In Fighting Hitler from the North Jersey Suburbs, James Berrall shares recollections of Montclair from 1939-1946, years that were not surprisingly dominated by World War II—even for a boy aged 5-12. The accounts are as he experienced and understood them as a young boy and learned of them through the whispers, radio broadcasts, and newspapers he saw, and rounded out with historical facts and details that he may not have been fully aware of at the time.
His first memory of the war was in September 1939 as he sat in the backseat of the car on a ride to visit family in Connecticut. His parents and grandfather were discussing Germany’s invasion of Poland:
“You could tell it was serious by the sound of their voices…”
and one of his final recollections after the war, in spring 1946 was as he and his parents viewed the victorious fleet of American military in New York Harbor:
“This was sure not the same fleet we had visited six years before. These were great, serious-looking ships, ships that had been to war.” He went on, “One of them, I think it was the aircraft carrier Franklin, had been fire-blackened in several places and still showed much of the battle damage she had received…We went to see the USS Missouri, the ship where the surrender ceremony had been held…And there, set in the deck, was the shining golden circle, the polished bronze plate that marks the spot where the surrender was signed….I…touched the golden circle, and it was then that I realized that the war that I had lived with and that had shaped most of my life was truly over.”
The war, and the location of James’ home, which was designed by his architect father Lloyd Berrall on the high, western edge of Montclair abutting what is now Mills Reservation, contributed to a fascination with the sky and the outdoors. The fighter pilot heroes of the war fueled his life-long fascination with flying and military history, leading to his Air Force career.
Each chapter of the book shares information about the war as it advanced and its impact on his life in Montclair. He also had typical childhood adventures with his friends in places familiar to those of us living in Montclair.
The book is also a loving tribute to his mother, Julia Smith Berrall, who he describes as “an unusual human being” with many talents. She was very well-respected in the Montclair community and was well-known for her gardening and flower arranging prowess and writing on the subjects. (Her book, Early American Garden Bouquets, is available for purchase in our store.)
As a youngster, images of the war were prominent in the print media and radio, but James’ overriding memory was that he was not afraid:
“Life wasn’t bad. We had enough to eat…We may have had some holes in our clothes or shoes, but patches and cardboard took care of that. We didn’t even think about it because it was the same for us all. We (boys anyhow) certainly did not fear air raids or seeing torpedoes ships burning off shore. We never thought we could be hurt; we wanted to see something like that. It was exciting. “
He mentions many childhood pleasures and wartime memories:
Sugar Jumbles (or Jumbos) from either Marker’s or Hassler’s, two Montclair bakeries of days gone by. They were BIG cookies, bigger than a donut – possibly ginger cookies or molasses and they were covered all over with big individual sugar crystals.
His mother loved listening to the London Philharmonic Orchestra on the radio on Sunday afternoons, delivered in part by shortwave broadcasts from England that were then rebroadcast on standard radio. The sound faded in and out, seeming to come close and then recede, which he blamed on the “Kennelly-Heavyside and other ionospheric layers.” He wondered why no one every mentions them nowadays.
He remembered the lamplighter, a man who appeared daily in a strange little truck after the sun went down to light the gas street lamps which lit the streets before and for some time after WWII.
In 1941, two young men in powder blue suits, likely Royal Air Force (RAF) members on a goodwill mission to drum up American support for the war, came to dinner at his home. His mom was very vocal in her support for the British.
For those Montclair history lovers who may have heard accounts of a military installation in the location of today’s Mills Reservation, which was literally in James’ backyard, his comments about unusual events / visitors there were particularly interesting, but not necessarily clarifying:
The site of the former quarry behind his home was obvious, not only from the street adjacent to his that would be named “Old Quarry Road” but from 1” holes bored into many of the piano-sized boulders lying on the quarry floor which had been drilled for placement of dynamite sticks. He tells of many, many adventures in the quarry. It was clearly a very special place to play as a child—not always without risk! In addition to the basalt and sandstone that were quarried there, there were fossils and quartz specimens.
He confirms the one-time presence of a water tank atop the old quarry, the base of which remains to this day: “On top of the north cliff there was a circular concrete platform about three feet high and twenty feet in diameter that had been the base for a large water tank.”
In 1942, he remembers seeing a spot light shining atop the ridge: “One night I awoke…to see several amazingly bright, big searchlight beams shining up into the sky from somewhere very close…One of them seemed to be coming from a place just down our street! …I was quite sure I would have known about it had there been any construction of anti-aircraft batteries going on in our neighborhood, but I had heard nothing. The lights waved around in the sky for a while, then one came down and pointed horizontally toward the east, where New York was...all very mysterious. Sometime later…I was riding in the car with my mother and I saw a large, olive-drab truck, and a trailer with a big searchlight mounted on it, parked at the side of the road right below ours. I don’t remember hearing anything about it, but it must have been a test of some kind of the air defenses in the area around New York...”
