© 2021 Patricia Jean Patten Evans
All rights reserved
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Dutchie Darling . . . Love, Bob |
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| A Love Story © 2021 Patricia Jean Patten Evans All rights reserved |
| When he gets to Fort Breckinridge, he is assigned to the 75th Infantry, 191st Company G. This Infantry Division, made up of many former ASTPers, would go on to fight hard and make a difference in the European Theater.
Bamp is John E Little, Charlotte's father and Jean's grandfather. He lived in Webster, NH on a small farm. The Little family had lived in Webster, NH since before the Revolutionary War. I remember Bamp from when I was a child. He died about the time I was 8 or 9. He would often come to stay a few days with us. My sister, Dotty, loved to play with him. She would tie a scarf around his head and call him Jane. She also liked to spit on his bald head and shine it. When my mother, Jean, was in college, Bamp wrote to her every week and always signed his letters the same way—" Remember, buy ATT and vote Republican, Your Grandfather, John E. Little." Uncle Gene was Jean's uncle by marriage. He married Charlotte's mother's sister, Aunt Lottie. Uncle Gene was quite wealthy and he paid for Jean to go to college. When she graduated in 1942, he took her on a trip across the country by train. They went all the way to Juneau, Alaska, where she saw the glaciers. In June of 1944, Jean went to join Bob in Kentucky. Bill Patten, Bob's dad, accompanied her and made sure that she had a place to stay, before he went back to Trenton, NJ. They came by train from Boston to Kentucky. While Jean was there with Bob, she became pregnant. Poor Bob would work all day, which meant lots of marches with his unit, and then he would walk the 2.5 miles to Waverly, where she was staying. He would grab a few hours sleep and then walk back to the base to be there for morning call. I remember Mom and Gram telling stories that Dad learned to sleep on his feet and keep marching. His friends would link arms with him and he could keep his feet moving, while he closed his eyes and slept. Although, I am sure, he hated to have her leave him to go back to Boston, in many ways he must have been relieved. When he got his furlough, they both went back on the train to Boston. This eight weeks that they lived together in one room, with no running water or air conditioning, would be the longest they were together until 1946, after the war and after Patty was born. On an envelope in fall of 1944, Jean has written some names and then countries beside them. She and Bob worked out a code, so that he could tell her where he was. There were censors, who had to read every letter from a serviceman before it could be sent to be sure that the soldier wasn't giving away any important war related information. Bob and Jean had worked out a way that he could tell her where he was headed without alerting the censors. |