First Bud went into the service, then later Felix, after the war ended I was drafted on April 19, 1946 and I was a military policeman in Tokyo, Japan at the war crimes trials at the International Military Tribunal Far East. I was discharged on October 4, 1947 from California. [Since] the war [was alread] over, my time in the Army was more like a vacation compared to my life on the farm. The day after I got home I was 21 years old.
In January of 1948 I went to St. Louis to work. While home that was the time that REA was building the electric lines in the area and the right of way had to be cleared. Uncle Henry Heymeyer was in charge for the REA and he couldn’t get anyone to take the contract to clear the right of way, so Oscar Goetz took it with the provision that each family that got electricity would help and that when we worked on one farm we ate lunch on that farm. I think we started clearing on the Ted Englebrecht farm and went past the Bob Bruley creek a way. Oscar Goetz did not keep any money. He was the time keeper. The pay was divided up according to how many hours one worked on the project.
Daddy and I helped Oscar Goetz build a tobacco barn one year. I happened to be home one year from St. Louis when the new silo was built. That was quite an experience. I stayed with Bud and Alma in St. Louis until April15, 1949 when Bud and Alma purchased the Ivan place that we lived at around 1930. I then went into a boarding house where I lived until I got married on February 2, 1952. We then lived on Tower Grove across the street from Shaw’s Garden in south St. Louis.
Naomi Vetter says
When Vernon and I went to Mary Jane’s I stayed the night before with him and had the opportunity to look at photos of Vernon in his Military Police attire standing guard at the war crime trial. The photos that are so impressive are the ones with him and Tojo and has Tojo’s signature. A reporter took the pictues. He has quite a few of them and is a real piece of history for us if he shares them with us.