Flags of Our Fathers (4 page)

As Franklin ripened to young manhood, his ventures with the girls stayed innocent. “Franklin liked the girls and we’d chase them,” J. B. Shannon remembers. “But did we make progress? Well, we were young innocent boys and we thought we did. At least we’d brag about it, lie about it to each other.”

The Second World War hovered in the far distant background of Franklin’s boyhood. News of its great battles and gossip about the fates of local servicemen filled the air at Hilltop as he cavorted and studied and helped Goldie in her struggles with the farm. There is no indication that Franklin paid it much attention. He was only six when Japan invaded Manchuria; Hitler’s sweep through Europe had begun when he was only thirteen. By the time he’d graduated from high school, in June of 1943, there was reason to be hopeful in both theaters. The staticky radio broadcasts that he and Goldie listened to—when they weren’t tuned in to Waite Hoyt calling the Cincinnati Reds on summer afternoons and evenings; Goldie was a big baseball fan—were telling tales of victory both in Europe and in the Pacific.

In the first American land battle of the war the Marines had captured Guadalcanal that past February, and the Germans had surrendered at Stalingrad. In March, the British Eighth Army under Montgomery broke through the Mareth Line in Tunisia; a couple of months later, German and Italian troops surrendered there. The Allies were driving toward Sicily at about the time Franklin’s small graduating class was receiving its diplomas. And from the Pacific, the radio commentators had been sending stirring reports of U.S. Navy and Marine victories with names such as Midway and Tarawa.

All of that sounded just fine to the people in the hills and hollows of eastern Kentucky. Franklin began dating in his last year of high school, escorting Frances Jolly or Marion Hamm to church, to the movies, or just for a walk in the woods.

But upon graduation, Franklin Sousley was more concerned with finding a way to shore up his struggling mother’s finances than dating or fighting for his country. Goldie came first, so he went straight to work at a Frigidaire plant in Dayton, across the Ohio border to the north. He lived in a small apartment at 107 Park Drive.

He was sending money back home to Goldie from his paycheck as an eighteen-year-old staker and propeller assembler in Plant No. 2 when, in January 1944, Uncle Sam sent him a telegram. On that day, rather than accept his fate as an Army infantryman, Franklin Sousley—the hijinking hill boy who’d fight a running sawmill—made up his mind to become a U.S. Marine.

It had been a jolt for Goldie when Franklin had gone off to Dayton, farther away from Hilltop than she had ever traveled. When she learned that the man in her life was off to the Marines, all she could do was hope for the best and pray to her Lord.

Now eighteen-year-old Franklin, who had smiled his way throughout his difficult boyhood, was off to another world. He spoke of his “duty as a man,” but his friend J. B. Shannon remembers that Franklin was “just a big country boy, unafraid of anything.”

Franklin was a “good ol’ boy” off to fight in the “good war.” What could possibly go wrong?

Harlon Block: Rio Grande Valley, Texas

Harlon Block is the figure with his back turned to the world. He’s there struggling with the base of the pole, his face invisible. He was the Seventh-Day Adventist who had been taught “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” who was out in the Pacific doing his duty. For almost two years the country didn’t know it was Harlon in the photo. But his mother, Belle, knew. Belle, who had begged him not to go to war. She knew. He had rejected her pleadings not to fight, but as he experienced the killing in the Pacific her teachings came back to him.

But by that time it was too late. He was committed.

He was from a place they call simply “the Valley.” It’s the Rio Grande Valley at the bottom of Texas, the far eastern end. Harlon Block was born on a farm there, outside of McAllen, down near the knife-blade tip of Texas where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s hot in the Valley, but not the dry heat of much of Texas. It’s hot and humid there, semitropical, with palm trees growing.

The farm had been something of a compromise between his parents, Ed Block and the former Ada Belle Brantley. Especially for Belle. Ed and Belle had been married in San Antonio in 1917. Ed promptly went off to fight in France in World War I. Just as promptly, he was laid low with both the measles and the mumps. Recuperating in England, he was tapped as an ambulance driver, and spent the rest of his service days ferrying hideously wounded men from the docks to the hospitals in London.

While he was away at war Belle lived frugally and saved the money he sent her. She took courses and became a practical nurse. When Ed returned, Belle spent another portion of the money on tuition for a business course for him. Belle liked the city and saw herself as the wife of a successful businessman there.

Ed passed the course and gave city life a try. He sold real estate and was moderately successful. But Ed dreamed of farming, his first love. One day he saw a get-rich flyer touting the Rio Grande Valley. Thanks to the technology of irrigation, a land boom was about to detonate there: Citrus orchards and cotton fields would overtake the sagebrush. Ed bought forty acres sight unseen and tore off his necktie once and for all. Belle was disappointed; she had no desire to work on a farm. But Ed was enthusiastic and painted a picture of a ground-floor opportunity. He was a practical man and made a down-to-earth case for a new life, living off the land. Belle was a young woman with strong convictions of her own, but she was also idealistic, a bit of a dreamer, and she was swayed by her forceful husband. She overcame her doubts and agreed to go along. It would be the first of many compromises for Belle.

The Valley is a seventy-mile stretch of land carved by the Rio Grande River between Mission, Texas, in the west and Brownsville, Texas, in the east. A separate part of Texas with its own weather system, its own way of life.

A drive along two-lane Route 83 in the 1930’s of Harlon’s youth would reveal a flat, lush land dominated by small farms, large cultivated fields, and the occasional town of 1,000 to 2,000 people. Where the land was not tilled, mesquite and palm trees held sway.

There was no industry in the Valley; everyone was involved in agriculture, working the soil. What was growing depended upon the seasons, of which there were two: summer and winter.

