Home Front's Call to Duty

On duty, he would use one of the tower telephones to call the operator with an "Army flash" whenever he saw aircraft. Taylor would describe what he'd spotted, its location and direction. The thrill wore off after a while: "You knew you were never going to see a German airplane." But he never regretted the hours spent up there. Still doesn't.

"It was to help the country," he said recently from his home in Falls Church.

Cassell, now retired and a resident of Hagerstown, Md., voiced a parallel sentiment: "Everybody was for the war in those days."

Goading them on were the lopsided newsreels playing at movie theaters from coast to coast. In Keystone, W.Va., Cassell and his friends went and cheered and talked nonstop about killing the Germans and the Japanese. They searched for dregs of copper and iron along the railroad tracks. The trains riding those tracks, loaded with troops and armament, came through town morning, noon and night, and the soldiers always grinned back at the youngsters shouting "Good luck!" and "Hooray!"

People learned to do without, not always voluntarily. In May 1942, compulsory sugar rationing began. Appeals to conserve gasoline failed despite such slogans as "Should brave men die so you can drive?" and by September, national gasoline rationing restricted most Americans to three gallons a week. Limits on tires, meat, coffee, nylons and shoes were imposed. Most conveniences of modern-day living simply stopped being made.

"For some reason, I remember the soap," said Hall, an Arlington resident. "Word got out that they were expecting a shipment of Rinso or Duz. The housewives would actually gather outside the store, and then the doors would open and you'd go. Because I was little, I could charge through." Her mother dubbed her "the supermarket sprinter."

Fashion was dramatically altered. To save material for the millions of uniforms needed for soldiers, the government demanded "victory suits," which lopped off men's trouser cuffs and narrowed their jacket lapels. Pleated skirts were banned, and hemlines climbed with official approval.

But when Uncle Sam asked women to help conserve rubber by going without their girdles, an outcry ensued. Another Pulitzer-honored account, "No Ordinary Time" by Doris Kearns Goodwin, explained how the bureaucrats backed down. "The War Production Board announced that foundation garments were an essential part of a woman's wardrobe and as such could continue to be manufactured despite the precious rubber involved!"

Throughout those years, Madison Avenue met no consumer good that it couldn't link to the fighting. "Rich in victory vitamin C!" touted an ad for Florida grapefruit juice. A promotion for Palmolive soap showed a young woman pining for her man in battle. "I pledge myself to guard every bit of beauty that he cherishes in me," she vowed.

Government and industry marched together to sell the war effort. Their ubiquitous, inescapable message reinforced the role that every American needed to play -- and, quite intentionally after a decade of ugly labor strife, impressed upon workers that they were "production soldiers." Duty meant giving nothing less than 100 percent.

Perhaps the most stunning propaganda success: Having spent most of the Depression discouraging women from seeking employment, the government now encouraged millions to enter the workforce for the first time. "The more women at work, the sooner we win!" it declared. A dire labor shortage actually left leaders no choice.

Middle-class matrons answered the call along with sheltered ingenues, some becoming riveters like the iconic Rosie. The 21-year-old Bergan -- now June Bergan Brooker of Falls Church -- traced drafting plans for P-40 fighters in the Curtiss-Wright plant outside of Buffalo. In September 1942, she was waiting for her carpool ride home when a terrific explosion shattered the afternoon. A test pilot had bailed out of one of the P-40s, and the plane had "come home to its birthplace, crashing into the assembly line where it had been made."

Twelve charred bodies were carried out of the factory. But the next day, everyone was back on the job.

"We came back to work, yes," Brooker recalled. "It was wartime, and that was drilled into us."

The United States briefly experienced this kind of home-front unity in the first weeks and months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The casualties of World War II were signified with gold stars in their families' windows; those killed on 9/11 became the faces on T-shirts and fliers and buttons. Once there had been nationwide calls for used pots and pans, for salvage cloth, for old tires; now, tens of thousands of people spontaneously stepped up to donate blood and money.

Then the moment passed, the spirit fractured.

If there is now an aura about those days more than a half-century ago, much of it comes from those memories of common purpose.

"It's part of the nostalgia," said Harry R. Rubenstein, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. "We'd love to feel united and fighting for a common goal."

Tomorrow: Combat in a wintry German forest.