Charles worked as an industrial plumber at the Monsanto Chemical Company plant in Everett, steadily pulling the Bushees up the economic ladder. Then the Great Depression struck, and the older sons dropped out of school to work in factories, bringing paychecks home to help their parents. By 1940, no one could ignore the newspaper headlines about the war in Europe, and America instituted its first peacetime draft . On a cool morning that October, the four eldest Bushee sons — Will, Ernie, Tommy, and Ray — walked the mile from their home to Melrose City Hall to register with draft board No. 99. All four drew high lottery numbers that made service unlikely, and Emma must have been relieved. But in just over a year, everything would change. Dawn in Melrose on Sunday, December 7, 1941, broke sunny and cold. Emma, then 52, began the day as usual in the kitchen — her proud domain — wearing her flowered apron as she prepared breakfast. Charles, 59, was looking forward to a leisurely day off from work. It was the last peaceful morning America would enjoy for four years. The attack on Pearl Harbor started just before 8 a.m. Hawaii time, midafternoon on the East Coast. The Bushees huddled around their radio; alarming reports from Honolulu were filled with static and faded in and out. The next day, Roosevelt delivered his “day of infamy” speech over the airwaves, and Congress declared war on Japan . In Boston, military recruiters were instantly overwhelmed. The Navy office alone was swarmed by 1,000 men, and announced it would stay open 24 hours a day. On December 11, Congress declared war on Germany and Italy . America’s entry into the war was complete. With Christmas just two weeks away, the country was gripped by uncertainty, fear, and steely resolve. Newspaper ads for holiday gifts appeared on the same pages as instructions for how to prepare for an air raid. Melrose, recognizing the possibility of wartime blackouts, abandoned its tradition of stringing festive colored lights above Main Street. Emma, like millions of American mothers, like tens of millions more across the globe, worried what would become of her sons. Emma Bushee — “Gram” to me — died when I was 9 years old, so my memories of her are through the eyes of a child. Yet even when I was young, visiting my grandmother with my father, Ray, I recognized her as someone to be reckoned with. Quick to smile and laugh, she also projected authority. With one quiet command she could bring to heel a pack of raucous adult sons who cheerfully ignored all others’ instructions. Emma was 5 feet 3 inches tall, but no problem was too large for her to handle. Even neighbors turned to “Mrs. B.” for counsel in times of trouble. I sense now that she was equal to any challenge, and that quality would serve her well — World War II tested her resolve like never before. By 1944, eight of Emma’s 12 sons would be serving in theaters of battle on six continents. Before it was all over, a ninth son enlisted, even though he was too young to do so, hoping to serve like his brothers. Melrose sent more than 3,200 men, as well as some women, to World War II. The Marshall family sent three sons. The Ritchies, five. But you could travel a hundred miles in any direction, a news service reported, and still not find another family like the Bushees that had sent eight. Over the next four years, Emma’s sons came home to see her whenever they could, if only for a day. Sometimes one had a port call at the Boston Navy Yard in Charlestown. Other times they’d cross a continent or an ocean to get to her. They sent her so many souvenirs from their travels that one newspaper article called the Bushee home the “Museum for Mom.” Emma treasured the gifts from her sons, but most of all she waited expectantly for their letters. When a missive arrived — a son writing from France, or Iran, or the Philippines — she’d drop everything to read it. And when the letters from one of her boys mysteriously stopped arriving — as would happen in early 1944 — she became increasingly nervous, even abandoning her regular diary entries. I’ve always believed she was experiencing the kind of premonition only a mother can. Eight days after Pearl Harbor, 21-year-old Arthur Bushee enlisted in the Navy. Known to family and friends as Bunte — he was born premature, and nearly disappeared in the folds of his bunting blanket — he’d been working at the Murray Shoe Co. factory. He dreamed of one day owning his own farm. The Bushee family saw Bunte off at Boston’s South Station, where he boarded a train bound for training in Newport, Rhode Island. He’d never been to sea, but the Navy was in a rush to dispatch sailors to their first assignments. By mid-January 1942, Bunte was already aboard the USS Livermore , engaged in convoy duty in the submarine-infested North Atlantic. Destroyers such as Livermore were known as “greyhounds” of the sea due to their speed and agility, and served missions worldwide. They were also considered the most expendable ships of the American fleet, tasked to sacrifice themselves, if necessary, to protect the war and merchant ships they escorted. Bunte, like other junior enlisted men, lived in