not have TV sets in their dorm rooms.).

The 1960 election was the first presidential election in which I was eligible to vote. After I received my absentee ballot from Johnson County, Iowa, I went with a Republican friend to vote and have our ballots notarized. If my memory is correct, we did that at the Registrar’s Office. We joked about cancelling each other out, though we were voting in different states.

There were evidently not many Iowans vying for tickets to the Kennedy inauguration. At any rate, my Congressman responded favorably to my request for a ticket. I had to pick it up at his office the day before the inauguration. On that day, eight inches of snow fell in D.C., more that DC knows how to handle! A lot of cars were abandoned, and traffic was a mess. It took longer than I expected to get to the Capitol Office Building, but I succeeded in getting my ticket. Standing on a street corner, waiting for a bus that would take me back to campus, I got very cold. I decided it would be better to walk than just stand there. I hiked the bus route, so I could catch the next bus, but it was a long time before one got through.

My roommate had two reserved-seat tickets to the inaugural parade. The temperature had dropped drastically so she decided she did not want to go. A friend (whose name I cannot recall) and I were happy to receive the tickets. My friend did not have a ticket to the inauguration itself, but she stuck close to me. Whenever I had to show my ticket to go through a gate, she just followed me in. No one stopped her. My ticket was for a standing-room section—we had to stand through the whole ceremony, including the new president’s speech. But we were so happy to be there that we didn’t complain. The standing room area was pretty crowded, which helped keep us warm.

After the ceremony, my friend and I walked up Pennsylvania to find our seats. We were quite fortunate, for the seats were in front of the US Treasury Building, just east of the White House. As the parade approached our seats, every act came alive. The bands began to play their best songs. Everything designed for the delight of the new president and his family happened within our view. With our coats buttoned up, our scarves tied tightly, gloved hands in our pockets, and our legs wrapped in blankets, we stayed through the entire parade.

I graduated from American University in 1961, but stayed in DC for the summer, working fulltime in the Registrar’s Office. I met Edgar Morris briefly on the last Monday evening of the summer—shortly before we both started graduate school at the University of Illinois. After we were married on August 31, 1963, we moved to College Park, Maryland, because Ed had a job at the National Bureau of Standards. As a result, we were back in the Washington area at the time of the assassination of President Kennedy. I was at home, straightening up the apartment and listening to the radio when I heard the terrible news. I called Ed at work to tell him, but I think he had heard the news there. I remember the radio playing mournful music between updates. The Bureau of Standards closed and Ed came home early. This was the first big shared sorrow of our married life.

caisson_bearing_the_flag-draped_casket_of_President_John_F._Kennedy_leaving_the_White_House..._-_NARA_-_200455Ed and I went to DC to watch the procession that transferred the President’s body from the White House to the Capitol Building. We had the sense that we were witnessing a tragic piece of history as the riderless horse passed by.

Howard and Sue Rees who worked with Baptist students in the DC area knew we were pretty distraught by the president’s death. They also knew we didn’t own a TV, so they invited us to their home to watch the funeral with their family. Had it been just me, I might have gone downtown in hopes of seeing some of the world leaders who came for the funeral. Some of our friends from Calvary Baptist Church did go to the vicinity of Saint Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church, and saw Charles de Gaulle and Haile Selassie, as well as others who attended the service. We only saw them on TV.

I lost some of my naiveté and some of my optimism when Kennedy was assassinated. Before the assassination, I don’t think I believed things like that still happened—they were part of history but not the present. Would that it were so!

Yvonne Addis:
Yvonne's Grandmother n- Dorinda Webber

Yvonne’s Grandmother Dorinda Webber

On that November 22, I was at my sorority house in Iowa City eating lunch in the dining room downstairs when our house mother came into the doorway and said, “Girls, the president has been shot.”  It is a freeze-frame moment for me.  We all went up to her apartment and huddled around the TV. Another memory I have is that soon after he was killed, I took my Grandmother Webber for a ride in our car.  I remember her weeping and saying, “It’s like losing a member of the family.”
P.S. It’s not too late to share your memories, Webber (or any other branch) family. I’ll just add them on.
And any other readers – please share your memories too!
2013.11W.11I’m linking this to Sepia Saturday as it fits the prompt theme for today.
Please feel free to read my personal memories of JFK here and my memories of the space shuttle Challenger disaster here.
But, my all means, see what others are sharing at Sepia Saturday!

Sepia Saturday – Christmas Weddings

Sepia Saturday provides bloggers with an opportunity to share their history through the medium of photographs. Historical photographs of any age or kind become the launchpad for explorations of family history, local history and social history in fact or fiction, poetry or prose, words or further images.

I’m glad that Sepia Saturday is “come-as-you-can” during the holidays as there are a couple of Christmas Day wedding anniversaries I had hoped to recognize but missed the day.

First is the 115th anniversary of the marriage of my paternal great-grandparents on Christmas Day 1897.

Wedding of Myron David Webber to Dorinda Rebecca Strange

Myron David Webber and Dorinda Rebecca Strange were married in the home of her parents, John Sylvester Strange and Susan Nancy Hendrickson, in Lincoln, Kansas. Unfortunately I don’t know who stood with them in the photo.

Myron and Dorinda had a large family of nine children – some of whom I have introduced previously:
John Norman
Abbie Elizabeth (my grandmother – she’s mentioned numerous times here!)
Aaron Ferrel
Geraldine Hattie
Fred Myron
Norrine Belle
Lottie Susan
Dora Ersel
Woodrow Wilson

M. D. and Dorinda celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary at First Baptist Church in Iowa City, Iowa in 1947.

Aaron, Margaret, M. D., Dorinda, and Fred Webber

In my grandmother’s photo album I found a picture of some flowers sent for the celebration and of a “wedding cake” – which I assume was also a part of the anniversary festivities.

             

Fifty-five years after the marriage of her parents, Woodye (Woodrow Wilson Webber) married the love of her life, Orville Kessler, on Christmas Day 1952.

Woodye had two children from a previous marriage and she and Orville had three more, but all were Orville’s children. The adoptions took place when the older girls were no longer girls, but quite grown up – a joyous occasion! I don’t have a picture of their wedding, but their daughter Wilda supplied me with these pictures from Woodye and Orville’s 55th wedding anniversary.

Wilda said in her email: “The bells in the 2nd photo are from our grandparents 50th anniversary and if my memory is correct were hung for Mother and Dad’s wedding, Dorinda’s and mine.”

And to bring this full circle, I’ll end with a poem written by Woodye’s and Orville’s daughter, Wilda. The poem evokes a memory of her grandfather, Myron David Webber, on a Christmas morning.

Gift

Rising early,
Grandfather stoked the ashes
of yesterday’s fire,
added fresh coal,
our first gift
on Christmas morning.

by Wilda Morris
From Secret Place (Nov. 1998 – Jan. 1999).
Used with the author’s permission.

If you would like to see more holiday stories from sepia images, visit Sepia Saturday.