The Raymonds of Cambridge – 100 Years
 

 

Chapter 7: 1940-1949, World War II and Robert R. Raymond’s Last Years

 

 

     The 1930s likely brought back some fleeting memories for older readers, but the war years that followed should elicit more, what with air raid test sirens and nighttime blackouts, airplane silhouette poster cards and War Bond stamps, gasoline, metal and plastics rationing defining the days and nights of Cambridge in the 1940s. At the half-century mark in the 1990s, we looked back to the Second World War in great detail through research and literature, film and other media, and we still do as the ranks of WWII veterans rapidly thin. That war resulted in lives lost and devastation on a scale not seen before, two wars actually, theatres east and west. Victory would come at the hands of heroic men (and boys) on the front, at sea, in the air, and women in far off field hospitals and depots, fearless women pilots ferrying aircraft high over oceans to distant flight lines, strong women working long hours in war factories. Including quite a few who called Cambridge home, they served to liberate hundreds of millions around the globe from tyranny and oppression.

     Hitler invaded Poland in September, 1939, and England, unable to stand by, declared war on Germany as it swept across Europe in all directions. In May, 1940, 300,000 Allied troops were secured across the English Channel from Dunkirk, yet by autumn London was under siege from Nazi V1 buzz-bombs; V2s seemed only a matter of time. The Royal Air Force, American pilots among them, would save the day by keeping the Nazis from the British Isles. In late 1941, Japan signed a pact with the Axis, Italy included. How many German, Italian, and Japanese descendants in America found themselves at odds with kin, distant, even close?

     For a time, life went on as usual in upstate New York and across the nation. In the winter of 1940, Robert and Blossom boarded a train for the West Coast, to see daughter Clara and family, Dr. Paul Spangler and four grandchildren in Portland; they returned with the spring thaw. In late August, after three years at Schofield Barracks on Oahu, Capt. Charles W. Raymond II, wife and toddler, sailed for the mainland under the Golden Gate, and took a Pullman to Denver, en route to a stateside assignment. Rob and Blos were also visiting the mile-high city, attending the Annual Convention of the Episcopal Church as delegates. The extended family gathered at the home of daughter Virginia and Capt. Chester Ott, stationed at nearby Fort Logan. Charles, an expecting Anita, and Charlsie joined the celebration of Blossom’s 64th birthday on October 3rd. The next day, October 4, 1940, Bobby Raymond arrived at Denver’s Fitzsimons Army Hospital.

Training for War

     America stood on the sidelines at first, offering Lend-Lease materiel to our friends across the pond. But when things heated up, the ranks and files of what became known as the Greatest Generation soon filled the divisions and fleets of the Allied forces, including a good number from the Cambridge District. These were the folks that Robert and Blossom passed on the street, stood with in grocery lines and at the post office, folks who cheered on the gridiron and hoop teams of Cambridge Union.  Cambridge historian-emeritus Dave Thornton published a booklet in 1997, “Christmas 1940”, with a roll-call from the clippings of the old Washington County Post. Far removed from the Owlkill and facing a harrowing, uncertain future, they served, some died, to turn the tide of war in favor of the free.  Familiar names off to combat training that holiday season—infantry at Ft. Benning, GA, flight school in San Antonio, TX, officer’s training at Fort Riley, KS, infantry at Fort Ord, CA—included Army 2nd Lt. Paul Austin, Navy Lt. j.g. Robert Holmes, Army Air Forces Cadet Milton Keyes, and Army pilot trainees Purcell and Toby Herrington.  Also, Army Air Cadet Donald Starbuck, Army Capt. Frank Henry, Navy Lt. Cdr. Burton Lake, medic Theodore Decker of the Army Medical Corps, and Army Capt. Sam Lansing. Other Cambridge notables were Gardner Cullinan, called up from the VT National Guard to serve in Europe in Intelligence—later he’d edit the old WCP, was Mayor of Cambridge, and Supt. at Mary McClellan. Tink Parish, ROTC at Cornell that Christmas, would receive a Silver Star for combat valor and two Purple Hearts for severe wounds—after the War you bought hammers and nails from him at Cambridge Lumber. Two other village patriots would become Cambridge historians of note: Lt. Amos Moscrip and Richard Wilson.

