THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512190095
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 13 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER PORTSMOUTH
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
Dear Mom,
Well, Christmas is over now; this makes my second away from home. I hope it's the last.
Joseph Reeves was one of many young men who yearned for home but didn't make it back in time for Christmas in 1945.
And he still has a collection of 150 letters he had written home while spending the holiday on an aviation tanker in the Philippines.
Someone managed to get hold of a fir tree and some decorations, so we had a Christmas tree. We had a pretty good dinner, but nothing exceptional. For breakfast we had beans and for supper, cold cuts.
Beans for breakfast was a Navy staple, said Reeves, who was a signalman third class in 1945.
It wasn't the only thing different about life in the military.
Winter usually brought white Christmases back home - a small town on the outskirts of Philadelphia called Erdenheim, which means ``home on earth.''
There are many years between Reeves, 69, and that home now. After the war, he earned a doctorate in social work and went into the Army. He retired as a colonel and taught at Tidewater Community College and Norfolk State University before retiring again.
Reeves lived in Portsmouth's Merrifields neighborhood for more than 20 years before moving to Bennetts Creek this year.
But Reeves spent his first Christmas away from snowy Pennsylvania in San Francisco, an 18-year-old waiting to be shipped off to war.
``We really used the USO a lot,'' he recalled. ``At Christmas, I was invited to some people's home. . . . There it was sunny, bright and warm - as good a Christmas as you can have away from home, I guess.''
At home he would have been Christmas caroling with friends from his church and spending time with his widowed mother and younger brother.
But the war was still being fought and being away from home at the holidays was a sacrifice most young men were making.
Things felt different in the Christmas of 1945, he remembered.
The war was over and it was a little harder to feel good about being away.
``The main thing was just wanting to get home,'' he said. ``Then, there was no reason to be out there.''
Yesterday we got some mail. That made everybody happier. I received your card and the letter with Billy's picture. Thanks for the money. It certainly did come at a swell time. I missed last pay day due to being in sick bay so I was pretty low. Please thank Mrs. Custis for her card if you happen to see her. She sent me a dollar.
``That was a lot of money at that time,'' Reeves said. ``People were good about writing and I wrote a lot.''
The next letter he wrote brought back another holiday memory for Reeves.
His mother had sent him a Christmas package with a cake in it. Reeves figures it must have gotten caught in one of the many monsoons that the servicemen experienced while in the Pacific during those months.
``It was soggy and it had worms in it,'' he said of the cake. ``That's the kind of thing you forget about.''
Actually, Reeves had forgotten a lot of things before reading through his letters.
``What happens without the letters or something to jog my mind is a tendency to remember all the good things rather than some of the ways you were feeling that weren't so good,'' he said.
But Reeves doesn't think he was sad really.
``We knew we were getting back,'' he said. ``I didn't have any terrible feelings of nostalgia. When you're out there for awhile, it's almost like the world back home isn't real. You're wondering and hoping one day I'll get back, but what was real was right where you were.''
But for the Christmas of 1945, Reeves' family was the crew of the USS Anacostia.
The harbor was really lit up Christmas Eve. All the ships in the harbor had their search lights and all types of running lights going. Some ships fired rockets and flares.
They have a couple of Red Cross centers and USOs in Manila that made it seem somewhat like Christmas and quite a lot of places in town were all decorated, but just the same it didn't really seem like Christmas. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Joseph Reeves, above, as he looks today and, left, in the Navy
during World War II.
by CNB