My father was born John Maurer Wilson on November 20, 1918, taking his middle name from my grandmother’s maiden name. He informally changed his name to his nickname, Jack, and never used John – even on official documents.  His father, RaymondWilson, died very young.  Olive Maurer Wilson remarried to Mr. Cappe  who died while my father was still in school.   They lived on Scott Avenue in Glenshaw and my father attended Dehaven Elementary School and then Shaler High School, just as I did three decades later.  After his step father died, his mother Ollie and two widowed aunts, Nora Ballard and Myrtle Schopper raised him and his younger brother Ray jointly.  For many years Dad was the “man of the family” and the three sisters treated him just that way.   They doted on him.

When they were in their 80’s they still served Dad as if he was the patriarch (I guess he was!) of the family.  Dad never had to fill his own coffee cup or wash a dish.  There was always one of the three of them ready willing and able to do so.  I was particularly annoyed when my father would lift his empty cup and look at the bottom.   Eighty some year old Aunt Myrt would struggle to her feet, grab her walker, make her way to kitchen, get the coffee pot and return to fill his cup.  One day I was infuriated and mentioned this to my mother.  She cautioned me not to say a word.  This was Aunt Myrt’s life.  If I took that away from her she might feel that there was no reason to go on.  As crazy as it sounded, I knew that mom was right.

My dad and my mother married in 1942 and then he entered Army.  He fought in North Africa for General Mark Clark as a Technical Sergeant in charge of the motor pool.  The African campaign was his introduction to war, but his role went relatively smoothly in this campaign.

That changed dramatically when he was assigned to the Anzioinvasion.  The plan was for him and his mechanics to follow in a later wave of the invasion after the infantry had secured an ample beachhead.  The problem with that plan was that the first wave was annihilated in the water and on the beach.  He found himself being handed a rifle and sent ashore into Anzio beach as part of second wave.  Wading through the bodies of the first troops, he and his mates managed to gain the beach safely, but got pinned down there under withering fire.  They held their ground and dug in on the beach, but the foxhole was lower than the water table and kept filling with water.  After suffering through a couple of days in the wet foxhole, he spied a bale of straw in a farmer’s field not far from where he was dug in.   One night, when the firing was quiet, he crawled out of the hole and into the farmer’s field to drag back the straw.   Then he used his helmet to bail out the water and lined the foxhole with straw.  As he jumped down into the hole he felt the water that had seeped right back in again, and jumped up cursing and throwing down his helmet.   A stream of machinegun fire encouraged him to get back into the hole, wet or not.  This time on the beach would eventually lead to trench foot – a disease that would eventually require him to be shipped back stateside for hospitalization.

However, this was not the time that he could leave.  Eventually they fought their way off beach and got onto a farm on dry land.  He and his buddies decided to “liberate” a pig that they found abandoned on the farm and cooked and ate it. It was their first real food in a long time.  Their reward for their efforts was that they all got food poisoning.

He also loved to tell the story of one of his friends who tried to get a date with an Italian girl and finally got her to agree to go to a movie with him. To his dismay, her father joined them on the date!  My father ribbed him mercilessly.

Eventually my father was sent stateside to Camp Atterbury in Indiana for treatment.  I was born in the Camp Atterbury hospital 9 months later.  My mother had gone there to join him at the hospital and apparently he was in better shape than many thought!

My mother tells the story of my birth in Camp Atterbury Hospital.  In June of 1945, the war was winding down and doctors were returning from the European theater.  They had spent the war treating the wounded and had little experience in delivering babies.  According to my mother, one of the doctors opened the army manual on “How to Deliver a Baby” and read to the second doctor who delivered me according to the instructions.  My mother then was given the army manual on how to raise a baby.  I often claim that I was raised according to “Colonel Spock” rather than “Doctor Spock!”

I feel that this story allows me lay claim to being the first baby of the baby boom.  If one defines the baby boom as being the children of returning soldiers, then I was surely one of the earliest.

Although my father was still a sergeant, he had far more experience than most of the personnel at the hospital.  As the war was now winding down, they had to convert the camp into a center for reprocessing.  The base commander was very impressed with my father and made him his chief of staff –giving him major responsibility for running the base and making it into a major center for mustering out soldiers as they returned at the end of WWII.