Virgie Bell's View: Amherst Heroes

For years Kayla would ask me, "Who is your favorite author? What is your favorite book, Granny?" For years my answer was always the same. “I don't know Kayla. I hope I haven't read my favorite book. I hope I am still looking forward to my favorite author.” So many times I would think this is the one. He is it! Or else, she is it! Then one time last year my book club offered Marjorie Morningstar. I had heard of that one. I recognized the author’s name. I was hooked from the start. For the first time in my life I searched the web for Mr. Wouk. I wanted to thank him for the enjoyment he brought into a readers life, my life. This was to no avail. Oh, he lives in the United States with frequent trips to Israel. But he did most of his writing before websites. Of course then, I bought the other books by him. A total of eleven books, I believe. Special ordered some. A couple of them were used, which I ordered over the net. It took me the most part of a year to read them, to live them, to visit my childhood once again. To relive my patriotism. To visit once again that time when we pulled together and saved my world, our world, The United States of America. When I finally lay in my bed one night reading War and Remembrance, so engrossed was I that when I was reading about the battle of Midway, I felt as if I was there.

I grew up with my eyes on the silver screen when the rage was war movies. I dove with the handsome hero in the dive bombers, over and over again, and then my playmates and I would play like we were the soldier, the sailor, the marine. I saw my brothers hold little toy planes and make the burrrr, pow-pow right in our living room. It is said you can’t go home again, but I find we never stop trying. With Mr. Wouk, I came close. Home for me was in Los Angeles, but I started out my life in Amherst, Texas. I was born there; all my children were born there, as was Zach. As was Aaron. One night, as I was engrossed in reading about the battle of Midway, one battle that decided the course of the war in the South Pacific, I came to a paragraph in which a planned coordinated attack in which the dive bombers were supposed to distract the enemy fighter, so as to give the vulnerable torpedo planes their chance to come in. Instead, the torpedo planes had pulled down the zeros and cleared the air for the dive bombers. What was not luck, but the soul of the United States of America in action, was the willingness of the torpedo plane squadrons to go in against hopeless odds. This was the extra ounce of the martial weight that in a few decisive minutes tripped the balance of history. It gave the list of those who gave their lives so that I and my fellow countrymen could live on. On the U.S.S. YORKTOWN it had a page naming them all. One was from Amherst, Texas. His name was Charles L. Moore. I don't know if he was born there. My guess is that he was. We don't ever fall far from the tree, especially not then.

De'on and I made a pact to go over there and research what we could about this wonderful hero. If there is a marker, that is all it will be. He will be one of those that God will command the sea to give up on the day of the resurrection. And it seems so strange that we females who blog on Gunz Up are writing about him so very many years later. But then maybe it is not so very strange. We are the mother and grandmother of another hero that was born there in that small wonderful town which will always be home to me. You have read about my grandson and her son. This blog is dedicated to him and is about him. Just one more time though I want to say thank you, Charles L. Moore and Aaron Cole Austin, Amherst Heroes. I salute you!

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