cramped quarters in the belly of the ship, stacked in narrow bunk beds with a single footlocker for his possessions. The scorching air below decks smelled of sweat and engine exhaust, and when the Livermore’ s guns fired, the deafening noise rattled every corner of the ship and every soul aboard. Life for Bunte and his shipmates fell into a pattern of excruciating boredom — days spent maintaining equipment and keeping watch in bone-chilling sleet — interrupted by bursts of terror when German U-Boats were spotted. From mid-January until August 1942, German subs destroyed 22 percent of the East Coast tanker fleet and sank 233 merchant ships. The next of Emma’s sons to enlist was Raymond, 24, in March 1942, two months after his younger brother Bunte. A week later, their 26-year-old brother Tommy signed up, joining the Army after the Marines rejected him because of a childhood injury. While Emma loved all her children, she did have some reservations about her rambunctious son Ray. A gifted athlete, he boxed professionally to earn extra money while also playing minor league baseball outside of Montreal, hoping to one day make it to the American big leagues. Ray had been dating Dorothy “Dot” Fahy — a tall, athletic girl just out of high school — whom he’d met in Melrose. Later, Dot told Emma she planned to marry her son. “Don’t marry him,” Emma responded in her typically direct way, “he’s no good.” (My parents remained happily married until my mother’s death more than 45 years later.) Ray had a great sense of humor, but a fiery temper not easily bent to the dictates of authority, an attitude that would later prove to be a poor fit for military culture. But in the beginning, in the Army’s infinite wisdom, it appointed him a military policeman. The year 1942 saw two more Bushee sons enter the armed services. After Army basic training, 29-year-old Will returned home to Melrose to marry Jeanette Pellagrini, sister of future Red Sox infielder Eddie Pellagrini. Will, a welder, worked as an aircraft mechanic at a stateside air base before deploying to England, where he’d assemble gliders ahead of the Normandy invasion. Ernie, 28, was later assigned to the Naval Armed Guard , a unit that manned powerful guns on Allied merchant ships. These ships were sunk so often that “regular” Navy sailors often referred to their Armed Guard colleagues as “ fish food .” Bunte, for his part, seemed to take to enlisted life, and rose steadily through the ranks. He also witnessed firsthand — more than once — the devastating results of the German assault. The cargo ship SS Santa Rita was torpedoed on July 9, and Livermore participated in rescuing 48 merchant seamen and a nine-man Naval Armed Guard detachment. On July 21, Bunte was among the deck crew that pulled 33 survivors of a torpedoed British tanker from the water. In the fall, Bunte took part in Operation Torch , the Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa . US and British forces landed on the coasts, with Major General George Patton’s troops going ashore near Casablanca to open a new front in the war. The invasion armada’s presence was discovered by the crew of several French coastal steamers, and the Germans were notified in the early morning hours of November 8. The American soldiers were untested in combat, and the incoming fire and choppy surf made the landings chaotic. Some landing craft broached and spilled soldiers into the sea, their heavy packs pulling them inexorably beneath the waves. Initially, Bunte and his shipmates didn’t know what was happening ashore. For the next 36 hours, Livermore’ s crew went without sleep as they bombarded targets on the sea and in the air. By the time it concluded, the battle for Mehdia was a victory for the Allies. But it cost 79 American lives and left 250 wounded. Unlike his older brothers, Freeman Bushee, 20, thought it wiser to take his chances with the draft. Freeman — who went by both “Free” and “Zeke” — was an exuberant young man, known to entertain himself by jumping out of a second-story window into a snowbank or starting a fistfight for the fun of it. He was drafted into the Army on November 20, 1942. The next month, he and a busload of other young men from Melrose reported to Fort Devens, about 40 miles west of Boston. Freeman was eventually assigned to Company B, 350th Infantry Regiment, 88th Infantry Division . It would become the first division composed principally of draftees to see combat in World War II. In Melrose that winter, shortages and rationing intensified. On the East Coast, horse meat began to appear in markets. Charles was working as many extra shifts at the Monsanto plant as he could handle, and their daughter, Irma, had a job at the Watertown Arsenal munitions plant. Christmas Day 1942 at the Bushee home was unusually quiet. The service flag hanging in the window now had six blue stars, one for each son in the service. “Melrose Family ‘Gone to War’ for Uncle Sam,” read a Boston Globe headline that December. Freeman had advised his brother Frankie to take his chances and wait to be drafted. Frankie ignored the advice and was due to join the Navy soon, when he turned 18. Emma told the