Helping The War Effort

During the last week of school in June 1942, a large army truck arrived at our country school.
The two young soldiers unloaded two big bales of jute bags and dragged them right up the steps and into the school. Their appearance seemed to fluster Miss Davis, our 1st year teacher who was not used to dealing with brash young men like these. They took right over and explained to us kids that they were enlisting all of us to help out with the war effort and even better, we would be paid for our work. They then handed Miss Davis some papers and left as quickly as they had arrived.

After studying the papers for a minute or so, Miss Davis enlisted some of the big boys to haul the bales into the library room, out of sight. Curiosity had us all on the edge of our seats, but the teacher told us we would have to wait until the last day of school on Friday to find out more.

You can imagine how excited we were by Friday. Finally, just before we were dismissed for the year, she had the bags dragged back out to the front of the classroom. She told us our
contribution to the war effort was to provide the materials to make synthetic rubber tires for the army and also life preservers for the navy! To our amazement, the army wanted us to pick MILKWEED, leaves (for the milk) for the tires and seed fluff for life preservers ( I think they called the fluff Kapoc). Furthermore they would pay us .08 cents a pound for leaves and .18 cents for fluff!

Since we all lived on farms, and all the farm pastures were full of an endless supply of milkweed, we had pictures of being rich when we cashed in next September. Everyone took several of the huge bags and the instruction sheet. (the report cards we had just received were largely ignored)

It turned out that this project had to be put on hold until August when the seed pods were ripe. They had to be picked first and at just the right time so the fluff was fluffy, but had not blown away. The leaves were to be picked later.

I figured the trick was to pick the pods a little early, take them home and let them dry before breaking them open. This way none would escape on the wind. My disappointment grew as the bags filled with fluff but the scales hardly moved!

Next came the leaves. If you have ever picked a milkweed leaf, you will know that it is almost impossible to do without getting the "milk" on your hands,on face, in your mouth, on your clothes etc. Injesting milkweed milk also makes small boys sick. At least the leaves were heavier than fluff and in my minds eye I could see the money piling up a I weighed each days effort. My father put a pinprick in my dreams of wealth after he read the instruction sheet and pointed out the leaves had to be perfectly dried to avoid mould when packed in the bags. I spread the leaves out on the thrash floor in the barn and when they were dry they did not weigh up much better than the fluff.

I got a ride to school with my bags on the pick-up day. I had calculated my summer's work to be worth $12.60. I complained when the soldier paid me only $12.00 and was told they were rounding DOWN to the nearest dollar.

NEXT -- The last war blog

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It's all in how
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Irish Insight