A Girl's Memory
Collection: Mary Carttar Hartley
Title
A Girl's Memory
Subject
Mary Carttar Hartley
Description
A young girl's reminiscences about growing up in Winfield, Kansas during World War 2
Creator
Mary Carttar Hartley
Source
Winfield Public Library
Publisher
Winfield Public Library, Winfield, Kansas USA
Date
ca 2000
Rights
Format
application/pdf
Language
English
Type
Narratives
Citation
Mary Carttar Hartley, “A Girl's Memory,” Winfield Digital Collections, accessed April 29, 2024, https://winfield.digitalsckls.info/item/67.
Text
A GIRL'S MEMORY
My generation's memories usually begin with wartime memories. All of us were conscious of the war, but its importance was based on how close we were to its consequences. Some of us had fathers away fighting and others, like me, had brothers in the war. I well remember the Christmas of 1944. We had just moved to Winfield in the summer. In our home, the overriding thought was of my brother who my parents felt must surely be fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. I frequently walked into the kitchen and found my mother silently weeping into the kitchen sink or just staring out the window not appearing to see anything in front of her. At school boys decorated their arithmetic papers with fighter planes shooting bullets that traced across the tops of the papers. Those wartime memories are vivid, but I was still young enough to find it all quite exciting. Until my cousin was killed in Italy I don't think I realized how serious war could be and I had no idea what was happening to the people who were living in the midst of the chaos.
It was after the war was over and the rebuilding began that I began to have a feel for the human toll. In school we put together CARE packages for children who had survived. The pictures of the devastation and the places people were trying to live were heart wrenching, even for an 11 year old. In Girl Scouts we gathered coats to send to Hungary. I remember helping my mother gather up my outgrown coats. She took them to the dry cleaners and we made sure all the buttons were sewn on and the linings were not torn. It was suggested to us that we could put our names and addresses in the coat pockets and perhaps we would hear from the person who received our coat.
I sent a gray coat I'd had the year before and I put my name in the pocket. Months later I received a letter from a girl in Hungary and we started a correspondence that lasted for several months, perhaps even as long as a year. It was so exciting hearing from this girl and I eagerly watched the mail for envelopes with her distinctive handwriting. Then, the letters stopped coming. Gradually, I realized I wasn't going to receive any more letters from her. It was several years before I realized her silence came when the Iron Curtain fell over Eastern Europe. The letters are in my crumbling scrapbook. I take them out now and then. I read them and I wonder what happened to that girl.
Mary Carttar Hartley
Original Format
Paper
Title
A Girl's Memory
Subject
Mary Carttar Hartley
Description
A young girl's reminiscences about growing up in Winfield, Kansas during World War 2
Creator
Mary Carttar Hartley
Source
Winfield Public Library
Publisher
Winfield Public Library, Winfield, Kansas USA
Date
ca 2000
Rights
Format
application/pdf
Language
English
Type
Narratives
Citation
Mary Carttar Hartley, “A Girl's Memory,” Winfield Digital Collections, accessed April 29, 2024, https://winfield.digitalsckls.info/item/67.Text
A GIRL'S MEMORY
My generation's memories usually begin with wartime memories. All of us were conscious of the war, but its importance was based on how close we were to its consequences. Some of us had fathers away fighting and others, like me, had brothers in the war. I well remember the Christmas of 1944. We had just moved to Winfield in the summer. In our home, the overriding thought was of my brother who my parents felt must surely be fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. I frequently walked into the kitchen and found my mother silently weeping into the kitchen sink or just staring out the window not appearing to see anything in front of her. At school boys decorated their arithmetic papers with fighter planes shooting bullets that traced across the tops of the papers. Those wartime memories are vivid, but I was still young enough to find it all quite exciting. Until my cousin was killed in Italy I don't think I realized how serious war could be and I had no idea what was happening to the people who were living in the midst of the chaos.
It was after the war was over and the rebuilding began that I began to have a feel for the human toll. In school we put together CARE packages for children who had survived. The pictures of the devastation and the places people were trying to live were heart wrenching, even for an 11 year old. In Girl Scouts we gathered coats to send to Hungary. I remember helping my mother gather up my outgrown coats. She took them to the dry cleaners and we made sure all the buttons were sewn on and the linings were not torn. It was suggested to us that we could put our names and addresses in the coat pockets and perhaps we would hear from the person who received our coat.
I sent a gray coat I'd had the year before and I put my name in the pocket. Months later I received a letter from a girl in Hungary and we started a correspondence that lasted for several months, perhaps even as long as a year. It was so exciting hearing from this girl and I eagerly watched the mail for envelopes with her distinctive handwriting. Then, the letters stopped coming. Gradually, I realized I wasn't going to receive any more letters from her. It was several years before I realized her silence came when the Iron Curtain fell over Eastern Europe. The letters are in my crumbling scrapbook. I take them out now and then. I read them and I wonder what happened to that girl.
Mary Carttar Hartley
Original Format
Paper