Globe reporter that her wish was to live to see every one of her boys return home safely. She was looking forward to dancing at each one of their weddings. By 1943, Emma and Charles’s sons were scattered across six continents. Frankie was training in the Finger Lakes region of New York, and Ray was an MP at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, where he was promoted to corporal and allowed frequent visits to see his family. The other brothers were much farther from home. Ernie was sailing on a Liberty ship through the Panama Canal to Australia , then on to the Middle East. Will had been transferred to England, to a base just outside London. Bunte was transferred to a new Fletcher class destroyer, USS Sproston — faster, roomier, and capable of absorbing far more punishment than Livermore. He tattooed the names of both his ships on his arm. As for Tommy, he was serving in the hellish campaign on the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal , which was critical to maintaining the lifeline between the United States and Australia and became the site of the first American offensive in the Pacific. Freeman’s division, the 88th, was preparing for the journey to North Africa later that year. But Freeman himself had other plans. He’d had a feeling he wouldn’t survive the war, and without permission, he returned to Melrose to visit his family one last time. Going AWOL was a serious wartime infraction, and Freeman would pay a price. But first, he spent a weekend at home. At the end of it, he kissed his mother goodbye and turned himself in. He was fined and demoted to buck private, the lowest rank possible. In early December, one of the 88th Division’s last groups left for Africa, Freeman among them. The three-week ocean voyage to Casablanca was miserable. Hundreds of soldiers were crammed into the holds of the troopships, wedged into bunks stacked five men high. The ships violently pitched and rolled with the waves. Bunte, with his knack for being in the middle of the action, began 1944 aboard Sproston in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands , preparing for America’s first naval surface bombardment of Japan. They were given permission to grow beards for protection against the biting cold, and Bunte sent home a picture of himself sporting what the family called his “piratical beard.” As 1944 began, the 88th Division was preparing to move from North Africa to Italy, where the US Army was struggling to break through German defenses blocking the road to Rome. The many Americans with visions of a sunny and picturesque countryside were sorely disappointed to find mangled vegetation and shattered ancient buildings. The Italian people were emaciated and clad in dirty, tattered clothing. For the first time, Freeman and the others experienced the sights, smells, and sounds of war: the appalling physical destruction, the gunfire, the stench of death. Freeman wrote a letter to Ray, his military policeman brother then serving on a hospital ship. He mentioned that Dot, Ray’s girlfriend, had sent him a card. “She is a swell girl. You and her ought to be thinking of wedding bells soon.” He continued, engaging in some brotherly joking. “I’m glad to hear that your [sic] in good health. You know it’s pretty hard to find an M.P. that’s in good health. Some rugged infantryman usually kicks their head in,” Freeman joked. Then he turned serious. “I hope you don’t have to travel these waters over here. It’s not funny, those darn hospital ships make good targets.” Freeman also tried to explain why he’d gone AWOL. “As for me pulling a dumb trick, Ray. I’m not sorry I did it. I paid for doing it,” Freeman wrote. “Chances are I may never see home again, you try to figure it out. It made sense when I did it.” On March 4, 1944, the 88th division entered the front line near Minturno, Italy, relieving a British division under the cover of darkness. Freeman had what Ernie Pyle called a “worm’s eye view” of the war, where “the picture consists only of tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don’t want to die.” Several thousand yards north of the American position, the Germans were entrenched in concrete pillboxes and caves. Between the German and Allied lines was a no man’s land of rough terrain and deadly minefields. Friday, March 17, 1944, began with temperatures in the low 30s. It was overcast, with a steady drizzle throughout the day. Several hours after sunset, Second Lieutenant Francis J. Organ led Freeman and three other men on a reconnaissance patrol northeast into no man’s land. The men traveled light, carrying their rifles, a few grenades, and water. The night was pitch black, and about a mile into no man’s land, the patrol crept down a muddy slope. The men approached a stream, unaware that enemy soldiers were concealed on the far side, dug in on a ridge. One of the Americans snagged a tripwire that launched an illumination flare, suddenly bathing the landscape in an eerie, shifting light. The Germans tore into the patrol. Tracer rounds pierced the night and ricocheted past the men, as grenade explosions showered them with rocks. Freeman, Organ, and Corporal Horace