"The world must know what happened, and never forget." ---- Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces
Over the years, it has been my goal to reach World War II veterans who remained with us, in an effort to record their heroic wartime stories. While I regrettably missed many, I managed to get to know several through family members. Last year, after an unsettling situation in a salon, I embarked on a mission to recap those heretofore covered. In summary, a young friend unfamiliar with the details of the Second World War, inquired of me, "We were at war with Germany?" Lord have mercy. She could have knocked me -- the daughter of a World War II veteran -- over with a feather. I imagine, by the time the lesson was over, she regretted her inquiry.
Going back to the summer of 2017, it was then that I published a column on Silas Partman, Jr., husband of Alma Long and, after her death some forty-seven years later, Luberta Chappell Magee, to whom he was married almost twenty years.
One of ten children of Silas Dewey Partman, Sr., and wife Katie Burris Partman, Silas was educated at the Washington Parish Training School and was drafted into the Army in 1945, serving until his discharge at Camp Kilmer just prior to Christmas in December of 1946. It was at Camp Kilmer that, after basic training at Camp Crowder, Missouri, he fired the boilers for the bakery where they made bread and rolls. He described Camp Kilmer as a port of embarkation, with soldiers coming and going in the war effort. Yes, indeed. Camp Kilmer was where in November of 1943 my father made final preparations for his overseas duty. And it was from there that, prior to departure, he mailed my mother a Christmas card.
At Christmas time that same year, 2017, I wrote about an unsung World War II hero, Lt. Patrick H. Wilkinson, the first husband of long-time Franklinton resident Frances Wilkinson Knight. He didn't come home from the war. The poignant story was shared with me by Franklinton native and friend Martha Knight Elliott, daughter of Frances Knight and her second husband Dr. Wilmer W. Knight.
Known as "Doc," he was the son of Early and Evie Knight of Washington Parish and a large animal veterinarian. He and wife Frances raised their family on 8th Avenue in Babington subdivision in Franklinton.
But back to Lt. Wilkinson, a bombardier, he deployed in late 1944 with the 391 Bomb. Group which operated out of France, flying from there on missions into Germany. Pat was shot down flying cover for Patton's ground forces on December 23, 1944. He was to have sung mellifluous music for their overseas military Christmas Eve celebration. But instead, he was reported missing in action; wife Frances received notice by telegram in January 1945. Then, just a few short months later, she gave birth to their daughter Patsy four days after receiving a telegram on March 29, 1945, informing that Pat had been killed in action.
And while local loved ones received notification of military casualties, people in Europe were suffering casualties of a different kind. Yet, real awareness of the barbarity in Europe had not reached parts of the United States. Some Americans didn't know the real truth, even after the United States was drawn into the war after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Holocaust means "sacrifice by fire," a reminder of the crematoria of the concentration camps where the bodies were burned. From their home countries of Poland, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, and others, the Jewish people, including children, were deported to these camps where at the hands of the Nazis, they were killed. With Hitler at the helm, six million Jews were exterminated - shot, starved, or gassed.
While space doesn't permit me to recount the heroism of Julia Leana Gottlieb Moak (1921 - 1998) in full - I gave her remembrance my best shot in 2020 - I could not possibly recap local World War II heroes without summarizing her story. Many locals may remember her as the wife of Percy Ezra Moak, Jr., or the mother of Nathan, David, Benjamin, Cynthia, Sylvia, and Lydia Moak or even the librarian at the Washington Parish Library where she worked for twenty-eight years.
But before that, she was a survivor, of World War II. Entrusted by daughter Sylvia Esther Moak LaPointe with a memorandum her beloved mother hand-penned for her children, I was able to recount her journey, step by step in Europe. A young Jewish woman, Julia was sharp, escaping the Germans multiple times in a myriad of ways. Beginning with the attack on May 10, 1940 - the Battle of Belgium - she left Antwerp, Belgium, with her family for destinations at that time unknown. The family stayed in Boulogne-sur-Gesse before moving to Spain and eventually landing in Cannes in the South of France which was still a free zone.
But everything changed on August 20, 1942, when her father and then her mother and brother Joey were deported. Yet, Julia courageously managed to save her 11-year-old sister Esther Lewin, bravely becoming part of the French resistance.
As local lawyer Wayne Kuhn described it to me, her valiant efforts were a small-scale "Schindler's List." Not long after the Allies liberated the South of France, beginning on August 15, 1944, Julia and Esther moved in 1945 to Marseilles, where they waited for word of their family's fate and Julia worked for Western Union. If all goes according to plan, my husband Rodney and I will visit Marseilles in the spring, and there, I will remember Julia.
Ike was right. We must never forget.
