Ted Poe: “Born in the 1920s, he grew up in the Depression of the 1930s poor, just like many American children in the rural areas.…”

“Born in the 1920s, he grew up in the Depression of the 1930s poor, just like many American children in the rural areas. Fresh vegetables were grown in the family garden behind the small frame house, and his mother made sandwiches for school out of homemade bread. Store-bought bread was for the rich. He grew up belonging to the Boy Scouts, playing the trumpet in high school band, raising rabbits and bees, and he went to church on most Sundays. In 1944, this 18-year-old country boy who had never been more than 50 miles from home finally found himself going through basic training in the United States Army at Camp Wolters, Texas. After that, he rode the train with hundreds of other American GIs--mostly teenagers, really--to New York City for an ocean trip on a cramped Liberty ship to fight in the great World War II. As a soldier in the Seventh Army, he went from France on to survive the Battle of the Bulge and through the cities of Aachen, Stuttgart, Cologne, and Bonn. As a teenager, he saw the concentration camps and the victims of the Nazis. He saw incredible numbers of other teenage Americans buried in graves throughout France, a sobering monument to those soldiers at Normandy. After Germany surrendered, Tech Sergeant Virgil Poe went back to Fort Hood, Texas, to be reequipped for the invasion of Japan.…”