That Happy New Year Ahead
Looks Like Just Another 12
Months of War and Wishing
With her husband and his daddy on the battlefront in Germany, |
By Frances Jordan
Courier Staff Writer
“Happy New Year” – without an exclamation mark.
It’s hard to imagine where in the world you’d find an exclamation mark to such a greeting in the wake of 1944. Happy 1945.
Fourth year of the war – that’s all you have to say.
It’s to be the fourth year to expect another few thousand fellows you knew and didn’t know, but liked anyway, to turn up missing or lying inert in their own blood.
It’s the fourth year to keep terribly busy so it won’t prey on your sanity to wait for a telegram, hoping to God it won’t come.
It’s the fourth year to keep buying bonds you know will be a loan for a purchase of a few more deaths.
It’s the fourth year to roll bandages at Red Cross headquarters, to write V-mail letters, to appeal for army and navy relief funds and contribute to them yourself, to read headlines you can’t possibly comprehend.
It’s the fourth year to be only and feel like two-cents because you can’t seem to do any more than Roosevelt or Churchill or Stalin or the Almighty Himself to wave a wand over the whole globe and say, “Go home and bleed no more.”
It’s the fourth year to sit at home and wish and wish and wish.
You wish because you hope. And hope’s the last that remains when nothing else is left.
Source: Waterloo Daily Courier, Waterloo, Iowa, Sunday, December 31, 1944, Section 2, Page 19 (includes mother/son photo)
Crew Killed Fighting in Germany
Pfc. Maurice Crew, 32, resident of Waterloo almost his entire life and former city manager of Tri-States theaters, was killed in action in Germany on Feb. 5, according to a war department telegram received Tuesday morning by his wife and son, Gary 7, of 1203 Commercial street.
Private Crew entered the army on Mar. 15, 1944, and received basic infantry training at Camp Roberts, Cal. In September, 1944, he went overseas, arriving in Germany in November. When he entered service his wife and son moved from their home at 309 Bertch avenue, into the home of her grandmother, Mrs. Sarah E. Mueller.
Born Sept. 13, 1912, in Waterloo, he was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Z. Crew. His father died during his last furlough at home before going overseas in August, 1944. His mother lives at Vinton, Ia.
After graduation from West high school he worked at the Paramount theater here, and later was employed at a Des Moines theater. He returned to Waterloo five years ago as manager of the Strand theater, and in May, 1943, he was named city manager of the Strand and Paramount theaters.
He was a member of Waterloo Lions club and the Elks club.
Surviving, in addition to his wife, son and mother, are two brothers, Capt. Newlin Crew, stationed at Ft. Riley, Kan., and three sisters, Janet, Betty and Lenore, all at home.
Source: Waterloo Daily Courier, Waterloo, Iowa, Friday, February 20, 1945 (includes photo)
Maurice Zelotus Crew was born Sept. 13, 1912 to Calvin Z. and Bertha E. Wagner Crew. He died Feb. 5, 1945 and is buried in Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery, Hombourg, Belgium. He has a cenotaph in Evergreen Cemetery, Vinton, IA.
Pvt. Crew served in World War II with the U.S. Army 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division and was awarded the Purple Heart.
Sources: ancestry.com; abmc.gov
