Camp McCoy in the Words of My Uncle: 2020-09-13

PVT. CHARLES D KNIGHT ON HIS WAY HOME

UNCLE CHARLIE ARRIVES AT UNION STATION
PORTLAND, MAINE

I DOUBT IT BUT IF HIS PARENTS WERE NOT AT THE STATION,
UNCLE CHARLIE COULD HAVE GONE TO THE WAITING ROOM

HOME SWEET HOME AT THE KNIGHT HOMESTEAD
GORHAM, MAINE

PVT. CHARLES D KNIGHT IN HIS 2ND INFANTRY DIVISION
UNIFORM STANDING ON THE KNIGHT HOMESTEAD

TWO OF HIS SIBLINGS THERE
TO GREET HIM HOME

THE MAN AND HIS CAR

Once home I can imagine my Uncle Charlie hugging everyone who was not at Union Station to pick him up. Later, he is sitting at the kitchen table with the family sharing about his experiences at Camp McCoy and answering questions coming from all directions. I sat at the same table many years later while visiting my grandmother and Uncle Charlie while growing up. I just wish I had been alive in 1943 listening to my uncle share his hopes, fears, and experiences at Camp McCoy. Listening to the struggles he was facing being a young man of 27 living away from home for the very first time in Wisconsin though from the old Yankee state of Maine. Next, he may have walked through the barn with his father who had built it while he was away. The same barn I use to play in as a young child. Oh, the memories. He may have entered his carpenter shop next where I would watch him work making beautiful items out of wood years later.

The days were going by so quickly as he listened to the crickets at night through his slightly open bedroom window after a long day swimming with his brother Eugene and his soon to be brother in law Joe. On another day he may have gone fishing or visited other members of his family using his car to get there while the scent of Maine's Pine trees and freshly cut fields of grass for the farmers' cows was coming through his open car window to give a breeze on a hot muggy day. He took in the smells, the images and sounds of his home town wishing he could package them for when he returns to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin.

Another day he may have visited his girlfriend or gone to see his former co-workers at S.D. Warren wondering if he would return there when he got out of the Army. However, before leaving the Army, he is going to have to live, serve and breathe a bitter war across an ocean. It would start for him in just a few months after returning to Camp McCoy. A war that would change him in ways he could only try to understand and was able to share so little about years later.

He will be entering a crucible of fire that will make him into the man I came to know. A man of his word, a heart that cared for his family and others. A man that always did his best in everything he did. Whether it was at his work at S.D. Warren, or being an uncle, brother and son, or the hard work as a Mason. His achievements as a Mason would allow several of us nephews and nieces to serve hundreds of Masons and their wives a remarkable dinner with homemade ice cream from the family. He was to be honored that evening for achieving the highest post that a Mason and Shriner could reach in their state.

Yes, I wish I could have been there at his homecoming in July 1943 because it will be two long years before he will return again to the Knight Homestead on the hill that his father, my grandfather, built with his own hands. Much too soon he must get back on the train at Union Station to return to Camp McCoy where he will remain for just about two more months before going to Camp Shanks, New York. There on October 8, 1943 he will go aboard the Hawaiian Shipper that will take the 2nd Infantry Division to Northern Ireland to prepare for Operation Overlord.

However, in those next two months he will write another 35 letters before leaving Camp McCoy. Thirty-five more letters I will read, write and post on this blog in the weeks ahead. Letters giving us his view of "Camp McCoy in My Uncle's Own Words."