|
 The
time - 1942. Bread
costs nine cents,
the average income
is a little over
$1,200 a year,
Jimmy Cagney wins
the Academy Award
for his performance
in “Yankee
Doodle Dandy”
and Glenn Miller’s
“Serenade
in Blue”
is playing on
the radio.
But, it is far from a tranquil time. The bombing of Pearl Harbor has escalated the war effort. Troops by the hundreds of thousands are being shipped out to boot camp, training academies and overseas.
It’s a time fraught with anxiety - but purpose - and the railroads and South Station were ready to play their parts.
During the war years, literally millions of troops passed through South Station and many of the fighting soldiers of World War II can still vividly recall those moments in time.
John T. Tynan of South Boston was one of the aviation cadets sent to war. “In 1941, right after December 7th, South Station was a madhouse. It was like that every day. There were the troops getting ready to leave and the families there to see them off.” He recalls the onlookers standing on the balcony level watching as the soldiers poured out onto the platforms and boarded the trains.
He remembers his father saying, “we’re going to say our good-byes at home. I don’t want any teary farewells at the Station.” But, he reminisces, with a catch in his voice, “as I was boarding the train, I looked up to see my father standing silently on the balcony.”
The trip he embarked on took him to aviation cadet school in Alabama. From there he shipped out to Santa Ana, California. But the trip took almost a week. He recalls “the train was often sidetracked, and we had to get off, so they could use it to ship ammunition.” Eventually he made it to the West Coast and the War.
In recalling his emotions as he boarded the train he says, “I’ve since asked an Army psychiatrist - why weren’t we afraid?” His response was “you were too young to be afraid. Why do you think we picked you?” Then the doctor added, “we never could have gotten you the second time around.”
 Bob
Crowley, a seaman
second-class,
remembers South
Station as having
all the amenities
of a shopping
mall. He often
would go there,
catch the newsreels
at the theater,
or eat at the
restaurant. But
the most intense
memory is being
shipped out of
South Station
on a troop train
crowded with 500
to 600 fellow
soldiers. “It
was kind of sad,”
he says. “My
family was not
there, and no
one was allowed
on the platform,
and no one wanted
to get on until
the last possible
minute.”
His memory is
of soldiers ,by
the dozen, hanging
out the windows
to catch their
last glimpse of
the station in
the distance as
the train pulled
away.
Crowley’s homecoming was not what most of us have seen in the newsreels. “We came into Norfolk, Virginia and spent almost 10 days there until we were shipped to the personnel separation center at South Boston to be discharged,” he says. “We arrived in Boston on a civilian train, in a state of disbelief the war was over.” He recalls the train was very crowded with a mix of military and civilian personnel. On arrival in Boston, he and the other soldiers were whisked to South Boston where they had to spend another three to four days before being reunited with their families. But he adds, that was in 1946 and “I guess (big homecomings at the train station) were old news by then.”
Isaac Zeidman, now of Brookline, looks back at that time in 1942 when he enlisted and was shipped to Fort Devens. His fondest memory of South Station was later that year, home on furlough, stopping to have his picture taken.
When he finally returned from the War, however, his only thought was to walk through South Station hail a taxi, and walk up to the front door of his home and ring the bell. But, to this day, he says, “whenever anyone asks me for a picture ID, I take out the one of me in South Station in 1942.”
This article originally appeared in the June 1999 edition of South Station’s STATION BREAK newsletter.
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