Another day in 1942, “…an olive-drab telephone box appeared on a tree in the woods. It was fairly close to the edge of the cliff. …Then awhile later we met some men up there with binoculars who just stood around, looked out toward New York, and seemed bored. I bet they did get bored, for there was usually not much going on but the occasional DC-3 going into Newark [Airport]. It was not long before the young men on the lookout disappeared, but the telephone stayed there throughout the war. Many of us were tempted to pick it and see who answered, but I don’t know anyone who had the courage…”
In spring 1942, there was an unusual drill at his school. Instead of filing outside as they did with fire drills, they were ordered to the basement, and he heard whispers that it was an air raid. After some time, the children were released to walk home on their own – even second-graders like James! Fortunately, his mother was home when he arrived, but she was understandably surprised to see him arriving home alone at that hour. He overheard as his mom called the school, “A U-boat scare?” How is a U-boat possibly going to hurt us here? We’re 18 miles from the ocean!”
He and his friends wanted to help in the war effort and join the fight. “In 1942, pretty much the whole country felt that way….Everything we kids were exposed to – comic books, radio shows, magazines, newspapers, billboards, movies, posters at school – promoted going into the military, ‘doing your duty,’ or at least helping the war effort somehow.” His ambition to be a fighter pilot was encouraged by character Hop Harrigan who always signed off crying, “And remember kids, AMERICA NEEDS FLYERS..\
In 1942, he started to feel the effects of rationing and remembers his mom managing the ration books. Butter was unavailable and he clearly recalls that margarine “came in a big, mushy white mass in a plastic bag, with a little spot of red coloring that looked like a drop of blood…” which was kneaded into the mass until it looked more like the butter.
In the summer of 1942, he distinctly remembers learning of the British air raids in Germany. “We certainly heard a great deal about it in the newspapers and on the radio. One of the stores in town displayed a large photograph of the twin spires on a famous cathedral in Cologne, fire-blackened and standing alone in a wasteland of burned city. The picture stayed there for several years.”
He remembers pure “kid-stuff,” like the hard decisions about which candy to purchase with his dime at Lempert’s: root-beer flavored Paloops, Necco Wafers, Bazooka bubble gum, or Walnettos.
James enjoyed many radio shows during wartime: Jack Armstrong, All American Boy; Captain Midnight; the Adventures of Hop Harrigan; Terry and the Pilates; The Lone Ranger; Green Hornet; and early soap operas. Years later, he learned that the man who had played Dr. Huer on the Buck Rogers show was actor Edgar Stehli who lived very close to his own home in Montclair; James met Mr. Stehli years later.
The war was all children his age knew: “By 1943, the war had gone on for so long that for kids around my age it was just an accepted way of life.”
People rang in the New Year quite loudly, one of James’ favorite memories: “… perhaps the wonderful outpouring of sound that I remember from New Years’ Eves during the war years was, by that time, partly the sound of triumph. We knew we had faced and were fighting a monstrous enemy and that we were finally winning…The sound would rise up from the land, all across the plain between us and the big city on the horizon. It would build slowly: a thousand – or maybe a hundred thousand voices echoing from the distance, building and building, closer, bigger, nearer, rising up until it seemed like a huge wind of sound. I would stand there in the frosty darkness, struck dumb listening in awe while the vast wail of thousands of factory whistles, horns, bells, and hundreds upon hundreds of air-raid sirens in full cry around us rose up to the stars.“ This tradition seems to have petered out after the war.
In school in 1944 they made Red Cross packages for prisoners of war – adding things like soap, socks and needles/thread to a shoebox-sized box.
At this time, he also realized that his father had a “sort of secret job” which after the war he disclosed was his participation in designing camouflage plans for factories.
By 1944, the horrors of the Holocaust were becoming known and photos published, but he doesn’t recall kids speaking about it amongst themselves much, “I think we kids didn’t know what to say about it all, so we would just shake our heads and move on…like how to blow a bigger bubble with our Bazooka bubblegum.
In June 1945, all focus was on Japan: “Nobody really had a handle on what an “atomic bomb” was or how it worked, and the vague descriptions in newspapers were often wrong.” When the Japanese surrender was official, he took to the top of an outcrop in the old quarry to bang on some of his Mom’s cooking pots. Then the family drove through Montclair Center, where there was a large crowd gathering.
When the war ended, he remembers that ration-stamp books were discarded and things like car tires, gasoline, shoes and cigarettes were once again plentiful in the U.S. Army/Navy stores sold things like gloves, socks, canteens, knives, field jackets, and rations at low, low prices. He bought a set of green-tinted plastic snow-blindness goggles. They also began to hear of continuing struggles and starvation in Europe and about Displaced Persons or D.P. (millions of people who didn’t know where to go or had no home to return to).
At war’s end, he recalls seeing a new sign in Newark, as they drove there or on the train into NYC, which was painted in red white and blue in huge letters, “Welcome Home, Boys.” It remained up for many years.
He ends his memoir in 1946, then a sixth grader, with a phrase that was popular at the time, “Plant ya now, dig ya later.”
James C. Berrall is the son of Lloyd and Julia Berrall, among the founders of the Montclair Historical Society (now the Montclair History Center). His book Fighting Hitler from the North Jersey Suburbs was published by Belle Isle Books in 2015. A copy is available for viewing and reading at the Montclair History Center, 108 Orange Road.