Jackson were wounded in the fire fight. At some point, they stumbled into a minefield and triggered at least one mine. The other two soldiers from patrol made it back to the American lines and reported what had happened. In the days ahead, patrols searched the area but found no sign of the missing soldiers. Freeman “failed to return from patrol,” Army records reported, categorizing him and the others as missing in action. On April 16, 1944, a Sunday, the doorbell rang at the Bushee home in Melrose. Emma found a man in a Western Union uniform holding a telegram. The previous month, Emma had stopped writing in her diary. She’d recently mailed Freeman care packages — socks, a pen, writing paper, stamps — but had yet to hear back, which was unlike him. Something seemed wrong. Emma stepped inside her home, opened the telegram, and began to read: The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret that your son Private Freeman C. Bushee has been reported missing in action since nineteen March in Italy. Emma collapsed to the floor. Her younger children wondered what possibly could have happened. She didn’t resume her journal until May, with cursory entries like ones on the 11th of that month: “Mother’s Day. Received check from Bunte $60 and many cards and gifts.” She had been tirelessly writing to the War Department in Washington, desperate to learn what had happened to Freeman. Finally, on July 5, the Army responded with a letter transmitting a check for $40, thought to be the only of Freeman’s possessions found in Italy. There was no other word of her son, but the letter sternly warned that Emma might later have to return the money, if it was determined she was not legally entitled to it. For Ray, by mid-July, it was time to go to Europe. He was transferred to an Army hospital ship that would support the Allied invasion of southern France. The USAHS Emily H. M. Weder , capable of caring for 743 patients, set a course for Naples. Ray’s destination must have been unsettling for Emma. Freeman had landed in Naples just months earlier. “Up to now, no news of Free as expected,” she wrote in her diary. “If no news today will write the War Department tomorrow.” Bobby Bushee joined the Navy on September 25, 1944, shortly before his 18th birthday, the eighth Bushee son to go to war. He was stationed for a time at the Brooklyn Armed Guard Center along with his brother Ernie, who showed him the ropes . Bobby was eventually assigned to the USS Stockdale and was soon steaming toward Guam. Throughout the fall, Emma received letters from Bunte — now back in the US and assigned to a training base in San Diego — and from Ray, who was then in Corsica. Decades later, Ray would fondly recall swimming in the crystal blue Mediterranean waters, a rare good memory among those years of bad ones. Early the next year, he’d add another one: a chance reunion with Ernie at the hospital base at Hollandia, on New Guinea’s northern coast. When Ernie arrived aboard a merchant ship, the brothers got an opportunity to catch up 9,000 miles from home. Back in Melrose, Emma still wasn’t hearing anything about Freeman. “Want any news which might help,” she pleaded in her diary in October 1944. “8 months missing now.” She had been volunteering with the Melrose Hospital Guild and the Red Cross. And with Charles, she attended local prisoner of war group meetings, clinging to hope that Freeman was a POW and alive somewhere in Italy. As she did often, Emma walked to St. Mary’s Church and lit votive candles for her sons. And then she got down on her knees and prayed. Despite a severe winter storm on New Year’s Day, Emma was happy to begin 1945 with her school-age sons and daughters safe at home. The next month, on February 18, she wrote a note in her diary: “Freeman’s birthday 23 years old today.” Ray began 1945 still on the Emily Weder hospital ship, traversing the South Pacific from New Guinea to Leyte island in the Philippines. Conditions aboard were brutal; the hospital wards and crew quarters regularly reached 110 degrees or more. Before long, Ray’s fiery temper and disdain of authority caught up with him — he crossed a disciplinary line and was demoted from corporal to private. “Ray. Pvt. again in New Guinea,” Emma wrote simply, perhaps unsurprised. May brought good news, and a calm before one more storm. The war in Europe officially ended on the 8th. After building an American military that had a peak strength of 12 million service members, demobilization began. Emma had reason to hope her sons would soon be coming home. On Mother’s Day, she was showered with presents. “Very Nice. Gifts from Sister, Ann, Pa, and the kids. 16 lbs of candy from Mrs. Oleary,” she wrote. A news organization had recently informed her she “was the only mother with 8 sons in the service ... within a 100 mile radius.” But the joy was short-lived. The first week of August saw a series of events that shook the Bushee family and the world. On August 5 at suppertime on the East Coast of the United States — 8:15 a.m. on the 6th in Japan — the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing about 80,000 people instantly. On August 6, the next day