From: Ken Kalish
Date: December 8, 2015
Subject: Dec 7
Great retelling, Forrest. You've oopened a window most people don't know exists even in their own families.
Ken
The following is somewhat of a departure from what is usually posted on this website. However, it is a good story
and perhaps helps explain Forrest Brandt's background and his reasons for becoming an officer, etc.
This is also on Forrest Brandt's Photos and Stories page but is repeated here
in order that what following may make a little more sense.
From: Bob Morecook
Date: December 9, 2015
Subject: US Army Strafed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
Hi Steve,
I remember my dad wearing those too in the early 60s. Canadians in South Vietnam wore them during the close of the war. [They were part of the Four Power group overseeing it,] They were very appropriate for the climate.
Bob M
From: John Kafka
Date: December 8, 2015
Subject: Dec 7
Forrest,
Thanks for sharing. You have something to be proud of.
From: Bob Morecook
Date: December 8, 2015
Subject: US Army Strafed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
The barracks were hit that day on Oahu, near Honolulu. Dad [Albert C. Morecock, Jr] was a Sgt in the Army then in the Finance Corps. I asked him -- "So what did you do during the attack?" (Hoping for heroics, of course.) He said, "We took cover -- our weapons were all under lock and key -- it was a Sunday morning EXCEPT the CQ had a .45 and emptied at a Japanese plane -- to no effect."
Yes -- the US Army wore pith helmets in the tropics! :-)
Best wishes, Bob M
World War Two Memories
and Past Army Summer Uniforms (Shorts)
January 2016
From: Bob Nelson
Date: December 8, 2015
Subject: Dec 7
Now that you brought it up so eloquently, I never did hear my parents (two sets). My birth dad was at the Brooklyn ship yard... My adopted dad built war planes at the Martin Plant in Middle River, Maryland.
Bob
From: Steve Sevits
Date: December 9, 2015
Subject: US Army Strafed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
In '63 all of the admirals quartered at the Rex Hotel would fly off to war in the AM in their helicopters but could be counted upon to be back for a shower and change into white shorts and knee sox in time for happy hour.
Steve
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From: Jim White
Date: December 8, 2015
Subject: US Army Strafed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
Bob,
Your being issued khaki shorts and knee socks in 1961 had nothing to do with pith helmets or tropical uniforms. The Army simply went through a phase when they thought men's knees looked sexy. I went into the reserves in 1951 and on active duty in 1953 and never had any "sech things" until around 1961. I remember I did end up with two pair of khaki shorts and some knee socks. Don't remember if they were issued or I had to buy them out of my own pocket. I do know, however, that I never wore them. Didn't want of the women around to swoon or even perhaps have heart attacks.
Jim W
From: Forrest Brandt
Sent: December 8, 2015
Subject: Greem Lt and JUSPAO
DAY OF INFAMY, 7 DECEMBER 1941
I wouldn’t be born until February of 1943, and then to parents who had been warned to not have a second child. I have no doubt I was an attempt to keep my dad out of WWII. My sister, born in in 1935, made that abundantly clear to me.
The collective stories I have heard from beer softened aunts and uncles goes like this: On December 7, 1941 my dad, Forrest, my mom, Virginia, my uncle, Clifford, my aunt, Rose, and my Uncle Bobby - then a 17 year-old bachelor - were all working in the gloom and chill of a late autumn/early winter afternoon, putting roofs on the two one-car garages that Uncle Cliff and my dad were building on Hale Avenue in what was then Van Buren Township.
Around four, with the light failing, they decided to quite working. Dad, Mom and Granddad stopped at Murphy’s Bakery in Belmont, on Dayton’s south side - why was a bakery open on Sunday in an era of strict blue laws I often ask myself, but then I wasn’t there, so this is their story - Dad bought some bread and lunchmeat - Murphy’s was more of a delicatessen than bakery - but while he was in the store he was told to turn on the radio, the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor. They listened to the radio as they drove back to my grandparents home on Bremmer St.
All five brothers, the two wives, Mom and Aunt Rose, and my sister gathered at the family table. Tears and anger poured out - that my family, sister included, has confirmed. all, they’d just climbed out of the Depression. Dayton’s factories were running full tilt to fill the needs of Britain and Russia and the boys had full salaries for the first times in their lives, and now this. The draft was sure to strike and take that all away from them.
The youngest, Bobby, baby of the family and a junior at Wilbur Wright High School, wanted to join the army on Monday. Anna - my grandmother - refused to sign his papers. Dad, Cliff and Ray were willing to late fate of the draft overtake them while they continues to work at Delco.
Bobby landed in Normandy at D + 19, with the 59th Armored Field Artillery, part of Patton’s Third Army vanguard. Uncle Cliff (75th ID) and Uncle Ray (99th ID) arrived in Rouen in November, 1944 and were sent to Bradley’s First Army on the north shoulder of what would become “The Bulge” on 16 December.
I would appear before the Selective Service Board on Third and Main in late 1942 - albeit in the belly of my mom - as my dad’s proof that he had two children, not one.
Didn’t matter, they found him suitable for service and he soon found himself as a coast artillery spotter in Adak and Attu in the Aleutians and then as an MP in Casablanca. I don’t think his sinuses survived the experience.
What I do know is that the life of the entire family was profoundly changed that day and that the ripples of that day’s event will continue as long as any of the family DNA is passed on.
Thinking of you this day: Forrest Glenn Brandt Sr, Virginia Rankin Brandt, Betty JoAnn Brandt McIntire, Clifford Brandt, Rose Stoddard Brandt, Raymond Brandt, Betty Eva Brandt Kozmar, Bill Kozmar and especially Robert “Bobby” Brandt. Awarded six Bronze Stars, one of the liberators of Dachau and Buchenwald, and a victim of PTSD long before we knew it’s name.
From: Bob Nelson
Date: December 8, 2015
Subject: US Army Strafed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
They wore them through the 50s in the tropics. I joined in 61 and was issued khaki shorts and knee socks. The supply folks had run out of pith helmets.
Bob
From: Steve Sevits
Date: December 8, 2015
Subject: US Army Strafed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
I was drafted in ’61 (then enlisted for a full three after basic) and was issued shorts and knee sox. They are nothing I’d spend money on, not at my initial $78/month. Can’t say I ever recall wearing them.
Wearing them in public would have subjected me to accusations of “indecent exposure,” I’ll never did or would win a contest for good looking anything, my legs are as fetching as the legs on an oak piano.
Somebody in supply must have had a brother-in-law in the knee sox business. Possibly another classic example of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex?
Until I learned different, I had thought a pith helmet was either a head covering issued by a supply sergeant with a speech impediment or else an appliance for use in lieu of a convenient latrine.
Steve
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From: Craif Prosser
Date: December 10, 2015
Subject: US Army Strafed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
I wore those shorts and socks at Ft. Leavenworth in 1965, my last year in the Army. Many guys in the Hq. Detachment did. Mine weren't issued. I bought them at the PX and was glad I did. They made sense in the hot Kansas summer.