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At the age of 26 my grandfather, Milo Peck, joined the 110th Army infantry to serve in Rhineland, Germany in Central Europe. Milo had enlisted for active duty in Springfield in September 1944—at the height of World War II. After vaccinations for small pox, typhoid, and tetanus, he started boot camp training at Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, a military post and independent mobilization station for the U.S. Armed Forces. He left behind a pregnant wife and baby daughter, my mother. He also left his family farm.
At the time, the local farming industry advocates were appealing to Draft Board 82 to defer young farm workers like my grandfather from military induction. They were considered “essential to food production.” A Berkshire Eagle article from that month points out that the large cow herd on the Peck farm would have to be sold to make ends meet. “The proprietor’s son, Milo, father of two children, was drafted last week, leaving only Mr. Peck to give full-time service to the farm. [There] are 20 acres of ensilage corn to be cut—how, the Pecks don’t know.”
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Two decades after my grandfather’s death, I embarked on a labor of love to find out more about my grandfather, including his military service and the predicament his and other families faced at home. I tracked down his discharge papers at the town hall in Pittsfield. With that information, I contacted the National Archives and Records Administration in St. Louis, Missouri to acquire his military transcripts.
I also began searching the Berkshire Courier archives at the Mason Library in Great Barrington, and trolling through the Berkshire Eagle archives in Pittsfield. From these accounts, an intriguing chapter of my grandfather’s life emerged.
In May 1941, the Peck family farm had suffered a devastating fire that completely leveled the main barns and outbuildings. Rebuilding began right away. That same year, my grandfather met my grandmother at an Egremont Grange meeting, eventually marrying her in August 1942. My mother was born the following year in September 1943. Then, one year later, news came that my grandfather had been drafted.
Another Berkshire Courier article from August 1944 ironically and erroneously asserted that, “although there are 11 men from South Berkshire reporting for induction, none of them is a father.” In fact, my grandfather’s name appears second on this list from Draft Board 82 of Lee (in charge of Southern Berkshire). At the time, my mother was nearing her first birthday and my grandmother was pregnant with a second child.
A subsequent article, “Presidential Appeal Board Refuses to Defer Farm Boys,” detailed an appeal process, and how far it went.
“The military induction of Milo Peck [of] South Egremont last week, which necessitated the sale last Saturday of the milking herd on his father’s farm, occurred only after strenuous intercession by the county agricultural war board, culminating in rejection of appeal on his behalf by the presidential appeal board in Washington D.C. His appeal was the first in behalf of a Berkshire farmer to reach the Washington board since early in the draft. Peck was notified of the appeal of his case to Washington and later of the rejection by the national board. ‘We have tried to do everything possible to save essential farm workers in Berkshire County,’ said Jesse H. Fairfield, chairman of the war board and labor committee. He said he knew the Peck herd would be sold if Milo Peck was drafted.”
And sold it was. While Milo was overseas, my grandmother had to leave the farm and move in with her parents in Springfield, where my aunt Kay was born in February 1945.
My grandfather was discharged a year later, along with 48 other South County veterans, on January 4, 1946. He was reunited with his wife, reintroduced to my mother (who was by then three years-old), and held his new baby girl for the first time.
Finally home, it was back to his service to the town, his duties with the local grange, and most importantly the business of the farm, which he put his full heart and soul into resurrecting. By October 1947, he not only began excavation work on a new house for his family (“the lumber for which [was] cut and planed at home”), he also was in the midst of a stellar year of harvesting crops and producing supplies like maple syrup and lumber, “all of this without utilizing any outside help.”
He was eventually awarded the 1947 Dirt Farmer Certificate from the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture for achieving “notable success in his field”–a testament to his post-war determination and diligence.
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Milo Peck passed away exactly fifty years after his service to the U.S.A. in World War II began, in October of 1994. In the town of Egremont, on the village green, a Memorial Plaque honors by name he and the 67 other residents who served in the World Wars.
Though he did not give his life for his country, my grandfather’s life significantly changed because of it. His story is just one example of the compromises men and women unselfishly made during the war years of the 1940’s. Through their sacrifice of the good life for our lives, they earned Tom Brokaw’s appropriate appellation–“The Greatest Generation.”
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Photo Credit: Getty Images