     Also mustering in for service were three Raymond sons, four Burlingame grandsons, and an Ott son-in-law. At Christmastide 1940, Field Artillery Maj. Robert R. (Bob) Raymond, Jr. (USMA 1919) trained at Ft. Bragg, GA; 1st Lt. Richard (Dick) Raymond was serving with the British Purchasing Agency in Brooklyn; Field Artillery Capt. Charles W. (Charley) Raymond II (USMA 1931) directed howitzer fire at Camp Custer, MI; and Capt. Chester W. Ott (USMA 1931) drilled with the Army Corps of Engineers in Oregon. Within the year, the training ended and would quickly be tested under fire.  

The Day of Infamy

     Dateline: Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Fixed in history, the fiery event, Sunday morning murder, ordered America into a righteous fight (see Augustinian Just War Theory.) Clara and family, present in Honolulu, were physically unscathed but forever shaken as direct witnesses. Dr. Spangler had left his practice in Portland to join the U.S. Navy Medical Corps with orders to the Islands. On duty that fateful morning at Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital, he was the first surgeon in the O.R.

     By early 1942, the Allies waged war on several fronts in the Atlantic, North Africa, the Pacific. Within the year and into 1944, operations would extend into Italy and across Europe, as Robert and Charles Raymond received their battle orders. Charley sailed to Iceland in early ’42, joined the 34th Infantry Division (Red Bulls) in Northern Ireland and assumed command of the 185th Field Artillery Battalion. Beaching in North Africa, he’d direct batteries of 155mm howitzers, “Long Toms.” After Patton’s tanks had scattered Rommel’s across the desert sands, the 185th would add to Nazi woes.  

     By the summer of ’44, after the Navy and Army Air Forces had softened up Germany’s “Atlantic Fortress”, and following the brutal landings at Utah and Omaha beaches (American), Gold (British), Juno (Canadian), and Sword (British), Chester Ott’s engineers were ashore for the breakout into the hedgerows, laying down critical pontoon bridges across the swampy terrain as Yanks, Brits and Canucks massed, coordinated and shattered the Germans, liberated the French, and entered Paris.

The Burlingame Band of Brothers   

     In 1940, Robert’s eldest grandsons, young adults, were dealt the news of their father Cris’ death (Cris Burlingame, USMA 1912.)  With the nation on the verge of war and, although not West Pointers themselves, the Academy motto “Duty, Honor, Country” flowed through their veins, so they each stepped up.

     John, the eldest at 22, enlisted as an Army private in the Coast Artillery Corps, his father’s unit. But he qualified for flight training and received his wings as bomber pilot in the Army Air Forces. In late 1944, leaving Albany Airport, Lt. John Burlingame buzzed his B-25 Mitchell over Cambridge with family members waving from the ground. En route to the European Theatre, he’d engage in the Battle of Monte Cassino and make the requisite 50 missions to rotate home.  He retired in 1949 as a Lt. Colonel in the newly chartered USAF.

     Alfred, 20, an aspiring sports writer when the War broke out, enlisted in the Army and rose to sergeant. Afterward, Fred’s writings for church athletics journals led him to the seminary and Holy Orders.  Robert would have relished the news that a grandson would become an Episcopal priest (two decades later.)

     Edwin was 18 when he enlisted in the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion, then assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. This combat engineer group was activated in August 1942 with the nation fully engaged. After training, the “Screaming Eagles” dropped into Normandy with the historic airborne assault and drove into Holland. The stand at Bastogne that Christmas, the frozen Battle of the Bulge, turned the European theatre; Hitler’s army stalled before reaching the North Sea in a failed bid to slice the Allies in two.

     Bob was 16 when his father died and he joined the Navy in 1941 for a six-year hitch. He served in the Pacific as Signalman 2nd Class aboard Merchant Marine freighters with munitions bound for the U.S. Fleet. The family believes that the only grace of God directed his transfer from a ship out of Long Beach that went down with many hands lost.  Bob later served in the North Atlantic, his ship running interference against U-boats. After the War, he was assigned to the heavy cruiser USS New Orleans in Philadelphia, and on weekend passes he visited Cambridge and his mother, Katherine, at home on Academy Street until mustering out in 1947. Bob returned for good and graduated from CCS in 1948, where he met and married Nancy Knights. They were married at St. Luke’s in 1949.

