By the end of the war, over 19 million American women had left the kitchen and gone to work in factories, but Haak's mother was not among them. She did help coordinate a campaign to send letters and cookies to soldiers from the farmhouse in Wisconsin, but the farm required both Haak's father and mother to stay and work the land. A fair percentage of the food (potatoes, tomatoes, carrots and cabbage) raised on the Haak farm was donated by the Haak family to charities and other organization that were assisting injured soldiers and war widows.
Meanwhile, Bill Haak wanted to be in the Pacific theater where the fighting was, but he was ordered to work in England during most of 1942 and 1943, as part of the air effort; naval enlistees found themselves engaged in everything from supply efforts to ship maintenance. It made Haak a bit frustrated, but the colonel in charge of his company used patriotic speeches to keep the troops believing that they were as important to the war effort as the Marines charging up the beaches of Guam, Saipan, and the other islands in that chain of Japanese-held territories. There was never a question of re-upping his enlistment; Haak had long ago decided that he was in this war for the long haul, as long as he was fit and able to participate, he was going to be fighting against the Nazis and the Japs. One good thing that happened to Haak while in England was that he met an intellectually gifted and attractive member of the Women's Army Corps (WAC). Her name was Carol and she was stationed near Haak outside of London.
They met at a dance hall and after a couple draft beers, Haak got up the nerve to ask her to dance. She was the daughter of a well-known physician in New York City, a woman of culture and society who was not as down-to-earth as the farm girls Haak had known in Wisconsin, but was honest, and committed to her duties. She found Haak a refreshing change from some of the more pretentious males she had known in New York; his strong hands, made tough through a lifetime of farm work, his knowledge of world history and of the background reasons for this war, made him an attractive mate for a well-heeled woman.
Carol was particularly intrigued that what on the surface appeared to be a simple yet handsome farm boy from Wisconsin actually was a very well-informed and knowledgeable person who knew all the intricacies of the Treaty of Versailles, and understood the way in which Hitler had used that treaty to stir up passions in his country and eventually seize dictatorial control. They fell in love; and even though Carol's parents had warned her not to get involved with any "flyboy" or "ground soldier," she gave her heart to Bill Haak. Being in love with Carol added a reason to the long list of reasons that Haak was committed to this war to the end; he now had someone to look forward to spending his life with once the bloody war was over.
In June 1944, the day Haak had been waiting for was just around the corner. The Army, Marines, Army Air Corps and the Navy...
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