My grandfather was born in 1882 in Poland (then part of Russia) as a slave (or serf bound to the land). He served in the Tsar's army as a conscript for two years before Russia fell apart and dropped out of the war. He went back to farming and raised a family. Just before WW2 started he shipped his children off to the US to live with relatives while he waited for his pregnant wife to give birth before following them. The Nazis invaded and he found himself being mobilized to fight them only to be marched in the opposite direction to meet the Soviet invasion. He was taken prisoner and shipped back to the depths of the Soviet Union and somehow escaped and a couple years later showed up in New York on a returning Liberty ship (by hook or crook).
His wife's twin sister (a Catholic nun) had taken refuge at the family farm after the Nazi's had ordered all schools and religious centers closed and most of their members arrested. When the Nazis found the sister everyone in the home was arrested. My grandmother and her twin sister along with my twin uncles (about three months old) were never heard from again.
Upon arrival in the US my grandfather tracked down his children and found his three oldest sons had been drafted and my father (about 10 at the time) was being passed from family to family as he didn't have a ration card (undocumented immigrant?). Grandpa started farming and my dad was his only farm hand so he quit school in the 8th grade to farm full time. When Korea rolled around dad was drafted early and hard and sent to Korea as a replacement rifleman (no education or "vocational skill" gets one a front row seat in the army). Eventually he was wounded and sent home to recover and was discharged from active duty as a corporal. Later I learned he was in the reserves for years afterwards and wasn't discharged(?) from the reserves until the early 1970s. That kind of surprised me considering he had a sizable farm and 12 kids depending on him.
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Today's Featured Article - A Cautionary Tale - by Ian Minshull. In the early 1950s my father bought an Allis Chalmers B and I used it for all the row crop work with the mangolds and potatoes, rolling and the haymaking on our farm. The farm and the Allis were sold and I have spent a lifetime working on farms throughout the country. I promised myself that one day I would own an Allis. That time event
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