It was mostly summer in the Valley, from March to October. The hot and humid weather came from the southeast, borne on winds from the Gulf of Mexico. Cotton was king during the Valley’s summer, a crop that flourished despite the lack of rain. Fathers and sons would pick cotton by hand on days that regularly saw temperatures of over one hundred degrees with ninety percent humidity.

From Thanksgiving to March, the “northers” brought cooler weather. Temperatures would fall and the humidity would ease. The people of the Valley called this season “winter” and complained of the “cold” if the temperature dipped below fifty degrees.

Citrus and “row vegetables” were planted and then harvested. In the winter the Valley was a grand garden of grapefruit, navel oranges, lemons, limes, carrots, beets, broccoli, and cabbage.

Ranching and oil were small contributors to the Valley’s economy, unlike the rest of Texas. There were no wide-open grazing spaces; cattle were raised on feedlots. Some oil was found in the western part of the Valley, but the gushers were far away.

The small Valley farmers were hardly affected by the Depression. The country had an appetite for all they could produce, and the numerous harvests meant work for all.

On the other side of the Rio Grande is Mexico, and the Mexican influence was evident throughout the Valley. Spanish-style white stucco buildings with red tile roofs were part of the landscape. Tacos, tamales, and enchiladas were eaten alongside hamburgers and hot dogs. Twenty percent of the population was Mexican; they lived together in their Catholic enclaves and mixed easily with the majority Protestant Anglos.

Everyday social life revolved around farm, school, and church. Annual celebrations at the county fairgrounds were for displaying prize beets or carrots or pigs. Floats with agricultural themes would follow the high-school band as it marched down the paved main streets. The “Style Show” consisted of ladies modeling fashions made from local produce—carrot and beet “diamonds” shimmering against an eggplant-skin-and-date-palm dress. One lucky girl would have her life transformed as she proudly accepted the title “Citrus Queen.”

The Valley was a small part of Texas with small farms and small towns. A youngster’s grade-school class would consist of eight students. A large high-school graduating class might number forty-five. It was a place where everyone knew their neighbors’ dogs.

The Blocks struggled at first. The newly built farmhouse caught fire and burned to the ground. Ed had to take a job as a farm laborer and rent a small house while they got back on their feet. Belle had an idea to make some money. She suggested they buy a cow every two months with Ed’s earnings. Soon, the Blocks were in the dairy business.

And soon they had a family. Ed Jr. arrived in 1920, followed by Maurine two years later, and Harlon in 1924. Later came three more boys: Larry, Corky, and Melford.

As a middle child in a large family, with a brother four years older and a sister two years older, Harlon didn’t have to be a trailblazer. He could follow along in his older siblings’ footsteps.

The chores started small and gradually for young Harlon. At first he would open the gates as his older brother, Ed Jr., brought the cows in to be milked. Then, as he grew, Harlon, his parents, his brother Ed Jr., and his sister, Maurine, milked fifteen cows apiece every morning starting at three
A.M.
Maurine would cool the raw, unpasteurized milk. She and Belle would wash the milk bottles and fill them. Then Ed Sr. would be off on his route selling his milk for five cents a quart. “That is how we survived the Depression,” was the way Maurine remembered it toward the end of the century.

Harlon was a good helper. He always completed his chores without complaint. He took orders well, fit in as part of the family.

Belle was determined to do right by her family, and she tried to be happy on the farm. But it was difficult for her. She missed the city, but loved her husband and children. So she made the best of it. Fine-featured and dark-haired, she was bred for the city. The Valley’s hot, damp climate had her red-eyed and runny-nosed from asthma and hay fever all the time, and the work at the milking stool hurt her back. Maurine recalled how her mother began to suffer bouts of depression: Toward evening she’d walk outside the farmhouse, stare off into space for half an hour, have a conversation with herself, and then come back.

Perhaps it was Belle’s longing for another life that made her open to the preachings of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Early in their move to the Valley, Belle became a fully accepting practitioner of the vivid Protestant strain that assumed a seven-day creation of the Earth, a Great Controversy between Jesus Christ and Satan, and a millennial return of Christ into history, at which moment the dead will awaken, evil will vanish, and time will end. Belle accepted, too, her denomination’s strictures against alcohol, narcotics, and unclean foods; against swearing and unchastity; and against violation of the Ten Commandments—including the Commandment that stipulated, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

All Christians shared a belief in that Commandment, but the Seventh-Day Adventists took it to heart. Their founder, William Miller, had been an Army officer in the War of 1812, but the killing he witnessed caused him to become a skeptic. Adventist boys were taught they must never carry guns or knives because the Lord would offer them all the protection they needed. And Seventh-Day Adventists had a long record of refusing to fight in time of war. They never faltered in their support of their country, but they served in the medical corps as conscientious objectors.

But being an Adventist didn’t just mean heeding prohibitions. It meant being an active force to help your fellowman. The Adventists were well represented in the healing and helping professions as nurses, doctors, and teachers.

Belle was a nurse and put in long hours nursing terminal patients in their homes during their last days. She used her hard-earned money to pay the tuition of her children at the local Adventist school. Knowing her children were being brought up in the protective fold of her church, she felt her sacrifices were worth it.

Ed converted too, donning a respectable suit for church services on the “Seventh Day,” Saturday. He followed his wife’s lead in the family’s religious life, as many men do. But Belle was the true literal believer who lived the word of her Bible. She was always ready to help, and others sensed it. A series of kids who needed a break came to stay with the Blocks over the years. Like young Herbert Savage, who was not welcome in his own home, they showed up at Belle’s door asking for room, board, and a new start in life. A local girl who had been raped walked four miles in the dark to seek out Belle’s loving help.