in Melrose, Ray returned home. He and Dot had been making plans to marry that week at St. Mary’s Church. But also that day, the news Emma and Charles feared most finally arrived: Freeman’s status was changed to killed in action — his official date of death set at August 3, 1945. Instead of a wedding, the Bushee family would hold a funeral. The service was held on August 13 at St. Mary’s. Family and friends offered their condolences, and letters and flowers — “spiritual bouquets for my Freeman,” Emma called them — continued to arrive for more than a week. “Everyone has been so good to us,” she wrote in her diary. Freeman’s remains wouldn’t be found for nearly two more years, but his medals soon arrived at the Bushee home: a Combat Infantryman’s Badge and a Purple Heart. On August 14, President Truman announced Japan had agreed to unconditional surrender . Emma added to her diary entry: “End of the war Thank God at 7 p.m. Everyone went foolish. My heart’s too heavy.” A few days later, Ray and Dot were married in a small private ceremony in the rectory of St. Mary’s. They honeymooned in a cottage near Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, before Ray returned to his ship. By August 22, Emma had hung a new service flag in the front window of her home, the Globe reported. It now bore seven blue stars and one gold — the gold star “because Pvt. Freeman C. Bushee, reported missing in action some months ago, now is listed as killed.” Before the war formally concluded , a ninth Bushee son, George, enlisted in the Army in early 1946 — even though at 17, he was too young. Four months into his service, the Army caught on and discharged him. (He’d be drafted during the Korean War, as would two of his younger brothers.) Nine of Emma and Charles’s sons had served around the globe, from the steaming jungles of Guadalcanal, to the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, to the battlefields of smoke and blood at the heart of Europe. Eight of them returned home to Melrose. When the city dedicated an Honor Roll to the World War II dead, 700 people gathered to walk to the new memorial. Emma and other Gold Star mothers led the procession. Charles and Emma decided to have Freeman’s remains interred in the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, Italy, near where he was killed. Will, Ernie, Tommy, and more of the brothers worked at least for a time alongside their father at the Monsanto plant. Bunte did, too, but soon married and moved to Malden, where he raised his family. He never did get to start his own farm, but did build a long career in the trucking industry. Frankie worked as machinist for Sylvania and BASF, and Bobby became a mason. Ray returned to Melrose to start his postwar life with Dot, his new bride. At 27, his dream of becoming a major league ballplayer was over, and he worked at Monsanto for the next 40 years. My two brothers and I went on to join the military, which occasionally puzzled him. In 1946, US Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson wrote to Charles and Emma. “I have recently learned that you are the parents of nine sons whose services have been given to the armed forces,” he wrote. “One of your sons has sacrificed his life in the service of his country. In extending my deep sympathy to you for this loss I should like to extend my gratitude for the service of these fine men.” Patterson continued, “In spite of your sorrow, I know that you must feel a great sense of pride in the contribution to victory which your sons have made in the late ruthless war. You may be sure that the nation shares this feeling with all parents whose courageous men drove forward with our forces to crush the military power of our enemies and to bring us peace at last.” Most of the battlefields on which the brothers fought have long been reclaimed by nature, the bases where they were stationed long abandoned, and the ships that they sailed on, taken apart for scrap. The old Boston Navy Yard, which once employed over 50,000 workers and built or repaired many of the ships that helped win the war, closed in 1974. The Monsanto plant is now the site of the Encore Boston Harbor casino. The Bushee home on 40 Main Street was demolished years ago to make way for the Windsor at Oak Grove apartments, where new generations are now raising their families. Growing up, I never really appreciated the depth of character of Emma and her sons. They rarely spoke of their wartime experiences, even as those experiences shaped their values and guided their decisions for the rest of their lives. I deeply regret my sense as a young man that sometimes my father and uncles didn’t really “get it.” My father once said something in passing about France, and I rudely replied, with a teenager’s misplaced confidence, “How would you know?” He shook his head and walked away. It turns out that my father and his brothers understood the world all too well, having learned hard lessons in an unforgiving school. Their one wish was that their children would live in a better world than they did, and in that, they succeeded beyond even their hopes.
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