As Robert Last Knew Them

     Through the early 1940s, Robert and Blossom found comfort in the younger grandchildren present in Cambridge with their fathers away at war. Waiting for their heroes to return, the Charles Raymonds and Chester Otts rented homes near the 120 West Main Street home; the Richard Raymonds also visited frequently. Updates from overseas arrived in letters (censored) and V-Grams, over the airwaves of WGY-AM, Schenectady, and in the local press. During the Battle of Britain, Robert’s Philco radio would announce “This is London”, the classic intonations of Edward R. Morrow. In the New York Times, a trusted icon of balanced journalism then, Robert cherished reports from the likes of Ernie Pyle, a civilian patriot who, nevertheless, gave his last in battle. Retired Colonel Raymond understood why details of live operations were limited. Was he aware of the new radar and sonar technologies turning the war in favor of the Allies? Perhaps. Did he know of the Manhattan Project, our critical race to beat the Germans to atomic critical mass? Surely not. He did know that he had no need to know what his generals and admirals were up to, which trumped whatever rights he might claim at the moment. He trusted the younger Academy grads to plan, execute, and win the war without kibitzing from the sidelines, naïve appeasers, bleating voices from faculty lounges and the like. Robert’s own were locked in mortal combat as telegrams arrived daily across America from the front. The Raymonds, all of Cambridge, held breaths with unannounced knocks at the door. Robert didn’t mince words for his disdain for Nazi sympathizers in their midst: it’s said a Vermont ski resort designed its runs to resemble large arrows pointing to NYC.  Robert would offer only a courteous yet curt “No comment” for Asian eyes and ears railroaded off to desert camps. “Thank your Emperor, the Fuhrer.” And after the 1937 release of Disney’s Snow White, kids sang: “Whistle while you work, Hitler is a jerk, Mussolini is a meanie, Hirohito’s worse.”

     Robert didn’t live to see the tide turn by mid-1944 with the Normandy Invasion, executed brilliantly by fellow West Pointer, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower (USMA 1915). Nor the total liberation of France and the Lowlands, or the successes in the Pacific.  Only through the guts and glory of the American G.I., of our British, Canadian, Australian/New Zealand, and other Allies did VE and VJ arrive in mid-1945. Charles arrived stateside from Italy in early ’45, his troop transport barely missing a U-boat torpedo off Norfolk. With the War thought to run longer, he had tentative orders for the Pacific in early 1946 for the planned invasion of Japan.  At the end of 1945, though, with the world at peace, he was directed to West Point as Executive Officer of Troops. (This scribe, one of the very first Boomers, arrived by stork at the post hospital in April, 1946.)

     After Robert’s death in early 1944, and that of FDR a year later, after years of Axis-born horrors, gas chambers and stalags later revealed, the Allies firebombed Dresden, then released two sun bombs over Japan, both easily argued as moral and ethical acts by saving countless lives. Justice served to the Axis, let the War Crimes Trials begin.  

 Robert Rossiter Raymond, 1871-1944

     Robert died of heart failure January 18, 1944, in Cambridge, aged 73. His male ancestors had also lived into their 70s, yet with modern medicine and health education, he might have made it to his eighties, nineties. The stress of war, his kin in harm’s way, surely weighed heavily. Robert was laid to rest at West Point with military honors, a color guard and readings from Scripture, the 21-gun salute, the teary farewell with Taps. Old Glory, draped over his casket, was presented to his widow, Mrs. Blossom King Raymond. Seen here in the summer of 1943, it’s one of his last photos.

     Robert R. Raymond left seven children and fifteen grandchildren, the older boys still at war.  He knew of his first great-grandchild but departed this life before his last two grandsons and more great-grandchildren entered “The Grand Army of the Family Raymond.”  Through his life, Robert embraced the traditions, rich, powerful, spiritual, of the United States Army, a legacy traced to 1775 and George Washington’s Continentals. The only standing army in the world, then as now, it defends, not a fatherland, not a monarch, potentate, or dictator, but an ideal, one where the people are sovereign. For over two centuries, the U.S. Army, with the other branches, has been America’s, the world’s, leading platform for stability and order. And for honest Americans who understand threats, foreign and domestic (ignorant, cynical pundits aside), the Army is also an endearing enterprise founded in the virtue of Holy Scripture as availed to the troops by the Chaplains Corps. “West Point prays for peace and prepares for war.”

     At the War’s end in 1945, and through the rest of the decade and into the next, life in America and with the Robert R. Raymonds of Cambridge began to boom with babies, with Buicks and Chevys from reworked assembly lines, and with Buck Rogers and Roy Rogers at Saturday morning matinees. Yet tempered, soberly, with the birth of the Atomic Age.

Next Time - Chapter 8: 1950-1972, Robert’s Baby Boomers Frequent 120 West Main Street.