2024 #52Ancestors #Week17 The War at Home

Back: Dorothy, Peter Winkel, Dave, Carole

Front: Dennis, Elsie, unknown ladies (likely Elsie’s sister Bertha and Carole’s mother)

Small children are Dave and Carole’s Dianne and David Jr.

Unknown Cousin

So much space has been devoted to our country, and my family's many veterans of many wars. I am the wife of a veteran, and I'd like to devote a little space to the war at home.

I've found a few clippings re: the war effort in Sioux County during World War I:

Mondag 8 April. … Miss Mary Winkel (list of several women covering shifts for week).

- Red Cross Com. - April 3, 1918


Mrs. D. Ten Kley has already knitted 36 pairs of socks for the Red Cross. -

Nieuwsblad June 26, 1918


I've written before about the difficulty that must have concerned and confused immigrants who still had siblings, nieces and nephews in the Netherlands. I don't have surviving letters, but there are a few from around the turn of the century, and certainly there must have been some trepidation in waiting for the news in the papers.

As for World War II, many mothers, my great-grandmother included, watched and waited as their sons went off to Europe and the Pacific Theater, supported their daughters whose husbands were gone, and helped to care for grandchildren, to say nothing of maintaining Victory Gardens and running a household during rationing. Elsie and Peter Winkel loaded their Packard and drove from Iowa to Washington State to see their son (Dave, I believe. He was in the Navy, but Dick was in Seattle for a time). I would hazard a guess that family members donated their gas rations for this trip. My own dad recalls having to donate rubber from a variety of sources including tricycle and bicycle tires.

In June 1943, my great uncle Dick was home for a short while on furlough, and a month later a note appeared listing his APO at Fort Robinson in Arkansas. I don't know if Grandma had been able to see her brother during his furlough as she was in Ohio, married on the same day Dick's address clipping ran in their hometown paper. That same summer, Dorothy had remarried and moved to northern MN, so that all 4 Winkel children were away from home.

Additionally, while war was raging, Aunt Mary lost her 17 year old son who had been born with severe disability, while she was also attendinhg her ailing father, whom the family mourned the loss of in Dec 1944. Their patriarch was gone, and his namesake grandson was still away.

Ultimately, my 2 great uncles Dick (married to Mary) and Dave (Carole) made it home to Sioux City after the war, and before the death of their mother the following spring. When my grandma and grandpa returned to Iowa, they had agreed to visit and to begin a new life in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dorothy and her new husband and Dennis, nearly 10 when the war ended, remained in Duluth.